Two shots rang out simultaneously, and both men fell. Decatur, who was at first supposed to be dead, presently showed signs of returning animation and was lifted to his feet, only to stagger a few paces toward his antagonist and fall again. As the two men lay side by side, Barron turned his face to say to Decatur that he hoped, when they met in another world, they would be better friends than in this. Decatur responded that he had never been Barren’s enemy, and, though he cherished no animosity to Barron for killing him, he found it harder to forgive the men who had goaded them into this quarrel. Both combatants were carried back to Washington, where Barron slowly recovered from his wound; but Decatur, after a day of intense suffering, died in the house which still bears his name, at the corner of Jackson Place and H Street.
So habitually was this one ravine chosen for the settlement of affairs of honor that when two Representatives, Jonathan Cilley of Maine and William J. Graves of Kentucky, decided in 1838 to end a dispute with rifles, they outwitted pursuit by choosing for their fight the eastern end of the Anacostia bridge on the high-road to Marlboro, Maryland; and a posse who started out to stop them went to the accustomed ground only to find it empty. This duel had naught of the dramatic quality of that between Decatur and Barren, but its effect on the public mind proved more far-reaching. Cilley was a young man of brilliant promise, highly respected as well as popular, with a wife and three little children. The quarrel was forced upon him because, in the interest of the proper dignity of Congress, he objected to a proposed investigation by the House of some vague and irresponsible insinuations made in a recent newspaper letter against sundry members who were not named or otherwise identified. Graves insisted that this speech was an insult to the author of the article, whose championship he gratuitously undertook.
The first two shots were thrown away on both sides. At the third fire, Cilley fell upon his face, his adversary’s bullet having killed him instantly. When the news of his death spread through Washington, indignation against Graves rose to fever heat, and his public career ended with that hour. The wantonness of such a sacrifice of a useful life, where the writer who figured as the cause of the quarrel did not even take a part in it, gave special point to the condemnation of the false standard of honor set up by the “code.” The funeral services for Cilley at the Capitol were attended by the President and Cabinet, in testimony to the high esteem in which he had universally been held; while the Supreme Court declined its invitation in a body, as the most emphatic means of expressing its abhorrence of glossing murder with a thin coat of etiquette. Ministers, not only in Washington but in all the more highly civilized parts of the country, denounced dueling from the pulpit, newspapers published editorials and associations adopted resolutions against it, additional legislation for the abolition of the practice was introduced in various legislatures, and Congress passed an act to punish, with a term in the penitentiary, the sending or acceptance of a challenge in the District of Columbia.