Chatham County GaArchives History .....Savannah Duels - Chapter VII 1923 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 October 25, 2004, 6:15 pm CHAPTER VII. DID THEY FIGHT, OR DID THEY NOT FIGHT? PECULIAR INSTANCES OF PROMINENT MEN LIBELING EACH OTHER IN PUBLIC PLACES WITH OPPROBRIOUS EPITHETS, BUT WITH NO EVIDENCE OF THEIR SUBSEQUENTLY MEETING ON THE FIELD OF HONOR—GUNN vs. WELSCHER, SHICK vs. SARZEDAS, McINTOSH vs. CUTHBERT, PUTNAM vs. WOOD, LEAKE vs. MILLER, —HOW JOHN HOUSTON McINTOSH HANDLED A SPANIARD—NO MAN IMMUNE FROM THE TONGUES OF SLANDER. Did they fight, or did they not fight? This is the question that often puzzles one in studying the published correspondence in the early newspapers, in which two Savannahians denounce each other, apply the epithets "coward", "liar", "scoundrel", "rascal", or something else equally as unpleasant to face in cold print and realize that everyone in the community is discussing it. There are the letters setting forth the trouble, each one's version of it, and there are the vituperative remarks by the contending men—and then there is an utter absence of any further information. It was not a time when men tamely submitted to private reflections upon their manhood, let alone to wholesale advertising of such charges. Generally the parties to the disputes which are spread before the readers of the "Gazette", or later newspapers, are recognized as men of bravery. In the years immediately following the revolution they are found to be those who had served their country courageously in that struggle. Reading the notes that passed between them and the final statements to the public, generally closing with the posting of one or the other, or both, in the most opprobrious manner, one is constrained to believe that they must finally have resorted to the code and for the satisfaction of their "honor" taken a shot or two at one another. Neither being seriously wounded or killed, the newspapers simply refrained from mentioning the meeting; after a few days further discussion the minds of men and women turned to other subjects, and with the passing of that generation all remembrance of the affair faded away. Take the trouble between James Gunn, then Colonel of the Chatham County Regiment, and Joseph Welscher, Captain of the West Company of that regiment. Welscher was not popular with his men and there was talk of their appealing to the line officers for his removal. He was unquestionably unpopular with Col. Gunn. At the Fourth of July celebration in 1787, after the regimental parade and review, there was the customary dinner. All were more or less mellowed by the popular liquors of the day when Welscher arose to sing a song. He rendered one written before the War for Independence. In the song were allusions that were offensive to Gunn and other officers. It was evidently an unwise selection. Some officers hissed and Gunn peremptorily ordered Welscher to sit down. There were all the elements for an affair of honor. Capt. Welscher later said: "The company prest me to sing it—that it would give no offense—wherefore I began: " 'It was in the gates of Calais, Hogarth tells' " Col. Gunn and others loudly groaned. Welscher stopped and explained that he had apologized for the song before he began it. He had been called on to sing and it was the only song he knew, so he continued "The Roast Beef of Old England", as it was called, a popular song of the years before the country had tried the issue of freedom with the mother land. Sentiment with regard to the song had changed. At one time its "hits" at the French and the Irish had brought forth uproarious applause. But the French had become allies instead of enemies and the cause of Ireland was now looked upon with a favorable eye. But Welscher made the room ring with offensive lines: "Then Britons be valiant, the Moral is clear; The Ox is Old England, the Frog is Monsieur, Whose Puffs and Bravadoes we need never fear. * * * * His Fellow-Guard, of right Hibernian Clay, Whose brazen Front his Country did betray, From Tyburn's fatal Tree had hither fled, By honest means to gain his daily bread." Col. Gunn's wrath was up. "Damn your song and you, too," said he. Then Welscher's feelings were aroused. "Col. Gunn, that is language which I am not used to, nor ever receive." Col. Gunn abandoned his position as presiding officer and rushed at Welscher. Other officers interfered, and when the colonel ordered the captain to leave the room Mr. William Stephens interposed and told Welscher he should not go. Whereupon Gunn told Stephens that he was now "the ostensible person and he should call upon him." "Whenever you please, Sir," replied Stephens. Here was the opening for a second duel. After this Gunn, by entreaties and arguments, was persuaded to