The Brutal Side of Crackerdom: Gougers

There was a bad side to the honor code especially in the south. Dueling seldom occurred with pistols and knives, which is good, but ended up in “gouging’ matches, which was not so good. This tidbit from the Gazette of Georgia (1837) reminds us of how widespread and common this gruesome practice was in those days:

Jacksonborough has a new C H (court house). It is presumed that this place was named after General James rather than Andrew Jackson: for it must have been in existence many years before Gen. Andrew became distinguished for his prowess in war. This place is 53 miles from Augusta; 72** Savannah. This used to be a “torn down” place, to use our** Georgia phrase. It was reported in the mornings after drunken frolics and fights you could see the children picking up eye-balls in tea-saucers! i.e. there was so much gouging going on(Sherwood:1837:180)!

The origins of gouging are not completely know. There is a scene in Shakespeares King Lear that resembles a gouging match. It is certain that the British soldiers in the revolution accused American soldiers of gouging out captives eyes, though this was never proven (see for example History of the American Revolution: London, 1788: 480). Some even compared eye gouging to taking scalps as a truly American phenomenon.

The best description of this fight first appeared in Milfort’s treatise on “crackeurs and “gougers” (Le Clerke, Milfort: 1802):

It is interesting to note that these men are very careful, from their infancy on, never to cut their fingernails which they simply let grow. In order to make them very tough, they smear them with tallow and then hold them in front of the fire; the tallow, as it melts, penetrates the pores of the nail and makes it extremely hard when it has dried. I have seen some which were as hard and as dangerous as the claws of a lion. Not satisfied with this weapon, they even arm their heels with spurs, which they never take off, not even to go to bed, and whose rosette is a very sharp pointed spike. It is with such weapons that they present themselves for the fight; it is easy to imagine how deadly they are.

When the elder among them has given the signal for the fight, by saying: Any thing is allowed, then the two antagonists attack each other with their teeth, spurs and fingernails, which they use very skillfully. When one of the two succumbs, the other makes the most of his advantage, and inhumanly tears him to pieces, and easily succeeds in tearing out one of his eyes. Until then the onlookers watch the fight with the greatest calmness; it is only at this time that they put an end to the fight; and if they do not do it quickly, it happens sometimes that both eyes are torn out. Then the victor climbs up on the stump of a tree, a great number of which are cut approximately three feet above ground; and there, all covered with blood, he crows over his victory; he insults the assembly, challenges all the spectators one after the other, by telling them that there is not among them a man his equal. Anger excites his imagination to such an extent, that when no one presents himself to avenge his insults, he defies the Creator to descend from the heavens to try his strength with him. When he has finished all his provocations, he comes down from the tree stump and every one applauds and proclaims him the victor. Since these fights occur often, it follows that you meet in this nation few men who do not have one eye put out in this manner ( Milfort 1802: 183-191).

The sportsmen of the day widely reported this savagery along with pugilism and other sporting endeavors of that time (Apperly 1905: 238) The Sporting appeal was also mentioned recently by Vickers (2002).

Gouging was a sport in itself, usually used to settle gambling disputes over cock fighting or horse racing (although political arguments were sometimes the impetus for engaging in brutal eye gouging, jaw breaking and nose biting match). Not limited to the lower classes, gouging was an unfortunate English custom finely honed by Americans (Holliman, 138). The powerful and educated were just as prone to engage in gouging as the poor and illiterate. Combatants throughout the nation were held in high esteem or their ability to gouge out eyes and bite to the bone….Gouging matches were held much in the same way as wrestling matches (143)…

Other such ghastly scenes are mentioned in: Robert Bollings poem from the 1760s Neanthe; Charles Mason’s Burlesque Sermon; Anita Vickers: 2002 The New Nation:143; Charles J. Apperly : 1905: The life of a Sportsman : 238; John B. McMaster: 1885: History of the People of the United States : 5,578; Isaac Weld: 1800: Travels throught the States of North America..etc : 143.

Eventually all states would ban gouging as a form of fighting, employing jail terms and even the death penalty to discourage its use. It had a long run in the colonies and in early America’s frontier era and had played out about the time of the Civil War:

In 1746,four deaths prompted the Governor of North Carolina to ask for legislation against “the barbarous and inhuman manner of boxing which so much prevails among the lower sort of people”. The colonial assembly responded by making it a felony “to cut out the tongue or pull out the eyes of the King’s liege people”. Five years later the Assembly added slitting, biting and cutting off noses to the list of offenses. Virginia passed similar legislation in 1748 and revised these statutes in 1772 explicitly to discourage men from “ gouging, plucking or putting out an eye, biting or kicking or stomping upon” quiet peaceable citizens. By 1786, South Carolina had made premeditated mayhem a capital offense, defining the crime as severing another’s bodily parts (Smith:2001:98).

It seems to be noticed around the end of the French and Indian War, the losers implying that the scalping by Indians was answered by the colonists gouging their victim's eyes out. In the aftermath of the American Revolution, the defeated British cried foul, accusing the Americans of gouging British soldiers' eyes out. One older dictionary mentions this:

Gouge. To squeeze out an opponent's eye with one's thumb and finger. This brutal practice appears to have been unknown in New England, but to have been practiced** *considerably by the rougher sort of frontiersmen and in early days along the* Mississippi.**

1775 This event may give rise to some malevolent pen to write that many of the killed and wounded at Lexington were not only scalped, but had their eyes forced out of the sockets by the fanatics of New England: not one was so treated, either there or at Concord. -- W. Gordon. History of the American Revolution (1788: I 480).

1776 A soldier who had been slightly wounded, appeared with his eyes torn out of their sockets, by the barbarous habit of googing, a word and practice peculiar to the Americans. -- The Rights of Great Britain Asserted, (67 of the Philadelphia reprint).

Gouging was so rife among the new Americans even top officials had become involved. Georgia's Governor from 1798 - 1801, James Jackson, suffered an attempt to gouge his eyes out by Robert Watkins, a backer of the Yazoo Land laws (Cook 2005: 73). It was not unusual to be arrested for gouging in some of the more civilized places of this new country. The punishment on first offense might be flogging while a second offense might result in a death penalty (McMaster 1885: 5) Though the practice was widespread from Maryland through Kentucky and the Deep South, it seems to f ill the literature of crackers and of Georgia.

1905 Apperley, Charles James, The Life of a Sportsman, Kessinger Publishing: Whitefish, Montana.

1788, Gordon, William, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Establishment of the Independence of the United States of America : Including an Account of the late War, and of the Thirteen Colonies from their Origin to that Period, Charles Dilly: London.

1885 McMaster, John Bach, A History of the People of the United States: From the Revolution to the Civil War,** D. Appleton: N.Y.

1802 Milfort, Le Clerke, In Memoire ou coup d'oeil rapide sur mes differens voyages et mon sejour dans la Nation Creek, Paris.

1837 Sherwood, Adiel, A Gazetteer of the State of Georgia: Embracing a Particular Description of the Counties, Towns, Villages, Rivers, and & and Whatsoever Is Usual In Geographies and Minute Statistical Works; Together With A New Map of the State, Printed by P. Force: Washington City, Ga.

2001 Smith, Mark Michael, The Old South, Wiley-Blackwell publishers: Malden, Mass.

2002 Vickers, Anita, The New Nation, Greenwood Publishing : Westport, Conn.

The Gouger Tradition in America