A
Dueling Incident in Boone-Duden Country
by
Bob Brail
In
his book Duels
and the Roots of Violence in Missouri,
Dick Steward notes that Missouri's first recorded duel occurred in
1807 near Cape Girardeau. William Ogle, a merchant and tax
collector, was accused of making an insulting remark to the wife of
Joseph McFerron, a teacher. Ogle was then apparently slapped in the
face by McFerron, so he challenged McFerron to a duel. The weapons
to be used were smooth-bore pistols, and the location of the duel was
Cypress Island, near Cape Girardeau. Both men missed at the first
fire, but at the second fire McFerron killed Ogle. McFerron would go
on to have a successful career in politics, participating in both
Missouri's constitutional convention and the state's first General
Assembly. Over fifty years later, St. Charles County would witness
one of Missouri's last court cases involving dueling, when two young
men whose families lived as neighbors on the Booneslick Road became
embroiled in a dispute which possibly arose from differing attitudes
toward secession.
The original cause of the feud between the Nunnelly and
Bailey families in 1859 is no longer known. What is known from court
records is that on January 25, 1859, twenty year old Gustavus Bailey
was returning to his home in Callaway Township from Wentzville with a
friend, each on horseback. As they rode east along Booneslick Road
in the early evening, they approached the home of Granville Nunnelly,
Sr., and his family. Two of Nunnelly's sons were in front of the
house, one on each side of the road, both armed: twenty-two year old
William had a double-barreled shotgun, and nineteen year old
Granville Carson wielded a pistol. Both men also held rocks. As
Bailey and his friend approached, Granville Carson said, “Here they
are, Bill,” and then, “There he is. Shoot him, Bill, shoot him.”
By this time the muzzle of the shotgun was only a few feet from
Bailey's face. Bailey and his friend spurred their horses in
opposite directions as the Nunnellies threw rocks and then fired one
shot.
Later that day, William Nunnelly penned a note,
challenging Gustavus Bailey to a duel. The note read (original
grammar and spelling):
Sir
If
you are any part of a gentleman if you have any honesty in your
treacherous heart please do me the favor to meet me on the hill which
lies between your father's house and mine and then and there I will
settle all difficulty which exist between you and myself meet me in
ten minutes (or prove your self a Damed
Coward
which every person who knows you has long been aware of – W. M.
Nunnelly
The note was delivered the next day by Granville Carson
Nunnelly to Lucinda Bailey, Gustavus's mother, at the nearby Bailey
home with instructions to give it to Gustavus. The Baileys notified
the authorities. An arrest warrant was issued by Justice of the
Peace Gabriel Gosney on January 28 for both William and Granville
Carson since both dueling and carrying a duel challenge were against
the law. Both Nunnellys appeared before Gosney on January 31 and
acknowledged what they had done. Each was ordered to paid $100 bail
and told to appear in court on June 1. Besides dueling, the official
charge was also “assault on the public highway with deadly
weapons.”
This story would have one more episode. A few days
later, on February 2, John Montgomery, a constable in Callaway
Township, arrived at the Nunnelly home with a few other men and
arrested and forcibly removed William, Granville Carson, and their
twenty-five year old brother James, and took them to the Wentzville
jail where they were held for three days. Of course, the two younger
brothers were legally free on bail, and James had not committed a
crime. Justice of the Peace Gosney then issued a warrant for the
arrest of John Montgomery for abusing his authority as constable.
In the decade leading to the Civil
War, dueling was in decline in America, although the deeply held
political convictions of the era would be the cause of many duels.
Perhaps the best known example of a dueling controversy caused by
tension between secessionists and unionists was the 1860 dueling
challenge issued by Roger Pryor, a congressman from Virginia, to J.
F. Potter, a congressman from Wisconsin. Their dispute took place in
open debate in the House of Representatives, and was covered in the
national press. When Potter chose Bowie knives as the weapons to be
used, Pryor declined to fight. Dueling in Missouri was also “swept
up in a far greater conflict and, like other forms of violence across
the country, it reflected the menacing stresses and strains of
sectional controversy and disunion.” In the years leading up to
the Civil War, dueling was more common in Roger Pryor's south than in
Missouri. However, because of its status as a border state, with
secessionist and unionist neighbors in strife with each other,
Missouri was especially susceptible to disputes which might result in
duels, even though dueling was actually in decline in the state.