resume the chair until the party broke up about midnight. The more serious trouble came later. On his way home Capt. Welscher passed Col. Gunn's house. As Welscher told the story, Gunn called from his -piazza: "Mr. Welscher I want to speak with you." Welscher waited and his colonel came out. "I have been waiting for you the whole night, Sir," said he. Snatching Welscher's sword, which the captain was carrying under his arm, the colonel threw it in his house, called for a whip, and fell upon the captain. After beating him Gunn called for the swords and ordered the captain to take one and defend himself. Mrs. Gunn sent a servant posthaste for Maj. Berrien, living close by. When the major arrived he found the two swords sticking in the ground and Gunn commanding Welscher to take his choice of them. Major Berrien wrested the sword from Welscher's hand, without trouble, and after a struggle got the one from Gunn. Col. Gunn put Capt. Welscher under military arrest, made two formal charges against him of conduct unbecoming an officer or a gentleman, and a court-martial convened with Maj. Frederick Shick as president, the other members being Capt. Josiah Tattnall, Capt. James Bulloch, Capt. Thomas Elfe, First Lieut. William Lewden, Second Lieut. Win. H. Spencer, John Eppinger, and Justice Justus H. Scheuber. Added to the charge of failing to act as an officer and gentleman should have done in the affray with Col. Gunn. there was the additional accusation that he had permitted James Simpson to disarm and assault him without properly resenting it—again an instance of too much liquor at military events in the old days. The court exonerated him of the charge in his trouble with Col. Gunn, doubtless on the score that at the time he was in no condition to defend himself, but held that his conduct as regards the affair with Simpson was highly censurable and recommended that he should be severely reprimanded. We shall meet with both Gunn and Welscher in later affairs of honor. The incident related did not injure Welscher with the public, it seems, as he became very popular and prominent in local politics and at the bar. Some years later, with George M. Troup as his second, he calmly faced a political foe and almost fatally wounded him. There is no evidence, though, that after the court-martial brought on by Gunn he further resented what his commanding officer had done. A few weeks later one finds Maj. Frederick Shick, presiding officer at the Welscher court-martial, being advertised by Dr. David Sarzedas, whom Shick had refused to honor by accepting an invitation to adjust their personal troubles with duelling pistols. Strange to say, the same Capt. Edward Cowan who figured as second for Welscher in an attempt to bring Gunn to accept a challenge from Welscher the day after their midnight affray, is found representing Dr. Sarzedas, who charged Shick with "unbecoming conduct to him in the street". Sarzedas, it appears, hired a slave from Maj. Shick's parents' for domestic service, and, as Shick charged, had failed to pay for the services except with physical abuse of the negro. He had also failed to pay a note on which Shick was endorser. In an encounter in the street the major whipped the doctor for this combination of offences, and when challenged replied: "When you pay the note you gave William Welscher, and the debt you owe my father, I shall talk to you of satisfaction." Sarzedas published the letters that passed between them and as a final shot informed the public that "The character of Maj. Shick I hold in abhorrence; his conduct on the present occasion shall be the criterion whether he merits the appellation of the soldier, gentleman, or coward, which I shall leave men of honour to determine." Maj. Shick threatened to chastise Dr. Sarzedas again and the physician left for Charleston. On his return he stated that if Shick was satisfied he was, but that if assaulted he would be found prepared. Shick closed the affair with a letter to the editor of the "Gazette", which is useful as showing the position sometimes assumed in these personal affairs: "When a man conducts himself beneath the character of a gentleman or a man of honour, I do not hold myself bound by any custom to risk my salvation with him, but, on the contrary: the man whom I esteem in a different point of view, I shall ever conceive myself highly honored by attending his invitation. I am equally as bound to pay every respect to the gentleman as I am to chastise the rascal whose conduct merits abuse." If the major and the doctor met to satisfy honor with bullets or sword pricks it does not appear. Major Shick had an excellent revolutionary record and no one questioned his bravery. Sarzedas was an officer in the Light Dragoons of the First Regiment of Chatham