Just before they were placed in position, Baron remarked, "Commodore Decatur, I hope when we meet in another world we will be better friends."
Decatur promptly replied, "I have never been your enemy."
The distance was ten paces. Both were excellent shots, and firing simultaneously, both fell, Baron seriously, and Decatur fatally wounded.
Baron lived thirty years, becoming the senior officer of the navy, but he never wholly reinstated himself in the good opinion of either his brother officers or the people of his country.
Graves and Cilley
Graves and Cilley were congressmen from Kentucky and Maine, respectively. Cilley, in debate in the House, reflected on the character of Mr. Webb, editor of the New York Courier and Inquirer, who sent a note by his friend Graves demanding an explanation. Not wanting a controversy with Webb, Cilley declined to receive the note, expressing his high respect for Graves. According, however, to the duellists' hair-line theory of honor, Cilley's refusal to receive the note from Graves implied a reflection upon the latter and after some correspondence Graves sent a challenge to Cilley, which he accepted.
They met on the road to Marlborough, Maryland, Graves attended by Mr. Wise, his second, and Cilley by his friend, Mr. Jones. The weapons were rifles, the distance about 92 yards. They exchanged two shots without effect. After each shot efforts were made to reach an accommodation, thwarted by Graves and his seconds. After the second, Graves said, "I must have another shot," and asked Wise to prevent a prolongation of the affair by proposing closer quarters, if they missed repeatedly. But at the third shot, Cilley dropped his rifle, cried, "I am shot," put both hands to his wound, fell, and in two or three minutes expired, shot through the body.
The committee of seven appointed by the House of Representatives to investigate this affair reported that early on the day on which Cilley met his unfortunate end, James Watson Webb, Daniel Jackson, and William H. Morell agreed to arm, repair to Cilley's rooms and force him to fight Webb with pistols on the spot, or pledge his word to give Webb a meeting before he did Graves. If Cilley would do neither, they agreed to shatter his right arm.
Finding Cilley was not at his lodgings, they went to Bladensburg, where it was said the duel was to take place. It was agreed that Webb would approach Cilley, claim the quarrel, insist on fighting him and assure him if he aimed at Graves, Webb would shoot him. Not finding the party at Bladensburg, they returned to the city to await the result of the duel. A statement drawn up by Webb, signed by Jackson and Morell, and published in the New York Courier and Inquirer, says: "It is unnecessary to add what would have been the course of Colonel Webb if Mr. Graves, instead of Mr. Cilley, had been injured. Suffice it to say that it was sanctioned by us and, however much we deplore it, we could not doubt but the extraordinary position in which he would have been placed would have warranted the course determined upon." It is difficult to imagine what is here darkly shadowed, if it be not that, had Cilley survived the encounter with Graves, and had the latter suffered it, it would then have been Cilley's fate to have encountered an assassin.