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Tough Teddy and Old Hickory: America’s Most Badass Presidents

Khalid Elhassan December 4, 2024 14 min

Tough - An 1828 woodcut of the Andrew Jackson vs Charles Dickinson duel — An 1828 woodcut of the Andrew Jackson vs Charles Dickinson duel. Wikimedia

16. The Badass Who Discovered He Wasn’t as Badass as Andrew Jackson

Charles Dickinson had a reputation as the best pistol shot in the country. That did not stop Andrew Jackson from calling him out. At the duel, Jackson stood stock still, and allowed Dickinson to take the first shot. Dickinson took aim, and put a bullet in Jackson’s chest. It wounded, but did not kill him. Jackson recovered, took aim, and pulled the trigger, but the pistol stopped at half cock. By the rules, that did not count as a shot. So as a horrified Dickinson waited, Jackson cleared the pistol, then took deliberate aim once more, and fired a shot that mortally wounded his adversary. As to Jackson, he recovered and went on to greater things, but Dickinson’s bullet remained in his chest for another nineteen years.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.