Definition
The fighting of two persons, each armed with deadly weapons, at an appointed time and place, upon a prior quarrel or grievance. Duelling is distinguished from other forms of violent confrontation by its essential element of premeditation: the encounter is planned, the parties consent to meet, and the combat follows an established code or arrangement. When a participant is killed, the survivor is guilty of murder under common law principles, regardless of consent or the formalities observed. Even where no death results, the act of duelling — and the sending or acceptance of a challenge to duel — has historically been treated as a criminal offense in most American jurisdictions.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Present participle and gerund of "duel" — the act of two people fighting, often used informally to describe any competitive one-on-one contest.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A combat between two persons, fought with deadly weapons, by agreement, to settle some real or imaginary quarrel.
The common usage captures the physical encounter but loses the legal weight. In law, duelling is not merely a fight between two willing parties — consent is irrelevant to criminal liability. A key trap is assuming that mutual agreement negates the homicide. It does not: the consenting victim doctrine does not apply, and a death in a duel is murder, not manslaughter, precisely because of the premeditation built into the arrangement.
Common Confusion
Duelling and affray are frequently conflated because both involve physical violence between individuals. The distinction is decisive in legal analysis: an affray arises on a sudden quarrel, without prior arrangement, and is typically treated as a lesser offense. Duelling, by contrast, is always the product of design — a deliberate challenge, accepted, and carried out at a chosen time and place. The premeditation that elevates duelling above affray is the same element that, when death results, supports a murder charge rather than manslaughter. Researchers encountering older criminal records should attend carefully to which charge was brought, as the two were sometimes confused or strategically substituted in charging decisions.
Why It Matters in Research
Duelling is a term with a defined historical arc. It was a functioning legal category in American law through most of the nineteenth century, generating statutes, criminal prosecutions, and civil disabilities (some jurisdictions barred convicted duellists from holding public office). By the early twentieth century, duelling had effectively disappeared as a live criminal concern, and the statutes addressing it became largely dormant — though not always repealed.
Researchers working in pre-Civil War criminal records will encounter duelling charges with some regularity, particularly in Southern states where the practice persisted longest. The applicable law in those records is almost entirely statutory, and the statutes varied considerably: some states criminalized the sending of a challenge alone; others required an actual encounter; a few imposed civil disabilities independent of criminal conviction. Rapalje & Lawrence correctly directs researchers to consult individual state statutes rather than assuming uniformity.
A secondary research trap: historical sources occasionally treat a death in a duel as manslaughter rather than murder, particularly in jurisdictions where heat-of-passion doctrine was loosely applied. The dominant common law rule — murder, not manslaughter, because premeditation is present — should be treated as the baseline, but local deviation exists and requires verification against jurisdiction-specific sources.
For constitutional and civil dimensions, researchers should note that challenges to anti-duelling oaths (required of officeholders in some states) generated their own body of case law, distinct from the criminal treatment of the act itself.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier and Rapalje & Lawrence are in close agreement on the core definition: premeditated armed combat between two persons, distinguished from affray by design rather than sudden quarrel. Both sources treat the criminal consequences as a matter for individual state statutes rather than attempting a comprehensive treatment, which accurately reflects the statutory landscape of the period.
Bouvier goes further than Rapalje & Lawrence in stating the homicide rule directly — that the survivor is guilty of murder when a death results — and cites Russell on Crimes for authority. This is the more useful formulation for legal research purposes, and it aligns with the weight of common law authority.
Neither source addresses the civil disabilities (office-holding bars, oath requirements) that several states attached to duelling convictions, nor the ecclesiastical and social dimensions that influenced how prosecutions were actually pursued. Researchers should not take the dictionary definitions as a complete picture of how duelling law operated in practice.
Jurisdictional Note
American law on duelling was almost entirely statutory and varied significantly by state. Southern states generally retained more permissive social attitudes toward duelling longer than Northern states, though anti-duelling statutes existed across the country. Some states imposed specific penalties for sending or accepting a challenge, independent of whether a duel took place. A few state constitutions included anti-duelling provisions affecting eligibility for public office.