Spencer Pettis

[citation needed] His father was a veteran of the American Revolution, serving with the 1st Regiment, Virginia Line at the Battle of Guilford Court House and elsewhere.

Genealogy records indicate he did have at least two sisters, one of whom, Sally, was the mother of American Civil War naval officer Thornton A. Jenkins.

Pettis, seeking every vote possible, had a large number of handbills printed promoting his campaign and distributed them far and wide across the most remote areas of the state.

Among them were "aye" on a bill to continue work on the Cumberland Road and a resolution urging the U.S. President negotiate with other nations for the abolition of the African slave trade.

Missouri's Jacksonian Democrats, led by Senator Thomas Hart Benton, engaged in a number of debates during the 1830 Congressional election season that saw many fiery speeches on issues of banking, currency stability, and western land use.

Things escalated dramatically on July 9, 1831, when Thomas Biddle heard that an ill Pettis was resting in a St. Louis hotel.

[7] After sufficient time to recover from the beating, on August 21, 1831, Congressman Pettis challenged Biddle to a duel, which was promptly accepted.

In short, it was suicidal and seen as a ploy by some observers and later historians to make Pettis back down and thus lose the affair of honor without bloodshed.

[2] At five p.m. on August 27, 1831, Biddle and Pettis, along with their seconds, Major Benjamin O'Fallon and Captain Martin Thomas respectively, met on Bloody Island, a small sandbar located in the Mississippi River between St. Louis and the Illinois shore.