The Baron, who had excellent taste in everything except his own make-up, superintended all the details of the affair, even to the costumes of the bridal party. The bridesmaids were schoolmates of Miss Williams, one being Jessie Benton, then aged fourteen, who afterward became the wife of General John C. Fremont. The groomsmen were generally contemporaries of the groom, so that the note of age disparity was uniform throughout. President Van Buren and Henry Clay were conspicuous among the guests. At the first opportunity, the Baron took his bride to Russia and presented her at court, where she electrified the assembled nobility by shaking the Czar’s hand in cordial American fashion. It delighted the Czar, however, which was more to the point; and, although she did many unusual things, like declining the Czarina’s invitation to a Sunday function because she had been brought up to “keep the Sabbath,” she became a great favorite in the inner imperial circle, and loved to dwell on her foreign experiences after she came back to Georgetown to live. The Bodisco house is still pointed out to strangers.
Not all the historic associations of Georgetown and its neighborhood have been so peaceful. For a few miles out of town the river’s edge is dotted with sequestered nooks to which hot-brained gentlemen could retire on occasion, to wipe out their grievances in one another’s blood. The Little Falls bridge afforded such a retreat to Henry Clay and John Randolph after Randolph’s speech declaring that the “alphabet that writes the name of Thersites, of blackguard, of squalidity, refuses her letters for” Clay. The combatants took the precaution to cross the bridge far enough to avoid the jurisdiction of the District authorities. Clay’s first shot cut Randolph’s coat near the hip, Randolph’s did nothing. At the second word, Clay’s bullet went wild, and Randolph deliberately sent his into the air, remarking: “I do not fire at you, Mr. Clay!” At the same time he advanced with hand outstretched, Clay meeting him halfway. Randolph, as they were leaving the field, pointed to the hole made by Clay’s first bullet, saying jocosely: “You owe me a coat, Mr. Clay.” “I am glad, sir,” answered Clay, “that the debt is no greater.”
The subject of duels calls to mind another suburb, to wit, Bladensburg, Maryland, where the defenders of Washington made their brief and ineffectual stand against the invading British in 1814. Here, for sixty years, in a green little dell about a mile out of town, all sorts of personal and political feuds were settled with deadly weapons. The most celebrated of these meetings was that of March 22, 1820, between two Commodores of the American navy, Stephen Decatur and James Barren. Like most duels, it was more the work of mischief-makers than of the principals themselves.
Decatur was at the height of his fame for achievements in the War of 1812 and against the Barbary pirates; he was a fine marksman with the pistol, and had had several earlier experiences on the dueling-field. Barren, on the other hand, was under a cloud for some professional mistakes; he was six years Decatur’s senior, had no taste for dueling, and was near-sighted. Down to the last, Barron was plainly disposed to accept any reasonable concession and call the affair off; but Decatur was in high spirits and full of confidence.
Two shots rang out simultaneously, and both men fell. Decatur, who was at first supposed to be dead, presently showed signs of returning animation and was lifted to his feet, only to stagger a few paces toward his antagonist and fall again. As the two men lay side by side, Barron turned his face to say to Decatur that he hoped, when they met in another world, they would be better friends than in this. Decatur responded that he had never been Barren’s enemy, and, though he cherished no animosity to Barron for killing him, he found it harder to forgive the men who had goaded them into this quarrel. Both combatants were carried back to Washington, where Barron slowly recovered from his wound; but Decatur, after a day of intense suffering, died in the house which still bears his name, at the corner of Jackson Place and H Street.
So habitually was this one ravine chosen for the settlement of affairs of honor that when two Representatives, Jonathan Cilley of Maine and William J. Graves of Kentucky, decided in 1838 to end a dispute with rifles, they outwitted pursuit by choosing for their fight the eastern end of the Anacostia bridge on the high-road to Marlboro, Maryland; and a posse who started out to stop them went to the accustomed ground only to find it empty. This duel had naught of the dramatic quality of that between Decatur and Barren, but its effect on the public mind proved more far-reaching. Cilley was a young man of brilliant promise, highly respected as well as popular, with a wife and three little children. The quarrel was forced upon him because, in the interest of the proper dignity of Congress, he objected to a proposed investigation by the House of some vague and irresponsible insinuations made in a recent newspaper letter against sundry members who were not named or otherwise identified. Graves insisted that this speech was an insult to the author of the article, whose championship he gratuitously undertook.
The first two shots were thrown away on both sides. At the third fire, Cilley fell upon his face, his adversary’s bullet having killed him instantly. When the news of his death spread through Washington, indignation against Graves rose to fever heat, and his public career ended with that hour. The wantonness of such a sacrifice of a useful life, where the writer who figured as the cause of the quarrel did not even take a part in it, gave special point to the condemnation of the false standard of honor set up by the “code.” The funeral services for Cilley at the Capitol were attended by the President and Cabinet, in testimony to the high esteem in which he had universally been held; while the Supreme Court declined its invitation in a body, as the most emphatic means of expressing its abhorrence of glossing murder with a thin coat of etiquette. Ministers, not only in Washington but in all the more highly civilized parts of the country, denounced dueling from the pulpit, newspapers published editorials and associations adopted resolutions against it, additional legislation for the abolition of the practice was introduced in various legislatures, and Congress passed an act to punish, with a term in the penitentiary, the sending or acceptance of a challenge in the District of Columbia.
Stage Entrance through which Booth Escaped