Citizens of Troy, New York, on suppression of duelling

Citizens of Troy, New York, on suppression of duelling

Petition requesting action on the part of Congress to suppress dueling

Citizens of Troy NY

1, March, 1838

Tim Schranck

Your memorialists, citizens of the city of Troy, in the county of Rensselaer, and State of New York, wish to call the attention of your honorable
bodies to the practice of duelling, in the belief that the present is a propitious time to devise some check or restraint to this practice; by the representatives of the people during their continuance in office.
In presenting this 'subject for consideration, your memorialists have no
design to cast any imputtitions upon the memory of the dead, or thq character of the living; bbut they speak of private combat in the abstract, as a
practice having its origin in a dark age of the world, at a time when the
rights of person, property,! and, character, were blt imperfectly understood,
and still more imperfectly protected by law: a practice which, at the present
time, we deem:antisocial 'in its tendencies, and opposed alike to public
policy, philanthropy, and religion.