Raynor HCA 2013-07
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 7/18/2013
Broadside, 13-1/4” x 8 1/4,” “To The People,” printed in two columns, old fold lines. Addressed for mailing on the verso and docketed, with the remnants of the original wax seal and a small hole above the title from where it was sealed. Closed tear in top edge, a few small separations along folds, affecting about ten letters but not affecting readability. Good. Matted. A rare and apparently unrecorded broadside detailing the political feud and duel attempts between United States Representatives George McDuffie, a Democrat of South Carolina, and Col. William Cumming. McDuffie (1790-1851) served in the South Carolina Assembly, the U.S. House of Representatives (1821-34), the United States Senate (1842-46), and was governor of South Carolina from 1834 to 1836. The exact nature of their disagreement is not stated, but it ultimately led to Cumming challenging McDuffie to a duel in 1822, the presumed year of this undated broadside. McDuffie accepted the challenge and set about practicing, only to be put off several times by Cumming, who, according to McDuffie, resorted to various measures to avoid the confrontation. The two men schedule meetings in various places in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee, despite the fact that dueling was illegal in all three states. McDuffie describes Cumming's various evasions in the text, and ultimately serves up a withering assessment of his nemesis; "From the foregoing facts, all of which can be established by judicial evidence, I deem it scarcely necessary to anticipate the public by pronouncing Col. Cumming a coward. He has shrunk from a contest of his own seeking, upon grounds, that in themselves disprove his title to considered a man of firmness and courage." McDuffie and Cumming did ultimately duel in late 1822, with both men surviving but McDuffie suffering serious injuries that afflicted him throughout his life. The broadside, which has been folded for mailing, is addressed in manuscript to Congressman Thomas Hill Hubbard of Hamilton, New York, and is postmarked in Edgefield Courthouse, South Carolina. Interesting evidence of the persistence of dueling as a means of settling political and personal disagreements in the United States, nearly twenty years after the Burr-Hamilton duel. Rare and apparently unrecorded.
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