Coming up, a noteworthy bicentennial
by Jack Neely
Knoxville was too small for the both of them. The tiny city existed only as a cluster of about 25 city blocks on the bluff over the river, with a population of only about 500. To judge it by its population would be to deny its importance as Turf. Knoxville was, for one thing, Tennessee's capital, one of only 17 state capitals in America. You never knew who might show up. Sometimes big shots encountered each other unexpectedly and weren't happy about it.
One well-dressed man was an established gentleman, already a legend in his own time. A few days past his 58th birthday, John Sevier was Tennessee's most famous soldier, veteran of the Battle of King's Mountain in the Revolution and dozens of clashes with Cherokees, Creeks, and Chickamaugans; founder of the premature State of Franklin; later the first governor of the state of Tennessee. He had taken a breather from the job a couple of years ago, but seemed destined to return to that post in the fall elections. He liked to carry a sheathed saber just in case, and it turns out that on that Saturday, Oct. 1, 1803, he found a reason to draw it.
That reason was the sight of a tall, gaunt young man who kept his fierce red hair tied back in an eelskin. He didn't look much like a former U.S. Representative or a former U.S. Senator, but he was both. Bored by D.C. jobs, he had quit the senate to come home to wild Tennessee, and ride the circuit as a justice in the state's Superior Court. It was, in those days, an adventurous occupation.
His name was Andrew Jackson, and he may have been the only white man in Knoxville that day who did not love John Sevier, who had once dismissed Jackson as a "poor pitiful pettifogging lawyer."
Recently, Jackson had been investigating a complicated land scheme. Two months before, in an article in the Knoxville Gazette, Jackson had charged Sevier with fraud and bribery.
Jackson arrived at the public square at the corner of the streets later known as Gay and Main. Sevier drew his saber and shouted at Jackson, ridiculing his "pretensions."
Startled, and apparently still intimidated by the heroic Sevier, Jackson stammered, defending his record of services to the state.
"Services?" answered the sarcastic Sevier. "I know of no service you have rendered the country, except taking a trip to Natchez with another man's wife!"
It was, maybe, the worst thing he could have said to Andrew Jackson. In Natchez a dozen years earlier, Jackson had married Rachel Robards, only to learn that the beauty was still legally married to her first husband. They'd been legally married for nine years now, but the three years that their marriage wasn't legal was still the subject of gossip.
"Great God!" Jackson shouted. "Do you mention her sacred name?"
Jackson was armed only with his cane sword, no match for Sevier's saber.
Excited Knoxville bystanders drew pistols, and some fired; a bystander was wounded. The next day, Sunday, the fuming Jackson scrawled a longhand challenge: "Sir, The ungentlemanly expressions and gasgonading conduct of yours relative to me on yesterday was in true character of yourself..."
Jackson held that Sevier was "devoid of every refined sentiment, or delicate sensation." He concluded, "I request an interview...my friend and myself will be armed with pistols—you cannot mistake me or my meaning..."
Sevier accepted the challenge to a duel immediately provided it not take place in Tennessee, a blessed land Sevier held to be too fine for dueling.
But Jackson wanted to duel in Knoxville. "Your attack was in the Town of Knoxville... Did you take the name of a lady into your polluted lips in the Town of Knoxville? ...now sir in the neighborhood of Knoxville you shall atone for it or I will publish you as a coward and a poltroon..."
Jackson finally agreed that they should cross to the "nearest Indian boundary line," which was in 1803 about 40 miles west, near Kingston. Sevier accepted the compromise.
What happened out there, somewhere along the Kingston Road, had the character of slapstick. Jackson's gestures with his sword spooked Sevier's horse, which trotted away with the governor's dueling pistols. Realizing his saber wouldn't help much against Jackson's pistols, Sevier hid behind a tree as his son James aimed at Jackson, whose second, Dr. Thomas Vandyke, aimed a pistol at James. Sevier's horse waited at a safe distance.
There was general agreement that the four men not kill each other. They came on back to town. Sevier and Jackson never reconciled. An account of the unpleasantness appears on page 6 of British historian Paul Johnson's world history, The Birth of the Modern, as a formative experience in the career of one young man who would become one of the most influential political figures of Western civilization. The Sevier-Jackson feud would also be blamed for Tennessee's stubborn political rifts which divide East from Middle to this day.
September 25, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 39
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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