One Duel. One Died. One Didn't 32.077938° -81.082580°

One Duel. One Died. One Didn’t.

32.077938° -81.082580°

Hey, everyone!

What a great day for a podcast!

Do we have a great country or what?

Yes… our country has problems… all countries have problems.

But at the time of the forming of our nation during the American Revolution, things got pretty bad, not just in the way the war was going, but in the political landscape of the founding fathers. Tensions were high between the early patriots.

Some said that in 1777, at the early phases of the fighting, Georgia’s war-time President was murdered by poisoning.

Yes or no, his death definitely had suspicious circumstances surrounding it… but no one could prove foul play. When Archibald Bulloch died… some people suspected that a man named Button Gwinnett had something to do with it.

 The wake of that incident washed over emotions, heated tempers, and created mistrust among Georgia’s founding fathers.

As a result, two American patriots fought a duel in Savannah, and one of them died. But today, we’ll look into WHERE the duel took place.

By the way, you’ve heard of six degrees of separation? President Theodore Roosevelt, who was born 81 years later, has a link to these events and this duel.

 I’m JD Byous. Welcome to History by GPS, where you travel through history and culture, GPS location by GPS location. So, click on your favorite map app and follow along.

Ready?… Here are the coordinates for today’s spot.

It is 32.077938° -81.082580°

Now, you’re going to find that this location is in the middle of a grassy park on the east side of town. But it is an important spot, and here’s the story behind it.

The President was a guy named Archibald Bulloch, a member of the Continental Congress and a veteran of the fight for freedom.

As an interesting note… Bulloch had to leave the meetings of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia and make a hasty trip to Georgia to help defend Savannah from an imminent British attack. If he had stayed in Pennsylvania, he would have been Georgia’s fourth signer of the Declaration of Independence.

You remember the others… Lyman Hall, George Walton, and Button Gwinnett.

Archibald Bulloch

Also… if Bulloch had not died when he did, one signer of the Declaration of Independence might have lived a little longer.

So, to clarify… Bulloch was the first President and Commander in Chief of Georgia… in the temporary government… in the soon to be new State while the war with England was still going on. After his death, he was replaced by the ambitious and recent English immigrant… a guy named, Button Gwinnett.

The President’s death and the suspicions surrounding it… illuminate the power struggle that was taking place among the American Rebel leadership.

Factional game-playing was debilitating the security of the Revolution, the state, and especially the city of Savannah.

Gwinnett is often remembered as a mystery man with a cloudy past. A decade earlier, when he immigrated from England, he purchased St. Catherines Island off of the South Georgia coast.

His investment failed, leaving him up to his eyeballs in debt. So, he was forced to sell his property in 1773. He turned to politics three years later, and the political winds pushed him into public office and a position in the newly formed