Not surprisingly, the Democratic press lashed out at Lincoln, derisively calling him “Aunt Becca,” rebuking him for his “most unwarrantable and unprovoked attack” on Shields, sneering at him for imagining that “an Irishman would run at the sight of a broad sword,” and ridiculing him as a “valiant man, who once attempted to frighten an Irishman with a broad sword, and who, when he found that impracticable procured his friends to manage ‘an amicable settlement.’ ” The editor of the Shawneetown Illinois Republican, Samuel D. Marshall, was less indignant: “We are gratified to learn that the duel which was to have taken place between our friends Shields and Lincoln did not come off, and that the whole affair was arranged satisfactorily to the parties, without bloodshed. They are both gentlemen of undoubted personal and moral courage, and we feel highly gratified that the matter has terminated thus happily.” When the Chicago Democrat demanded that Shields and Lincoln be punished, Marshall protested that “the evils of dueling like those of Intemperance must be cured by public opinion and not by the Legislature.” Marshall contended that if “Lincoln had refused to fight Mr. Shields no one would have gone further in denouncing him as a coward than the Editor of the Democrat,” John Wentworth, who “now seeks to impose an infamous punishment on him for doing the very thing he would have abused him most unmercifully for not doing.” Marshall declared that once “public opinion makes the refusal to accept as honorable as the offer of a challenge, then come on with your laws but not till then.” But as things stood, with “the present most repugnant and incomprehensible state of public opinion upon this subject,” Marshall would “deem a conviction for this offence highly disgraceful to the State. So long as public opinion countenances fighting let men fight in ‘peace.’ ” If dueling is to be outlawed, “let the man who sends a challenge be punished alone.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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