By Michael Earl Simmons

“Honor, Blood, and the Crimes the Court Pretended Not to See”

There is nothing quite like the sight of a mighty oak, its great branches stretching out over its domain like a king over his empire. Dripping with Spanish moss, the old oak has seen many changes over the years. That picture describes Pensacola’s Dueling Oaks.

Dawn came soft at Frascati.

That quiet Pensacola quiet—the kind that settles in heavy and slow, when the night air still clings to your skin and the Spanish moss hangs low enough to brush a man’s shoulders. The grass would be wet with dew, thick and green, greener than it ought to be. Old-timers used to say it grew that way for a reason.

“Too much blood soaked into that ground,” one of them once muttered. “That’s why it never died.”

Men arrived before sunrise, when the city still slept and the law still yawned. They didn’t come shouting. They came measured and deliberate, with polished shoes, straight backs, and faces that showed no doubt. Whatever had been said—at a dance, in a newspaper, in a tavern heavy with smoke—had already reached the point of no return.

Out here, beneath the oaks, words were finished.

What followed would not be called murder.

It would not be called assault.

It would be called an affair of honor—and Pensacola would look the other way.

Frascati and the Dueling Oaks

A Beautiful Place with a Dark Reputation

Before it earned its darker name, Frascati was meant to be something else entirely.

The property was originally granted to the city by the King of Spain, during Pensacola’s long colonial period, when the town still bore more European influence than American law. It was intended as a public place—a scenic parkland on the edge of town, where the well-to-do could stroll, gather, and breathe air away from the noise of the port. It stretched from the bluffs overlooking the bay north to and including the Wilder estate.

The name Frascati was no accident.

It almost certainly drew from Frascati, Italy, a city near Rome famous for its villas, gardens, and refined leisure. To early Pensacola’s elite, the name suggested beauty, culture, and continental sophistication—a civilized retreat in a frontier town.

And for a time, that is exactly what it was.

But places develop reputations based not on intention, but on use.

Locals began calling the same ground the “Dueling Oaks,” not officially, not on maps, but in the way communities name things they understand too well. It was known, quietly and unmistakably, as the place where men went to settle matters with steel.

Same land.

Two names.

One respectable. One honest.

The Code Duello

Dueling was not supposed to look like chaos. It was meant to look like order.

By the early 19th century, most duels followed the Code Duello, a set of rules adopted from European and Irish traditions and carried into the American South. These rules transformed personal violence into ritual.

Here’s how it worked in practice:

1. The insult

A duel began with a perceived injury to honor—an accusation of dishonesty, cowardice, or improper conduct, especially involving a woman. Public insult was the most dangerous kind.

2. The seconds

Each man appointed a second, whose job was to negotiate terms and, if possible, secure an apology. The irony of dueling culture is that it often tried to prevent violence—right up until it didn’t.

3. The weapons

In Pensacola’s earlier dueling tradition, swords were common, especially among men influenced by European honor culture. Sword duels were intimate, personal, and unmistakably deadly. Pistols were efficient; swords were deliberate.

4. The setting

Duels were held early in the morning, outside town limits, with minimal witnesses. Doctors might be nearby. Authorities were not invited.

5. The goal

The duel was not about guilt or innocence. It was about whether a man would risk death to defend his name. Once blood was drawn—or a man fell—honor was considered “satisfied.”

The law might still exist on paper.

But honor had already rendered judgment.

Pensacola Dueling Case File

Case File I: The Jackson-Era Duel

Date: 1821

During the turbulent transition from Spanish to American control, Pensacola was governed as much by personality as by statute. A duel fought “near Pensacola” in 1821 resulted in the death of a young officer, commonly identified in later accounts as Hull, during a challenge involving Randall.

Later histories folded this event into Andrew Jackson’s time in Pensacola, with the persistent claim that the duel was permitted—or at least not prevented—by authority.

What matters:

A man was killed.

No prosecution followed.

The duel passed into memory instead of record.

True-crime reality:

This was homicide softened by status and timing.

Case File II: Bernard de Marigny de Mandeville and the Seven Swords

Date: Traditionally placed in the mid-1820s

Bernard de Marigny de Mandeville was born into privilege and raised in a world where honor was enforced, not debated. Wealth insulated him. Reputation defined him. Violence, when necessary, was simply part of the language.

By the 1820s, Marigny had lost his wife and was still in mourning. Two of his friends, concerned for his happiness, convinced him to travel from his New Orleans home to the newly-acquired American town of Pensacola. It would be a short time and allow him to take his mind off of his loss. Before long, the trio had arrived.

Pensacola tradition places Marigny at a social gathering near Frascati—a dance, music, and polite society. While there, the grieving Marigny saw her. As soon as he laid eyes on her, he was smitten. In a few minutes, he was dancing with her – Dona Anna Morales –  and the dance lasted all night. She had been promised to dance with seven Spanish cadets, who were standing by, fuming. The offense was serious enough that challenge followed challenge, not as a group, but one at a time.

The terms were precise.

No pistols.

No shortcuts.

Swords.

According to long-preserved local memory:

* Marigny agreed to face all seven cadets individually

* The duels were fought in succession

* The first encounter ended in a fatal wound

* After blood was shed, the remaining cadets withdrew

* Honor, by the standards of the time, was satisfied

There was no arrest.

No inquest.

No official scandal.

Later, Marigny married Doña Ana Morales, closing the affair in a way that made perfect sense within honor culture.

Old Pensacola wisdom:

Men didn’t talk about what happened out there—but they remembered it.

Case File III: Walton vs. McMahon

Date: 1829

By 1829, dueling in Pensacola had become difficult to pretend away. A duel involving Colonel George Walton, Florida’s territorial secretary, and Dr. McMahon was serious enough to generate public reaction and lasting documentation.

This case proves what earlier ones imply:

Dueling was not fringe behavior.

It involved men at the center of power.

True-crime reality:

When leaders duel, legality becomes negotiable.

Case File IV: Mallory and the Last Challenges

Date: 1868

By Reconstruction, dueling was officially unacceptable—but old habits die slowly. Political disputes involving former Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory, who was now a practicing attorney in Pensacola, escalated into public challenges, talk of meetings, and preparations that looked very much like earlier affairs of honor.

This time, however, the police stepped in.

Not because men had grown gentler—but because enforcement had finally grown stronger.

This is the turning point.

The duel did not die of shame.

It died of interference.

Pattern Analysis: What Frascati Really Was

Across decades of stories, documents, and tradition, Frascati and the Dueling Oaks reveal the same truths:

1. Violence was ritualized

   Measured, formal, and deliberate.

2. Honor outranked law

   Especially when men of influence were involved.

3. The ground mattered

   Frascati offered beauty, seclusion, and plausible denial.

4. Records grew thin where blood grew thick

   The greener the grass, the fewer the files.

Closing: Where the Grass Grew Too Well

Today, Frascati survives as a marker and a memory. The oaks are fewer. The city has grown around what was once the edge of town. Joggers pass through without knowing why the ground feels heavy underfoot.

But Old Pensacola never forgot.

They remembered the dawn meetings.

They remembered the men who rode out and did not ride back.

They remembered why the grass stayed so green.

Because before Pensacola trusted courts and badges, it trusted honor—and honor, when wounded, demanded blood.

And out at Frascati—out under the Dueling Oaks—Pensacola once answered that demand in silence.