County Militia. The correspondence serves to show that men could say very harsh things at times, have street encounters, and still apparently fail to actually meet on the duelling ground, challenge or no challenge. Nine months later, in June, 1788, came the falling out between Maj. William McIntosh, Jr., and Col. Seth John Cuthbert, both men of local prominence, and both with war records that proved they were men of personal bravery. This affair grew out of a court trial in which McIntosh's father, General McIntosh, was making a defence in an action brought against him by John Cuthbert, Sr. Maj. McIntosh claimed that Col. Cuthbert "acted in a most unjustifiable manner, interrupting the general at a very inappropriate time, and declaring the general's assertions to be 'infamous falsehoods.'" The general, he pointed out, was referring to things that had occurred before Seth John Cuthbert was born, and of the truth of which he could not know. Gen. McIntosh had referred to the senior Cuthbert's "attempt to learn the cooper's trade, without possessing either industry, frugality or temper." Either the allusion to his father having been a cooper, or the accompanying remarks in derogation of his efforts to learn that trade, grievously wounded the younger Cuthbert. When called on, Cuthbert promptly admitted what he had said in the court room. "The words were forced from him," he said, "by the most illiberal and personal reflections on myself and my nearest connections that I have ever experienced." The offending words having been admitted, and no apology forthcoming, McIntosh sent a challenge at once: "I demand satisfaction at 11 o'clock tomorrow morning at the Fort, where I shall attend with a gentleman." The "Fort" was old Fort Wayne, at the foot of the Bay, where the gas works now stand. It was a favorite resort for the duellists of that day. The challenge was not accepted. Seth John Cuthbert felt himself bound "in reason and honor to answer no person but your father in any personal dispute between him and myself." He declined the challenge but stood ready to accept one from Gen. McIntosh. "There is a much greater similarity in his situation in life and my own. than there is betwixt yours and mine," said he to Maj. McIntosh, "and it is unreasonable to accept your challenge because, on the same principle that you demand satisfaction, it might be demanded by every member of your family in succession." McIntosh repeated the challenge. The next morning Mr. Clay, Jr., acting as the friend of Cuthbert, waited on Mr. Gibbons and informed him that Col. Cuthbert wished to refer the question of acceptance of Maj. McIntosh's challenge to two persons, and mentioned Mr. Gibbons and Dr. MacLeod as proper persons. Maj. McIntosh finally agreed and accepted Mr. MacQueen to represent him. MacQueen unexpectedly left the city and the board gave no decision. Then McIntosh published the correspondence and added that he had posted Col. Cuthbert, under the vendue house on Sunday afternoon, in the following words: "I do declare Seth John Cuthbert to be a coward. My reasons shall be made known in the publick Gazette. "WM. McINTOSH, Jun." Was there a hostile meeting between the two? It would seem almost inevitable that the former patriot officers should have met at ten paces at Fort Wayne after this public posting. Seth John Cuthbert died a few months later, in November, the "Gazette" states, "after a tedious and painful illness", which leads one to infer he may have been an ill man at the time of the trouble with Maj. McIntosh. The "Gazette" said he "was among the first who stood in the cause of their country. In 1776 he was appointed major of the Second Continental Battalion." He also represented Chatham in the legislature and served acceptably as State Treasurer in 1784. The "Gazette" speaks of his "amiable qualities and brilliant abilities." It was an age when self-restraint appears woefully lacking. Next appear Henry Putnam and Lieut. John Wood. Putnam sent a note to Wood, through Dr. Geoghegan, accusing him of slandering him. Wood verbally denied this to the doctor and sought his friend, George Throop. Throop called on Dr. Geoghegan and asked him what should be done in the matter: "Your man must make an apology or else take a crack in the field," was the reply. 