It seems likely that the problem
between the Baileys and Nunnellys was caused by the families'
differing political loyalties. Granville Nunnelly, who farmed in
Callaway Township, was an ardent secessionist who owned slaves. He
and his wife Elizabeth were both born in Virginia, as were his three
older sons, James (1834), William (1838), and Granville Carson
(1841), so the family brought a heritage of Southern values when they
came to St. Charles County. The Bailey family was equally committed
to its political loyalties. For example, in July, 1861, Robert
Bailey, Sr., the forty-seven year old father of Gustavus Bailey,
would join the New Melle Home Guards as his way of serving the Union
cause. His commanding officer would be his son, Robert Bailey, Jr.,
and his other adult sons, Gustavus and Arthur would also enlist in
the same unit. Later that year, Captain Robert Bailey would lead
his Home Guards to Jonesburg where, according to one account written
twenty-five years later, they “plundered the people of the
neighborhood indiscriminately” and made arrests of Southern
sympathizers. In the fall of 1862 Gustavus Bailey would enlist in
the 75th Enrolled Missouri Militia as a second lieutenant.
It hardly seems possible that the incident which resulted in a
challenge to duel could have taken place outside the context of
politics.
Both families would eventually pay a
heavy price for their political views. Captain Robert Bailey, Jr.,
according to his tombstone, died in the service of his country at
Port Hudson, Louisiana, in 1864, probably of disease. Granville
Nunnelly, the father of the young men involved in the dueling
incident, also paid with his life for his devotion to his cause. He
and his family had left St. Charles County for Montgomery County
shortly after the dueling incident to run a hotel in Danville. On
July 18, 1861, secessionists in Montgomery County murdered two
Federal soldiers. When Nunnelly heard the news, he had reportedly
said that one man deserved to be killed and if the other had stayed
home, he wouldn't have been hurt. When word of this reach a Union
colonel from Montgomery City, he sent a company of soldiers to
Danville to arrest Nunnelly and a few other secessionists, including
a lawyer named Robert Terrill. Terril, Nunnelly, and a few other men
were arrested in the middle of the night and taken in the direction
of Montgomery City, Nunnelly being allowed to drive his buggy since
he was too obese to walk. Just before daylight on July 22, about a
mile from Montgomery City, the captain in charge of the soldiers
halted the group and oradered Nunnelly, Terrill, and two others out
of the carriage. They were made to kneel and then shot dead by the
soldiers. Granville Nunnelly was fifty years old. His wife was left
to care for their children still at home and operate the hotel.
Although it might be correct to
conclude that the Bailey-Nunnelly feud sprang from differing
political views, it is important to clarify that slavery probably was
not the issue. Robert Bailey, Sr., though he had been born in Ohio,
owned several slaves at least until the census in 1860. The fact
that Robert Bailey, Sr., was a slave owner who fought for the Union
cause may suprise someone today, but it certainly did not make Bailey
an oddity in Missouri at the dawn of the Civil War. As the Civil War
began, “a majority of Missouri voters supported the institution of
slavery, but this attitude did not automatically translate into
support for secession.” This was true of many slaveowners, at
least at the beginning of the war, when many were hoping “to
guarantee both slavery and the Union.” Unfortunately for slave
owning supporters of the Union, they would incur the wrath of both
abolitionists and, in the case of the Baileys, slaveowning
secessionists like the Nunnellys.
It is not difficult to imagine
neighbors in 1859 Missouri at odds with each other if one family
supported secession and the other supported the Union, even if both
families owned slaves. It seems possible that the problem between
the Baileys and Nunnellys, which nearly caused a duel to be fought,
was caused by their deeply felt political views.
Sources: Agriculture and Slavery in
Missouri's Little Dixie (R. Douglas Hurt);
“Crack of the Pistol: Dueling in 19th Century Missouri”
(sos.mo.gov); “Duel!” (smithsonianmag.com); Duels and the
Roots of Violence in Missouri
(Dick Steward); Federal Population Censuses; Federal Slave
Censuses; Findagrave.com; History of St. Charles, Montgomery, and
Warren Counties, Missouri (1885);
Missouri's War: The Civil War in Documents (Ed. Silvana
Siddali); St. Charles County
(MO) Circuit Court Records (St. Charles County Historical Society);
Soldiers Records (sos.mo.gov).