Bryan Burrough
speaker
583 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Sep 2026
last heard 3d ago
Bryan Burrough’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 2.
Appearances
When Americans saw the British and French stage duels, they decided to try it for themselves, and it caught on.
By the time America achieved its independence, the new country had metabolized that old European honor code into an aspect of American culture.
Today, because it's such a foreign concept to modern-day mindsets, dueling is often portrayed as this marginal, nutty thing done by a handful of marginal, nutty, mostly southern, way back in the day.
In fact it was very much a part of a mainstream American life, especially among men with public profiles, those to which an insult could be harder to cover over.
So dueling thrived among the wealthy, and especially among the most keenly sensitive class in the public eye, politicians.
Sam Houston, back before he became president of the Republic of Texas, was a young Tennessee Congressman when he engaged in a duel
Notable mostly because Houston's shot veered at Tadlow and struck his rival in the um groin area.
Andrew Jackson was the only president we know of involved in a duel.
After a man named Charles Dickinson insulted his wife and accused Jackson of cheating on a horseback.
This was years before he became president.
Jackson killed his antagonist, but took a bullet to the chest, which remained there the rest of his life.
There's a story that other presidents almost had a duel.
I love this one.
According to one tale I'd like to believe, our fifth president, James Monroe, once tried to duel the second president, John Adams, until he was talked out of it by the fourth president, James Madison.
Even Abraham Lincoln got in on the trend, albeit in a very Abe Lincoln kind of way.
In 1842, while he was a state legislator out in the state of Illinois, he got into a spirited debate over Illinois banking policy.
when his opponent got all pissy and demanded a duel.
Lincoln accepted, reluctantly, but demanded they use broadswords, and they nearly went ahead with it, until their attendants, we call them seconds, talked them out of it at the last minute.
By the early 1800s then, duels had become more or less an accepted part of American life, even though there was a rising set of voices, especially preachers and women who denounced the practice as barbaric.
A turning point came with the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, easily the most famous duel in history.
Showing 81–100 of 583 · page 5 of 30
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