'He is determined not to apologize and our pistols are ready," was Throop's message. Wood anticipated what Putnam would probably do and the vendue house speedily bore this placard: "Having received a note from Mr. Henry Putnam by his friend, and having sent an answer thereto by my friend, I do declare said Putnam a coward and not worthy the notice of any gentleman. "JOHN WOOD." Putnam was in bed ill and Maj. McIntosh called and informed him of the posting. Putnam then called in Maj. Hopkins and this is the card he bore to Wood: "My friend, Major Hopkins, will point out the ground, time and mode of settling the business. Although you have been so expeditious as to publish to the world my deficiency, let the test prove the fact." Lieut. Wood stuck the note in his pocket when Maj. Hopkins handed it to him. "I have posted my answer already at the vendue house," said he. He then expressed a willingness to meet Maj. Hopkins at Fort Wayne and give that gentleman satisfaction, but Hopkins declined to assume his principal's quarrel. Another note at the vendue house gave the public something to talk over. It read: "Mr. J. Wood having published me yesterday as a coward &C. the public will please to suspend their opinions till Thursday next when by a state of facts they will find him a liar, coward and no gentleman. "HENRY PUTNAM." Savannah, 11 June, 1791. Wood then advertised Putnam and concluded: "I drop him into that contemptible state from which he endeavored to emerge by a seeming display of courage, though unfortunately it forsook him when called to exercise it." Did they fight? It was only five minutes walk to the vicinity of Fort Wayne where more than one duel had been fought under less provocation. If they fought, neither was killed. Duelling had become a fad, or perhaps a passion might more suitably express it. Even the free negroes became infected with the spirit. One of the most amusing items in the "Gazette" about this time is the account of two well known Savannah negroes who put on "white men's airs": "So prevalent has the practice of Duelling become lately, that Major Small and Capt. Qua, two men of color, some few days past agreed to meet at a time and place appointed, each attended by a friend with a pair of pistols, to decide a dispute which happened betwixt them. "Copy of the challenge: Capt. Qua tink himself injure by Major Small, esq. and require satisfaction for insult. Major Small must eider beg pardon, or fight to-morrow on pistols. My fellow servant Dick fix a place, and will let me know where. You must eider do one oder of the two tings, Mind, me say so. Afternoon near dark." "To Major Small, Esq., Gentlemen's Barber, Savannah." "The Answer: Major Small informs Capt. Qua that he has received his challenge and will accordingly meet him agreeable to appointment, in order to put out of the world a rascal and a thief that does not deserve to live in it. By gar. 9th June, 1790. To Capt. Qua." The major, though, failed to appear and the angered Capt. Qua, imitating white men, armed himself with a whip to flog the major. Then the law intervened. "0 wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us, To see oursels as ithers see us!" The "Gazette" facetiously observed: "Both of the gentlemen got their titles from the British during the late war." Most bitter of all the cards published in the one hundred and fifty years, 1732-1882, were those in 1798 between Richard Henry Leake and John Miller. Leake was an attorney of prominence, Miller apparently a business man of standing. There was no preliminary peppering with small arms in their dispute. They spent no time in voluminous correspondence and the publication thereof in the local papers. Two cards only appeared, but they left nothing to be said. Each knew what he had in mind and each said it in unmistakable English. As the most virulent specimens of this class of public denunciations they are given: "For the assertion of repeated falsehoods, and the highest provocations, I thought proper to send a message to John Miller, formerly of Belmont, by my friend Capt. John Lyons, requesting him to meet me, and give me that satisfaction I was entitled to demand. I therefore proclaim to the world, that the same John Miller, refusing to accept my said message, has evinced himself a lyar, a scoundrel, and a cowardly assassin. 6th June, 1798. RICHARD HENRY LEAKE." "ATTENTION "I DO proclaim RICHARD HENRY LEAKE, Attorney-at-Law, to be an infamous LIAR AND VILE DEFAMER. Fathers of families, if you value the reputation of your daughters, suffer him not to enter your doors. "JOHN MILLER." Not a line as to where and when they fought, nor what with, nor the result of the meeting. It was practically impossible for two men to live in Savannah after such cards as these and fail to wipe out the stigma through the code unless they resorted to a "recontre" on the public streets. Nowadays no newspaper would permit the publication of such cards. It is safe to say money could not buy the space. Even the Savannah journalists' of that time felt a bit squeamish about it. Seymour & Woolhopter, publishers of the "Columbian Museum", thought it advisable to protect themselves and stated in their journal: "We do not attempt to regulate or criticise the