The concept of honor, now derided as so medieval, so Islamic, was alive and well in America only a century or so ago.

Dishonor, not death, was the thing most greatly feared and the quality of life that developed around that ideal was one we to which we look back in nostalgia as something utterly lost to us now.

From “The Compleat Gentleman: The Modern Man’s Guide to Chivalry”:

“The first duel in America was fought in 1621 and the last — well, perhaps it has yet to be fought. “Judicial Combat” as it was sometimes known — ironically since it was generally illegal — was governed by the twenty-five rules of the Code Duello, established in Ireland just after the American Revolution.

So popular did dueling become in the States, though, that in 1838 the governor of South Carolina, John Lyde Wilson, felt compelled to revise and update the code for a specifically American milieu.

The 1804 duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, fought along the banks of the Hudson River in Weehawken, New Jersey, is the most famous in American history, but many other prominent Americans also dueled. Andrew Jackson was nearly killed in one. Charles Dickinson shot at the future president but only wounded him. Jackson swooned and collapsed, but not before he aimed and fired. Dickinson fell dead and a good thing too. He’d previously killed twenty-six of his fellow citizens in duels.

The Code included provisions for apologies after the first shots were fired. If the quarrel was settled with swords, and the man challenged to the duel won but spared the life of the challenger, the dispute was settled … unless, that is, the challenger wished to revive it: “Rule 23. If the cause of the meeting be of such a nature that no apology or explanation can or will be received, the challenged takes his ground, and calls on the challenger to proceed as he chooses; in such cases, firing at pleasure is the usual practice, but may be varied by agreement.” A sense of civilization is in there someplace. At least the Code Duello protected bystanders from barrages of bullets in taverns and on Main Street — until the Old West gunfight became popular, anyway.

But beloved General Lee would have none of it. His sense of honor was exactly the old franchise of the knights, as we see in this excerpt from a letter he wrote to his son:

“You must study to be frank with the world. Frankness is the child of honesty and courage. Say just what you mean to do, on every occasion, and take it for granted that you mean to do right…

Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or keep one; the man who requires you to do so is dearly purchased at the sacrifice. Deal kindly but firmly with all your classmates; you will find it the policy which wears best. Above all, do not appear to others what you are not.

If you have any fault to find with any one, tell him, not others, of what you complain; there is no more dangerous experiment than that of undertaking to be one thing before a man’s face and another behind his back…

Duty, then, is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things like the old Puritan. You cannot do more; you should never wish to do less. Never let your mother or me wear one gray hair for any lack of duty on your part.”

If that sounds like Polonius, listen more carefully. This is a man speaking his own words from his own heart.

When Lee died, the London Standard wrote: “A country which has given birth to men like him, and those who followed him, may look the chivalry of Europe in the face without shame; for the fatherlands of Sidney and Baryard never produced a nobler soldier, gentleman and Christian.”

And G.K. Chesterton called Lee “the last of the heroes”. As the old general expired, his last words were “Strike the tent!”