Definition
In criminal law, seconds are the persons who assist, direct, and support the principals in a duel. Each duelist typically had one second, whose role included arranging the terms of the encounter, ensuring fair conduct, and attending the principals on the field. Seconds were not mere bystanders; they were active participants in an illegal and dangerous proceeding, and the law treated them accordingly.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of "second" — a unit of time, or a position following first.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): One who attends another in a duel to act as an adviser and assistant; also the sixtieth part of a minute of time or of a degree.
Webster's 1913 actually captures the legal meaning here, because the dueling custom was still alive enough in 1913 to warrant explicit inclusion. The legal term is a specific application of that older common meaning — one now almost entirely defunct in both ordinary speech and active law, but essential to understand when reading nineteenth-century criminal sources.
Common Confusion
Seconds is occasionally misread in historical sources as a generic reference to assistants or supporters, causing researchers to underestimate the legal exposure of these individuals. The historical dictionaries are uniform: seconds were not mere witnesses or attendants. Under most American anti-dueling statutes and at common law, they were treated as principals in the underlying offense. A second who watched a fatal duel without intervening could face a murder charge alongside the man who fired the shot.
There is also a doctrinal dispute preserved in the sources regarding differential liability between the two seconds — specifically, whether the second of the slain party bears the same criminal responsibility as the second of the survivor. Hale's position, noted in Bouvier, held that the second of the killed party was guilty only of a lesser offense, reasoning that his principal had not committed the act causing death. The majority rule under American statutes rejected this distinction and treated all seconds equally.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in nineteenth-century American criminal law — particularly in states with explicit anti-dueling statutes — will encounter seconds as a discrete criminal category. Several points deserve attention:
First, liability varied by statute. Some states codified seconds' guilt expressly; others relied on common law accessory or principal analysis. The distinction between statutory and common law treatment affects how cases were charged and how courts analyzed culpability.
Second, the term appears in coroner's inquest records, grand jury materials, and trial transcripts from dueling prosecutions. In those contexts, "second" is a term of art, not a casual descriptor. Misreading it as a generic assistant will distort the legal analysis.
Third, dueling prosecutions are often proxies for political and social conflict in the historical record — many involved prominent figures, and the prosecutorial decisions (including whether to charge seconds) were frequently influenced by factors outside the courtroom. Researchers using these records for social history as well as legal history should keep that context in view.
Fourth, this term has essentially no live legal application. Modern researchers encountering "seconds" in a criminal context are almost certainly working with pre-twentieth-century materials. If the term appears in a modern document, confirm it is not being used in a colloquial or unrelated sense before applying the criminal law definition.
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical sources are in close agreement on the core definition. Black's (both editions), Rapalje & Lawrence, and Bouvier all define seconds as persons who assist, direct, and support dueling principals, and all treat criminal liability as flowing naturally from that role. The language in Black's first and second editions is identical, suggesting the definition was considered settled and uncontroversial by the time of publication.
Bouvier is the most analytically useful of the historical sources. It preserves the Hale dissent on differential liability between the second of the victor and the second of the slain — a genuine doctrinal controversy that the other dictionaries pass over. Researchers interested in the theoretical foundations of accessory liability in dueling cases should treat Bouvier as the starting point and work backward from there.
Rapalje & Lawrence add the practical cross-reference to statutes, noting that most American anti-dueling legislation made seconds "equally guilty with the principals." This is the dominant American rule and represents a departure from Hale's more graduated approach.
Anderson's entry is a bare cross-reference to BATTERY and DUEL — unhelpful for the specific question of seconds' liability, but a useful navigational pointer to the broader doctrinal context.
What the historical dictionaries collectively omit: they do not address the procedural question of how seconds were charged (as principals, accessories before the fact, or accessories at the fact), nor do they address how often prosecutions of seconds were actually pursued versus principals alone. Those questions require primary source research.
Jurisdictional Note
American states varied in how aggressively they prosecuted seconds and in whether anti-dueling statutes expressly named them. Southern states, where dueling culture persisted longest, produced the most developed case law. Some state constitutions included anti-dueling oaths for officeholders, which created separate civil disqualification consequences distinct from criminal liability.