Oliver Otis Howard, Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard, major general , United States army : volume 1

Major McKinstry was our department quartermaster, a large, fine-appearing man of strong character. One day McKinstry, Kilburn, the able commissary, Lieutenant Oscar A. Mack, who was an assistant in the commissary, and I were talking together when the subject of dueling came up. It was already against the law for an officer to engage in a duel, but the practice was not yet fully over. I made a remark that I would not fight a duel. I remember that McKinstry took me to task for it and gave me several instances where he said it was imperative that an officer should accept a challenge. He made this assertion: “Sup-.pose, Howard, you should be challenged to fight, and you declined, then you would be posted.”

I hardly knew what that meant, but I declared that my contestant might “post” me if he chose.

“Why,” he said, “you would be proclaimed as a coward.”

“ That would not make me one,” I answered. “I am not a coward, and probably the time will come, if I live long enough, to show that I am not.”

The conversation dropped at this point, but the recollection of it recalls the feeling that existed among my comrades that it would be difficult in the army to carry out the new law against dueling.

From the time I left home till June 1st my duties of receiving ordnance supplies and issuing them to the troops were constant, though not very onerous. At that time I was taking great interest in books, especially in religious reading.

I cannot tell for what reason, but after considerable activity in operations in every direction from Tampa as a center, Harney asked to be relieved, and Colonel L. L. Loomis, of the Fifth Infantry, became