Appendix III: Archival Account of the Wigfall-Brooks Duel

The following text is a verbatim transcription of a retrospective historical report originally published in the Augusta (Ga.) Herald and reprinted in a regional broadsheet. It provides an exhaustive, firsthand-backed record of the 1840 Vance's Island/Goat Island duel between Louis T. Wigfall and Preston S. Brooks, documenting the specific participants, the exact mechanics of the shootout, and the severe medical fallout.

A NOTABLE SOUTHERN DUEL. Meeting of Louis T. Wigfall and Preston S. Brooks.

From the Augusta (Ga.) Herald.

In the Savannah River some eight or ten miles above Augusta was, fifty or sixty years ago, a large and dreary sandbank, known as Goat Island—covered with drifting and shifting dunes—the home of the crane, the kingfisher, and the heron. Precisely fifty-six years ago one of the most noted duels that ever illustrated the code of honor took place on Goat Island—a sort of neutral ground amenable, perhaps, neither to the laws of Georgia nor South Carolina. The principals and seconds in this duel, save one, were all Edgefield men, of high descent and of the cavalier class, who believed in and practiced the code duello.

The principals were two handsome and brilliant young lawyers, Louis T. Wigfall, aged twenty-three years, and Preston S. Brooks, aged twenty-two. The casus belli in this famous duel grew out of political strifes and ambitions. Wigfall's second was John Laurens Manning of Sumter County, S. C. Brooks's second was Pierce Mason Butler of Edgefield. All these four men became famous characters in the history of their State—indeed, in the history of the South—as is abundantly proved by the chronicles and encyclopaedias that have been written or amended since.

In the very earliest hours of the dim, gray dawn of a Fall morning of the year 1841—to avoid notice and perhaps arrest—two close carriages are driven out of Augusta. They leave the door of the late Thomas Barrett, Esq., who is himself an occupant of one of the carriages. These two coaches convey Wigfall, Manning, Barrett, a physician, and three colored men servants to the vicinity of Goat Island. Brooks and Butler, with their physician and servants come from the Edgefield side, accompanied by the late Major Andrew Hammond of New Richmond.

The duel took place at 5:30 o'clock in the afternoon. The actors in the bloody drama were taken from either shore to the island in one of the long pole boats of that day. Two shots were exchanged. The result of the second shot was the wounding of Wigfall through both thighs and the whizzing of a bullet into Brooks's hip, the bullet ranging round into his back and lodging there. Both men were painfully and very seriously wounded. Both sank to the ground, and soon became almost unconscious from loss of blood.

Both wounds having been temporarily dressed, both men were lifted tenderly into the pole boat, and, lying almost side by side, were rowed down the night-mantled stream to the city. In this boat with the wounded men were the seconds, Mr. Barrett Major Hammond, the physicians, and five negro men.

Arriving at Augusta, Louis T. Wigfall was taken to the residence of Mr. Thomas Barrett, whose wife and mother-in-law, the late Mrs. Harriet Glasscock, were family connections of his, and there nursed back into life with tender care and motherly watchfulness. Preston Brooks was taken to Beard's Hotel in Hamburg, whence, after a few days, he was taken to his home in Edgefield.

Louis T. Wigfall married a brilliant belle of Providence, R. I., and, after living in Edgefield a few years, subsequent to this duel, removed to Marshall, Texas, which State he very soon represented in the United States Senate, where he achieved a National reputation as an orator and statesman. The war, of course, found him devotedly and enthusiastically on the side of his native South. He became a hero in the memorable and initial siege of Fort Sumter, a Brigadier General in the Confederate Army, Senator from Texas in the Confederate Congress, and an intimate friend and adviser of Jefferson Davis. He died in Galveston, Texas, some ten or twelve years after the close of the war.

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