What Happened to Bloody Island?

[rangerrebew]

What Happened to Bloody Island? by John Davis

by Jenny Kile · June 25, 2018
 
Article Written by John Davis

1853 Map of Bloody Island

On a brisk morning, with wind wafting off the Mississippi river across from St. Louis, Missouri, the men faced each other with pistols, at barely more than arm’s length. They’d come to shoot at one another because of an ‘offense against honor’.

The place, or ‘field of honor’, was Bloody Island.

http://mysteriouswritings.com/what-happened-to-bloody-island-by-john-davis/

[thackney]

It was a grim errand that sent Abraham Lincoln hurrying toward Alton, Illinois, early on the morning of September 22, 1842. At Alton, he would cross the Mississippi River to a small island over the Missouri border-Bloody Island. There, he would prepare himself to kill or be killed in a saber duel to the death....

http://www.historynet.com/abraham-lincoln-prepares-to-fight-a-saber-duel.htm

[musiclady]

Well now, THAT's a fascinating article!

[Fishrrman]

I had no idea that Lincoln had ever participated in an old-fashioned duel...

[thackney]

I had no idea that Lincoln had ever participated in an old-fashioned duel...

It did not happen, but it came close.  Since he was challenged, he got to select rules that favored him, broadswords, no crossing a center line.  He set it up too much in his favor (long reach).  When both were on site, it was shut down.

...Lincoln prescribed conditions so advantageous to himself that his opponent would be forced to write off the martial affair as a lost cause. He ordered ‘a plank ten feet long, and from nine to twelve inches abroad, to be firmly fixed on edge, on the ground, as the line between us, which neither is to pass his foot over upon forfeit of his life.’ Such unusual conditions would allow Lincoln to take advantage of his superior reach; Shields was only five feet, nine inches tall, while Lincoln soared to six feet, four inches....