AUGUSTA — Before U.S. Sen. Susan Collins agrees to a duel with a Texas congressman angry at her refusal to back GOP healthcare plans, the Maine Republican might want to consider the fate of one of her Pine Tree State predecessors on Capitol Hill.
Back in 1838, U.S. Rep. Jonathan Cilley of Maine, a lawyer and newspaper editor, wound up dead in the dirt after exchanging rifle shots with a fellow congressman who took exception to Cilley accusing him of bribery.
Pressed to accept a duel, the 35-year-old father of three ultimately accepted the challenge from U.S. Rep. William Graves of Kentucky in order to “preserve the honor of the New England states.”
His death on the Marlboro Pike in Washington, D.C., in one of the last recorded duels east of the Mississippi River shook the capital. The nation reeled in horror, especially in Maine, where dueling had little support.
Even so, congressional colleagues refused to censure Graves for pulling the trigger. They did, however, approve a measure to “prohibit the giving or accepting within the District of Columbia, of a challenge to fight a duel, and for the punishment thereof.”
Collins, a 20-year Senate veteran, wasn’t actually challenged to a duel. It was just something surprisingly close to one.
U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold, a four-term Republican, told a Corpus Christi radio host that “female senators from the Northeast” committed the “absolutely repugnant” act of blocking the healthcare bill recently.
“If it was a guy from South Texas, I might ask him to step outside and settle this Aaron Burr style,” the congressman said during a radio interview, apparently unaware that Collins is the only Republican senator in New England.
Collins said it marked the first time anyone has suggested dueling with her. She gave no indication that she had any intention of taking up the pseudo-challenge, which remains illegal.
Farenthold said late Monday his comments were “clearly tongue-in-cheek” and that the “left-wing, biased media” made something out of nothing.
Cilley, a former speaker of the Maine House, never got to serve out his first congressional term.
Born in New Hampshire, Cilley attended Bowdoin College, studied law and began to practice as an attorney in Thomaston in Knox County, where he also edited the Thomaston Register.
He won election to the Maine House and then to a congressional seat in 1836.
If he’d stayed in Maine, he likely wouldn’t have had to face the prospect of a duel. Maine put an anti-dueling law on its criminal code the same year it separated from Massachusetts, authorizing a $1,000 fine for suggesting or agreeing to one.
Novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne once wrote a brief memoir about Cilley, saying he “fought for what he deemed the honor of New England.”
“If that dark pitfall — that bloody grave — has not lain in the midst of his path, wither, wither might it not have led him!” Hawthorne wrote.
Cilley is buried in Thomaston.
scollins@sunjournal.com
U.S. Rep. Jonathan Cilley of Maine.
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