New York, Monday, April 16.
Dear Yankee: Congratulate
Mr. Potter for me from the bottom of my heart.
What is the talk
about code of honor? There is and never was such a codification in Europe among
the genuine chivalry for these one thousand years, neither among nobles of any
country of Europe. There is a kind of common law which every one knows, and a
practice of details which is acquired in the same way as by a lawyer. I fought
more than thirty duels, was second perhaps sixty times at least, and all with
gentlemen and noblemen, and never heard of code of honor or absolute rule about
weapons. If there is any code, rule, or common law about it, it is this: that
cowards only refuse when a weapon magnifies danger. I assisted to duels, as
second, when one of the combatants, pistols in hand, proposed to approach each
other from ten paces (the original distance) to three. It was accepted. Old and
hoary as I am, and never having really seen the use of a bowie-knife, I would
accept it if I still should insist on my reputation as duellist. We Polish
nobility, we fight generally with short, half-round Turkish swords. It makes
ugly gashes, and I saw bowels come out once.
Mrs. Potter is a
Spartan lady, and has a true gentleman for a husband. Greeley is an ass.
Yours,
Gurowski.
SOURCE: James
Shepherd Pike, First Blows of the Civil War: The Ten Years of
Preliminary Conflict in the United States from 1850 to 1860, p. 513
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