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Choose Your Weapon: The Duel in California, 1847–1861

Amazon.com Price:  $13.86 (as of 01/05/2019 21:14 PST- Details)

Description

In Gold Rush–era California, gunfighters weren’t outlaws or desperadoes ― they were were prominent journalists, legislators, governors, and judges. Choose Your Weapon brings to life a now-forgotten time, when California was once a raw new state with politics as violent as any banana republic. This was once the Golden Age of dueling, when prominent citizens would settle their political and personal disputes with gunfire, in keeping with the venerable law of the code duello. Choose Your Weapon documents each notable duel to have occurred in California, from the arrival of U.S. dueling culture with the primary American settlers to the top of dueling’s popularity at the eve of the Civil War.

In the heyday of dueling culture, men from all walks of life, from politicians to manual laborers, fought formal duels. Duels may well be triggered by political battles to shape state government―or they may well be fought over a woman or a personal slight. Braggarts ceaselessly proved to be cowards at the field of honor, and lots of a quiet and peaceable man could shoot with deadly accuracy when reputation was once at stake. For the California gentlemen of the 1850s, honor or dishonor―and life or death―may well be determined with a single shot.

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