The Devil Himself: A Tale of Honor, Insanity, and the Birth of Modern America

I propose a poster featuring newspaper cartoons that depict scenes from one of the nineteenth century’s most notorious scandals.  In 1882, a member of the Pennsylvania legislature, Nicholas Dukes, confessed to the seduction of the daughter of a prominent official at the state treasury, Captain Adam Nutt.  The two men then engaged in a widely publicized duel that left Nutt dead and Dukes on trial for his life.  Public opinion villainized the defendant for his brazen affront to the code of honor.  With the death penalty seemingly assured, a jury rigged with Dukes’s supporters acquitted the defendant.  Dukes then narrowly escaped a lynch mob in the wake of the verdict.  Still, his days were numbered.  Lizzie’s brother, James, hunted down Dukes and, using the Captain’s 38-caliber pistol, unloaded round after round into his father’s assassin.

Now on trial for murder himself, James Nutt became a national hero overnight, a symbol of justice that the law had failed to provide.  US Senator Daniel Voorhees spearheaded James’s defense and combined a classic invocation of honor with a relatively novel strategy—temporary insanity.  When the jury found James not guilty, the nation celebrated.  Even the defendant’s supporters conceded that the insanity defense was a ploy designed to secure his acquittal.  The tragic irony of the Dukes-Nutt saga is that James’s insanity proved neither fictional nor temporary.  After walking free, the hero of Uniontown attempted an unprovoked killing spree.     

My current book project—The Devil Himself: A Tale of Honor, Insanity, and the Birth of Modern America—is the first to tell this blood-soaked tale and explore its broader significance.  In particular, I challenge a core assumption that scholars have long made about Gilded Age America: the culture of honor killing was endemic to the South.  In fact, the Northern reaction to James Nutt indicates a striking embrace of honor-bound violence. This story is ultimately about a nation hesitating at the threshold between tradition and modernity.  As the world of their youth receded behind them and an uncertain future approached with dizzying speed, Americans of the Gilded Age clung to honor as a bulwark against rapid change.

The American Historical Association’s Poster Session is an ideal venue in which to present my research because of the numerous cartoons that represented scenes from the Dukes-Nutt saga.  Often these images were symbolic rather than literal.  For instance, one cartoon portrays a lynch mob hunting down Dukes.  Soaring above the mob is an angel, armed with a Smith & Wesson double-acting revolver.  This striking illustration conveys the sentiment that many clergy around the country voiced from their pulpits—vengeance against Dukes was divinely inspired.  I will also situate these illustrations in the context of Gilded Age cartooning, drawing from the work of the legendary Thomas Nast among others.