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finally fell out of favor. Politicians killed in duels included the governor of Georgia in 1789, Alexander Hamilton (1804), Senator Armistead Mason of Virginia (1819), US District Attorney Joshua Barton (1823), North Carolina Congressman Robert Vance (1827), and more!
    The threat of violence during congressional sessions was so real that by 1835, Vice President Martin Van Buren wore a brace of pistols when presiding over the Senate.
    John Fox Potter, Republican congressman from Wisconsin just prior to the Civil War, had a nickname. He was called “Bowie Knife” Potter due to an incident during the spring of 1860. Basically he offered to fight Roger Pryor, congressman from Virginia on the following terms: “Bowie-knives and a dark room, and one of us to die.” The duel never took place, but Potter received several Bowie knives as gifts from sympathizers (including a four-pound, six-and-a-half–foot folding knife) as well as a nifty new nickname.
    In one of the last physically violent episodes in US politics, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Ralph Yarborough of Texas wrestled for more than ten minutes outside a Senate hearing room over the 1964 Civil Rights Bill. Both were sixty-one years old at the time, but Thurmond, who was quite physically fit, pinned Yarborough at least twice.
Tricky Dick Tricked by Dick
    Dick Tuck has been a political consultant for American politicians for more than fifty years. And although he has worked on political campaigns for Adlai Stevenson, John and Robert Kennedy, and many others, he is best known as a political prankster and Richard Nixon’s arch nemesis. Many historians called Nixon’s administration paranoid, and if that were indeed the case, Dick Tuck had a hand in making it that way. Here’s a list of some of Tuck’s Nixon pranks.
    In 1950, while Nixon was running for California senator, Tuck, who was working for Nixon’s opponent, got himself hired as a Nixon campaign worker. Tuck was put in charge of organizing campaign rallies. At one such rally at UC Santa Barbara, Tuck booked an extremely large auditorium (a capacity of four thousand), yet did very little to promote the event. Fewer than fifty people attended. When the speech was over, Nixon asked Tuck his name and told him, “Dick Tuck, you’ve made your last advance.”
    In 1956, during the Republican National Convention where Nixon was running for reelection as Eisenhower’s vice president, Tuck hired garbage trucks to drive by the convention center with signs that read “Dump Nixon.”
    After the first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960, Tuck hired an elderly woman to don Nixon buttons and approach Nixon as he got off the plane. While TV cameras were rolling, the woman hugged him and said, “Don’t worry, son! He beat you last night, but you’ll get him next time.”
    During the 1960 presidential campaign, Nixon went on a whistle-stop tour of California. While giving a speech on the caboose, Tuck allegedly disguised himself as a railway employee and waved the train out of the station while Nixon was still talking.
    In a 1962 campaign visit to Chinatown, San Francisco, Nixon spoke to a crowd while children holding welcome signs stood behind him. However, Tuck planted one sign that said “What about the Hughes loan?” which was a reference to a loan the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes made to Nixon’s brother. Nixon grabbed the sign and ripped it up … on camera. (This prank backfired slightly when Tuck found out later that the sign actually said, “What about the
huge
loan?)
    In 1968, Tuck hired a pregnant African-American woman (some accounts say he hired several pregnant women) to wear a T-shirt with Nixon’s slogan and walk through a Nixon rally. What was the slogan? “Nixon’s the One.”
    Tuck is mentioned in the Nixon tapes! An October 1972 Oval Office tape caught Nixon saying, “Dick Tuck did that to me. Let’s get out what Dick Tuck did!”
    Many historians say that Nixon’s desire to out-Tuck