Transcription and additional commentary by Jefferson Hall
On August 23, 1802, a former mayor of Savannah killed one of its most prominent citizens. The fatal duel took place by the old Sheftall Cemetery, a few hundred yards west of town. One of the duel’s participants was David Bradie Mitchell (1766-1837), who had only just completed his term as mayor of Savannah weeks before, and would live on to serve three terms as Governor of Georgia. His antagonist was William Hunter (1767-1802), an active Savannah merchant, owner of one of the riverfront’s wharves and ship-owner… who would not be so lucky. According to Thomas Gamble, the men dueled at a distance of 30 feet, reducing the distance to 18 for their second volleys. More than three decades later, in the only first-hand account of the duel extant, Mitchell related the event to artist Richard West Habersham as the latter painted the above portrait… and as a horrified Habersham listened he found himself adding more and more red to the background.
The following is from Richard West Habersham’s series, “From the Reminiscences of an Artist.”
“DUELS“
“An Account of an Old-Time Affair of Honor, in Which the Survivor Owed His Life to the Tough Cloth of His Clothes.“
By Richard West Habersham, 1884
In recalling to memory the duels of which I have been cognizant, I naturally ran over the names of those I had known as boys of my own age or 3 or 4 years older to recall to mind what had befallen them. Few, very few—not half a dozen of them—seem to be still in the land of the living—this side of the dark river—but only one of them all died in private combat and only two in war. Some of their names even have disappeared from our streets, where once they were well-known, and not one of them has left “a footprint on the sands of time” to tell that ever they had been. Andersons, Charltons, Hardens, Mackays, Stileses, Williamses, Rices, Bassingers, Youngs, Burroughses, Hartstenes, Bartows, Millens, Hunters, Copes, Howards, Sweets and Grants, all boys of promise, well behaved and of character enough to create hopes of a future creditable to the city of their birth, and all looking to do credit to the State of which they were proud—all gone—and leaving no higher fame that I know of than not one of them ever joined the Hellfire Club. Now this may appear no great eulogium, but it is so when we consider the state of society along our coast from the Santee to the St. Mary’s, and the number of youths from the plantations below—good fellows, all, and some of them since respectable members of society, but then terribly fast in the pursuit of pleasure, as they called it, and believing in nothing but dogs, horses and good Madeira wine or cognac brandy. Whisky, unless pure Scotch or Irish, strong with the odor of pear, was considered utterly vulgar, except in punch, and not many highly thought of then, while New England rum was an abomination. I have often heard the fathers of my generation remark that of all these youth, so numerous for a city the size of Savannah, and so well-behaved and generally so promising, not one had attained to any great distinction in the world; and this they attributed to the fact that there was no road to distinction in the South by politics, and that better suited to the demagogue than to the statesman after the election to Congress by general ticket was abolished. Here is a subject for philosophic contemplation and for recalling to mind that at this time some looked more to the State for honor than to partisanship, when a District Attorney could give up $7,000 a year, rather than act against said State of which the Governor could say to the Executive of the United States, “Recall your Ge. Gaines, or I will send him to you under guard,” and when boys did not play in the streets at night, nor smoke cigarettes openly; when to smoke in the streets or the presence of ladies was considered a mark of vulgar breeding, and when infants did not swear save with precautions, as the following anecdote will show. Don’t think, reader, that there is no connection between these extremes of public and private conduct, for it is only by looking dispassionately at great and little things that we can arrive at a true perception of cause and effect. The story is this:
Two little fellows, thinking it manly to swear, retired to the woods beyond Fairlawn, where, finding a thicket, they entered, and after looking cautiously around and drawing a long breath, one said in a low voice, “I swear!” “So do I!” breathed out the other, and then both started for home at double-quick, as if the adversary himself were after them! I do not mean to say that the boys of that day were any better than those of today, but “manners,” say the French, “are lesser morals,” and with us “times have changed and we with them.” We laugh at the French duels, condemn their morals, but certainly must admit that their manners are most pleasant, possibly from the fact that any want of courtesy exposes the offender to the risk of his life—a risk, which, though small, generally is too often fatal, and quite as much to be regretted from the character of the victims as those I now relate.
The exact date of the duel I cannot recollect [editor’s note: August 23, 1802], although I heard the whole story from the survivor himself, nor can the oldest inhabitant inform me further than that it was during the administration of Mr. Jefferson, when politics ran high. Mr. Jefferson was elected in 1801, and his accession to the Presidency was a complete revolution of the policy of the country. Fifty years ago I sought correct information with regard to the party principles of those times, and to this day have not come to any other conclusion than that names meant different things, as they seem yet to do, at the North and at the South. With us the Federalist considered the Union to be one of sovereign States meeting in Congress as such, and not as provinces of one consolidated nation, while at the North Federalists regarded this doctrine as dangerous to the permanence of the Union, and sought to secure safety in a strong government. This view of it was taken by the administration under John Adams and led to the passage of the alien and sedition laws. The practical operation of these alarmed the people and caused the almost unanimous support of the Democrats, then called the Republican, party, headed by the author of the Declaration of Independence…. The interest in this matter was very great, and the agitation resulting therefrom led to collisions of parties, of citizens, and of individuals. On one occasion one who lived to a good old age, then a young man on the Federal side of the question, invited to a free discussion by the Republicans, would have been thrown out of a third story window but for the strenuous opposition of some of the leaders of the majority present. On another occasion a like discussion led to a fatal duel, of which I received an account from the survivor in substance as follows, viz:
“He was a tall, fine-looking Irishman, brave, energetic, a fine, persuasive speaker and known as a first-rate pistol shot. He came into a crowd listening to a Republican speaker, and replied in such a manner as to make a personal attack the only way of meeting him. We all carried canes in those times, but he appeared to have none, so when I attacked him and no one would lend him one, he attempted to retreat, but, opposed by the crowd, he could not escape till I had struck him several times. A duel to the death, according to the manners of the day, became unavoidable, and he challenged me. I, of course, accepted.