language of our advertising customers. We should hope, therefore in future, to be spared the trouble of being considered in any respect as parties' between persons who may chuse to apply to each other (through the medium of our paper) the most scurrilous or indecent epithets." Some years after this (1807) Leake disappeared. What became of him was never known. He may have been murdered. For some times he was advertised for broadly. Then his property went through the usual disposition. Nearly a century later it was found necessary again to re-establish, in some Northern court, that he had been diligently sought and no trace found, and Mr. William Harden furnished the proof and affidavit as to the ancient legal notices. The McIntoshes have already figured in three duelling stories, but two more remain to be told—perhaps more, if the records of all duels and challenges were available. John Houston McIntosh, grandson of John Mohr McIntosh, had all of the antipathy of his race to the Spaniards. His clan had suffered severely in the earliest days of Georgia in the border struggles with the Spanish. Old John Mohr McIntosh, who had led them after Culloden out of the mountains of Scotland to the far-away wilderness of the Altamaha, and Col. John McIntosh, grandson of the Highland chieftain, had lain in the darkness of Spanish dungeons for months. No McIntosh could forget that. There was no love, either, on the part of any of the frontiersmen of Georgia for the rulers of Florida. When the war came with the British in 1812 there was a well-defined fear that the Spaniards would turn Florida over to them and that it would become a source of great danger to the southern coast and country. Relying on assurances from Washington, a little army of Georgians and Floridians, "with all the woodchoppers and boatmen in the neighborhood of St. Mary's," formed a provisional government and chose the Georgian, John Houston McIntosh, as Director of East Florida. They organized as patriots seeking to establish republican institutions. United States gunboats came to their aid and Fernandina and Amelia Island were surrendered to them. Congress was disinclined to support the venture, the president finally disclaimed the acts of his agents, and the seized territory was returned to the Spaniards. The Spanish leaders were intensely indignant over the invasion of their territory, and especially of the action of the "Patriots" in setting up an opposition government. One Don Manuel Solana sent a challenge to Director McIntosh "to fight him by day or night, on foot or on horseback, with any weapon." McIntosh despised and disdained the Spaniards. His reply was cutting in the extreme: "Was he a private man and Don Manuel Solana (whom he did not even know) a decent character, he would meet him by day, with any weapon but a knife or stilletto, but as Mr. McIntosh had lived among the Spaniards long enough to know that those among them who have any honor left are great sticklers for etiquette, and as he is the Director of East Florida and is extremely solicitous to retain the love of his dear and honorable friends in St. Augustine, he could not condescend to accept a challenge from any individual in that place but Colonel Kinderland (Kintelan), Governor of all the town and castle of St. Augustine." No challenge appears to have been forthcoming from the Spanish governor of St. Augustine and Don Manuel Solana, not being acceptable as a substitute, was left to fume and fret over the sneering tone of the communication that had come in response to his challenge. In Savannah and in all the country to the St. Mary's there were doubtless many hearty laughs over the manner in which McIntosh had handled the presumptuous and bombastic Don. This quintette of difficulties between leading white men of the community amply illustrate the spirit of the closing years of the 18th and the opening years of the 19th century in Savannah and nearby country, the methods pursued, and also explain the somewhat frequent essays in the "Gazette" and "Museum" condemning duelling and deprecating the readiness shown to resort to it in this city and vicinity. There was a reason for this readiness to appeal to the code. All too often slander went broadcast through the community. A man's social or business standing, or even the magnificent patriotism he had shown, was no protection from the defiling tongues. No less a man than Col. James Jackson, to whom the Georgia legislature two years before in appreciation had presented the Tattnall home, was accused of accepting bribes while in the legislature in the interest of Tories, eager to escape from the dreariness of exile and seeking to be restored to citizenship and their properties. He scorned the libels, but in the end found that public