Charles Dickinson was a young lawyer of talent and fine connections. He would drink at times and was then wild and reckless, but he was not unamiable and was a gentleman when sober, but when excited by drink he swore violently and was loose in his talk. Soon after paying forfeit in the Truxton-Plowboy race he “got in his cups” and spoke disparagingly of Mrs. Jackson. In fact all of Jackson’s enemies, even from John Sevier down (whom Jackson once came very near killing for the same cause), used the unfortunate haste of Jackson’s marriage whenever they wished to offend him most deeply. Jackson called on Dickinson and quickly took him to task. Dickinson apologized, said if he had used the words he was drunk and was sorry, and they separated in a friendly manner. But Dickinson soon got into his cups again, and in the Nashville Inn used most offensive words concerning Mrs. Jackson. Jackson was always most cool and thoughtful in the closest places. This time he went to Captain Ervin and advised him to use his influence with his son-in-law to control his tongue, and added: “I wish no quarrel with him; he is being used by my enemies to pick a quarrel with me. Advise him to stop in time.” Here it would have ended but for “T. Swann, Esq., late of Virginia,” and as so many foolish reports of the famous duel have been published I shall go into details to tell how it was really fought. Every year it is published—how Dickinson at the famous race said in the presence of Jackson that “Truxton ran away from Plowboy like Jackson ran away with another man’s wife,” and so on. All of which is untrue. The Impartial Review and Cumberland Repository, edited by Thomas Eastin, of January, 1806, and now in the library of the Tennessee Historical Society, is full of all the letters and communications leading up to the tragedy, and without going into lengthy details, the main facts of which are these: 1. Mr. T. Swann, one night, was loafing in the store of George and Robert Bell and says he heard Patton Anderson say that the notes offered by Captain Joseph Ervin at the time he paid the forfeit were different from those General Jackson agreed to receive. Charles Dickinson heard of this and called on T. Swann, Esq., to know if it was true, and Swann said it was. 2. T. Swann then loafed over into General Jackson’s store, the old Indian block-house, which stood for many years on the Clover Bottom track, and asked General Jackson if Captain Ervin or Dickinson offered him notes different from those they had agreed to take. General Jackson answered that Dickinson’s were the same, but Ervin’s were a little different, not being due on demand, as agreed. 3. Mr. T. Swann later rode from Clover Bottom to Nashville with Captain Ervin and told him what General Jackson had said. 4. Meeting between General Jackson Ervin and Dickinson in Nashville. Mutual explanations, in which General Jackson said what he thought of T. Swann Esq., in terms forceful but not elegant.