Another California with whom I was personally acquainted, was William M. Gwin. He had long passed the allotted three score and ten when I first met him at the home of the late Senator Sharon. Few men have known so eventful a career. He had been the private secretary of Andrew Jackson. He knew well the public men of that day, and related many interesting incidents of the stormy period of the latter years of Jackson's Presidency. In his early manhood Gwin was a member of Congress from Alabama. At the close of the Mexican War he removed to California, and upon the admission of that State he and John C. Fremont were chosen its first Senators in Congress.
During a ride with him, he pointed out to me the spot where he had fought a duel in early California days. He was then a Senator, and his antagonist the Hon. J. W. McCorkle, a member of Congress. A card signed by their respective seconds appeared the day following, to the effect that after the exchange of three ineffectual shots between the Hon. William M. Gwin and the Hon. J. W. McCorkle, the friends of the respective parties, having discovered that their principals were fighting under a misapprehension of facts, mutually explained to their respective principals how the misapprehension had arisen. As a result, Senator Gwin promptly denied the cause of provocation and Mr. McCorkle withdrew his offensive language uttered at the race-course, and expressed regret at having used it.
To a layman in these "piping times of peace" it would appear the more reasonable course to have avoided "a misapprehension of facts" before even three ineffectual shots.
At the beginning of the great civil conflict, the fortunes of Senator Gwin were cast with the South, and at its close he became a citizen of Mexico. Maximilian was then Emperor, and one of his last official acts was the creation of a Mexican Duke out of the sometime American Senator. The glittering empire set up by Napoleon the Third and upheld for a time by French bayonets, was even then, however, tottering to its fall.
When receiving the Ducal coronet from the Imperial hand the self-expatriated American statesman might well have inquired,
"But shall we wear these glories for a day,
Or shall they last, and we rejoice in them?"
A few months later, at the behest of our Government, the French arms were withdrawn, the bubble of Mexican Empire vanished, and the ill-fated Maximilian had bravely met his tragic end. Thenceforth, a resident but no longer a citizen of the land that had given him birth, William M. Gwin, to the end of his life, bore the high sounding but empty title of "Duke of Sonora."
Frequent as have been the instances in our own country where death has resulted from duelling, it is believed that in but one has the survivor incurred the extreme penalty of the law. That one case occurred in 1820 in Illinois. What was intended merely as a "mock duel" by their respective friends, was fought with rifles by William Bennett and Alphonso Stewart in Belleville. It was privately agreed by the seconds of each that the rifles should be loaded with blank cartridges. This arrangement was faithfully carried out so far as the seconds were concerned; but Bennett, the challenging party, managed to get a bullet into his own gun. The result was the immediate death of Stewart, and the flight of his antagonist. Upon his return to Belleville a year or two later, Bennett was immediately arrested, placed upon trial, convicted, and executed.
In more than one instance, at a later day, while well-known Illinoisans have been parties to actual or prospective duels, no instance has occurred of a hostile meeting of that character within the limits of the State. A late auditor of public account, but recently deceased, killed his antagonist in a duel with rifles nearly half a century ago in California.
William I. Ferguson, one of the most brilliant orators Illinois has known, in early professional life the associate of men who have since achieved national distinction, fell in a duel while a member of the State Senate in California.