For a spring entry we have Littleberry Bush. He ran for Georgia State Representative from Richmond County in 1823 but lost.

http://elections.lib.tufts.edu/aas_portal/view-election.xq?id=MS115.002.GA.1823.00005

After a some digging I found out that his first name was actually his mother’s maiden name. His father Richard P. Bush married Sara Littleberry in 1786. Littleberry Bush was born in 1788, dies in 1829. I honestly can’t picture an old man with such a cute name.

There is a lot of talk in the current political climate that civility has left politics. I suppose that works under an assumption that civility once played a part in politics.

North Carolina has a distinction that reminds you that the death of Alexander Hamilton was not so out of place. Twice in North Carolina history, a bitter race for Congress left the opponents so enraged at comments made during the course of the campaign that the two opponents later fought duels.

The first was fought in 1802 between John Stanly and Richard Dobbs Spaight. Spaight has signed the Declaration of Independence and been a Governor and a Congressman, but Stanly was outraged by comments made by Spaight during their 1800 race for Congress and their duel ended with Spaight’s death and the subsequent banning of dueling by the state of North Carolina.

A bizarre footnote to this duel is that some twenty years later, Spaight’s son, Richard Dobbs Spaight, Jr. ran against Stanly for the North Carolina House of Commons (and won).

The second duel came in 1827. Again comments during a Congressional campaign (this one in 1825) resulted in the winner of the race (this time Samuel P. Carson) challenging the loser (Robert B. Vance) to a duel. In both duels, the winner of the Congressional election was ousting an incumbent, in both duels the winner of the election made the challenge, and in both cases the winner survived the duel and the loser of the election also became the loser of the duel.

And people complain today about the lack of civility in politics?

Erik Beck