repudiation of the tales was necessary. There was no one of position on whom he could pin direct responsibility and publicly brand as a "liar." In the "Gazette" he denounced the "infamous reports" being circulated that "he had been bribed by Dr. MacLeod", and a second report that he "had received sixty guineas from Mr. Thomas Young to serve his purpose". Mr. Young, of Liberty county, had presented to the Assembly a petition "signed by many staunch Whigs" for his reinstatement in American citizenship. This slander, Jackson found, had made an impression on his friends in the country, going the rounds as it had done without specific denial from him. A young man for whom Jackson had done much, and whom he did not dignify by naming, had industriously circulated the report and declared Jackson "a secondary planet in Mr. Young's business", an intimation that he had played second fiddle to some corrupt and more influential member of the Assembly. This seemed to sting worse than the general charge of corruption. "Did he know me," cried Jackson, "he would be convinced that my pride, however deficient I may be, will never permit me to rate myself second to any at the Georgia Bar, and therefore, was I to be bribed, it would take as large a purse to buy me as any of the profession." He then published an affidavit, drawn in the strongest possible terms, vigorously denouncing the charges, and concluding, "He had many and repeated tempting offers, which he had rejected as frequently." Two young men, afterwards well known, James Benjamin Maxwell and Jacob Henry Waldburge(r), clerks in Jackson's office, who had "access to all his papers and were privy to most of his transactions", told that they knew of applications to him to "speak to points in the legislature, which he always refused, declaring it repugnant to the duty he owed his country." They remembered especially one letter from a rich Tory, offering him one plantation out of two, or both, if he would use his endeavors to re-establish him and "get him off the Bill of Banishment and Confiscation"— a revelation of the means resorted to by the more obnoxious Tories to recover their lost positions in the country they had failed to defend. This especial proposition came from Philip Dell, large owner of lands on the Savannah river, then a refugee with the British in Florida. If a gallant and popular officer like Col. Jackson could not escape the calumniator, what could a former pro-British surgeon like Dr. MacLeod expect? That able surgeon, progenitor of a number of well known Savannahians of to-day, had already been through the agonies of a campaign of slander and once more was1 forced to undergo the fiery ordeal before his enemies allowed him peace of mind. No less atrocious charge was made against him than that of putting powdered glass in drugs prepared by him for the Americans wounded in the attack on Savannah in 1779. The accusation had been investigated before the Assembly and proved false, but that did not prevent its being revamped more maliciously in 1784 by a Dr. Rehm and others. MacLeod proved by affidavits from former officers and privates that he had never compounded drugs for the Americans, that in his capacity as surgeon for the British he had secured improved conditions for the American sick and wounded, that he had been recognized among them for his humanity and kindness. For a while, at least, he silenced the serpents' tongues, and the next year he was restored to citizenship. One wonders if the scurrilous reports of all sorts were originated by old and bitter Tories, not all of whom had left the community. Perhaps the Grand Juries of this and other counties thought so when they recommended that those who had been antagonistic to their country, and who would probably be a disturbing element in the great work of reconstruction ahead, should be sent to other realms, and returned special presentments against those "who harboured persons banished from Georgia or any other State." Savannah, like other places, in the period of evolution that followed revolution, was far from being a paradise of fraternal affection. Malice and envy and hatred and slander and selfish ambition were strong forces at work, and the lifting of the lid at times tells of the seething passions and harsh bitternesses that were the inevitable aftermath of a war that wrought so complete a political change and left for several years chaotic conditions. Additional Comments: From: ANNALS OF SAVANNAH SAVANNAH DUELS AND DUELLISTS 1733-1877 BY Thomas Gamble COPYRIGHT 1923 REVIEW PUBLISHING & PRINTING COMPANY SAVANNAH, GEORGIA File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/chatham/history/other/gms410savannah.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/gafiles/ File size: 29.4 Kb