Soon, Paste will be running a feature on why former U.S. president Andrew Jackson was a pretty awful guy, and why it's awesome that Harriet Tubman will be the new front face of the $20 bill (contrary to earlier reports Jackson's image will remain on the reverse side). That is not the purpose of this post, so Jackson haters be warned—this post is about the time he killed a man in a duel, and how f***ing crazy it was.
I came across this story last night while doing some cursory research on Jackson, who I always vaguely knew was kind of a dick, but who also stood up to the big banks and can be seen as an economic predecessor to future, less dickish presidents like FDR. None of that matters now, because like a good American journalist, I was immediately distracted by a story that I still can't quite believe—the May 1806 duel between Andrew Jackson and Charles Dickinson.
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