“My second was Col. Maxwell. His I do not remember. We took our places, and at the word ‘Fire!’ both pistols were discharged at the same moment. Feeling that I had been too hard on him for exercising his right of speech in discussing a question of public interest, I did not fire on him, but aimed at a clod far behind him on one side, and struck it, but at the same moment received a severe and very painful blow in my side. For one moment I thought myself mortally wounded, clapped my hand to my side, and the bullet fell into it. I drew myself up, still pressing both hands, and looked at my antagonist. He was standing erect, with arms folded on his chest, and the butt of his pistol under his chin. Had this been all, the affair would have stopped here, but as I caught his eye, he with a mocking air, nodded to me and said with a sneer: ‘You’ve got it, have you?’ ‘Yes, I have,’ said I, angered beyond all bounds by the pain in my side, and by his sneer. ‘Yes, I have, but not so badly that I cannot give it to you in my turn.’ He turned pale at this, but stood his ground like the brave man he was. Neither of us had moved, and when Col. Maxwell handed me my pistol, he said: ‘See that fold in his waistcoat? Fire at it!’ I leaned forward in a position of a fencer, making a thrust and at the word our pistols exploded simultaneously. I felt a sharp blow on my leg, half way above the knee, but did not change my position, absorbed as I was in seeing what I had done. He turned deadly pale, stood perfectly erect for a moment, and then a torrent of foam and blood gushed from his mouth, fell forward. They say as he received the shot he murmured ‘My wife! My children!’ but I did not hear him. Just as he fell dead his brother or second rushed up to me and shaking his fists in my face, exclaimed: ‘Murderer! See what you have done! What will become of his wife and little children!’ This drove me for the moment mad, and I seized the pistol, and had it been loaded would have shot him dead, and returned the question with bitter words. But I was hurried into the carriage and driven back to the city.”
The General-ex-Governor was sitting for his portrait—the very one I think now hanging at the Hodgson Library, if I am not mistaken—and I had just completed the head, making him look much younger than he was and giving him an air of bon homie, which seemed habitual to him, when my remark on the fact led him to one of many experiences which he had related to me in the above form. It was fortunate for me that he did not tell it before I had finished the head and was working on the background, for as he went on his face became paler and sterner by degrees till at last it settled into a stony far-off look, which made such a lasting impression on me that I have often thought of fixing it on canvas in that of one of the lost representatives in the Gnostic philosophy as watching over the tomb of matter. The effect on me was such that I dipped my brush in vermillion, mixed it with lake, and dashed it on the background, before the unfitness of the blood-red daub to the location aroused me to ask: “And how, General, was it that you were not killed?” He replied: “They said that I was protected against accidents by secret armor, but it was not so. Corduroy cloth was a common wear then, and his first ball struck my vest pocket, penetrated it, but lodged in the folds of my waistband, making only a considerable bruise. His second shot hit me on the stout, hard exterior muscle of the thigh, and buried the corduroy only deep enough to hold the ball till I drew the cloth straight. It then fell out. But the thing that saved my life was the character of his pistols. In those times the pistols in use were very long and the barrels as thin as a fowling piece. The balls, also, were as large as those of a musket, and the charge was necessarily small enough to prevent their recoil from destroying the aim. His pistols were of this pattern, while mine, newly arrived, were of the new style, barrels as heavy as those of a rifle and carrying a ball not more than half an ounce in weight. Had he like weapons, I should have been killed at the first fire. Come, let us go down to dinner.”
He kept the hotel in Milledgeville, and I had my lodging and painting rooms upstairs, and I had a young man’s appetite, but am free to confess that there was something repugnant to me in seeing how coolly he cut up and distributed the turkey after telling me such a tale. But “the world’s a stage and all the men and women actors;” not all, alas! In comedy, but also in tragedy, of which we will not know the mystery till the last trump sounds and the books are opened. The sea will then give up its dead and the mystery of iniquity be made plain.
– R.W.H.
Ironically, it is not at all clear that Habersham was ever told or ever knew the name of Mitchell’s adversary; not only did he not mention it once in this account, but the “Hunters” were just one of the families he casually referred to as long gone in Savannah. Similarly, a frustrated Thomas Gamble (1868-1945), in preparing his 1923 book, Savannah’s Duels and Duelists, vaguely recalled reading this very 1884 account of the duel in his youth… but three decades later was unable to remember its source for his book. The account you have just read marries the two accounts, and makes clear who both participants were.
In 1802 the duel was never directly addressed in any newspaper; this was simply not done. All that remains in the record today are some solemn notices in the papers in 1802 and 1803 by a devastated family left behind:
Seven years after the duel, on December 12, 1809, Governor David Bradie Mitchell signed an act outlawing the practice of dueling in the state of Georgia.
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