Three primary documents from the Georgia signer who died in a duel nine months after signing the Declaration. The LOC holds the letter McIntosh wrote describing what happened. The Georgia Historical Society holds the pistols.
Button Gwinnett was baptized in Down Hatherley, Gloucestershire, England around 1735. He married Ann Bourne in 1757 and worked as a merchant. In 1765 he moved to Savannah, Georgia and established himself as a trader. In 1770 he purchased St. Catherine's Island off the Georgia coast and took up farming. He entered Georgia politics in 1769 and was elected to the Commons House of Assembly.
Gwinnett was elected to the Continental Congress in 1776, signing the Declaration of Independence alongside fellow Georgians Lyman Hall and George Walton. He returned to Georgia immediately after signing. He served as Speaker of the Georgia legislature, helped write the Georgia Constitution of 1777, and became Acting President and commander in chief of Georgia when Archibald Bulloch died in office.
Lachlan McIntosh was a Brigadier General commanding Georgia's Continental forces, a position Gwinnett had wanted and had been passed over for. The two men clashed repeatedly over political and military authority. Gwinnett led a failed expedition against British-held East Florida in April 1777. He and McIntosh blamed each other publicly for the failure.
On May 1, 1777, McIntosh addressed the Georgia assembly and called Gwinnett a scoundrel and a lying rascal. These were fighting words. Gwinnett sent a written challenge. McIntosh refused to apologize. They agreed to meet on the field of honor.
Savannah in Georgia, 30th May, 1777. Dear Sir, As I hear you are shortly to set off for Philadelphia to Congress, I will trouble you with the deposition of the two Seconds in the dispute between the late President Gwinnett and myself.
On May 16, 1777, Gwinnett and McIntosh met in a field owned by deposed Royal Governor James Wright, a few miles east of Savannah. They stood twelve feet apart and fired simultaneously. Both men were hit. McIntosh was wounded in the thigh. Gwinnett was also hit in the thigh, near the knee. Both men accepted an offer from their seconds to continue the duel. Their seconds refused.
The wound to Gwinnett's thigh became gangrenous. He died on May 19, 1777, three days after the duel. He was thirty-one months removed from signing the Declaration of Independence. McIntosh was tried for murder and acquitted. He went on to serve at Valley Forge and the Siege of Savannah and died in 1806 at eighty. Gwinnett was buried in Colonial Park Cemetery in Savannah, though the exact location of his grave is unknown.