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THE SORROWS OF THE
ALSTONS* Part 8.
In 1837 the Second Seminole Wa' was raging in
termittently over the Florida peninsula Many Ameri
can officers, lacking Indians to kill, practiced the mur
derous arts upon each other. Colonel Augustus Alston
had ordered Lieutenant William Ward shot to death
on the spot for presenting him with a petition from his
troops Within a year Alston and Ward's brother, also
a colonel, had disabled each other in a duel over the
incident. The two men agreed to resume the duel when
both had recovered from their wounds.
Leigh Read came to Florida from Tennessee in
1831 and studied law under Richard K. Call, a promi
nent attorney and friend of President Andrew Jack-
son Call was a candidate for delegate to the U.S
Congress running against Joseph White. White's
neDhew made a public attack on Calls cbu/acter and
Read challenged him to a duel in defense of his
mentor s good name. Both men were wounded. In
March of 1836, Leigh Read, now a major in the Florida
militia, led 260 volunteers as part of a large command
marching against Afro-Seminole forces on the
Wi'hlacoochee River. He publicly accused his com
Southern
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manding officer of cowardice and ineptitude and en
gaged in a pistol duel which degenerated into a knife
fight. Jackson appointed Richard Call territorial gov
ernor while Read was creating havoc on the
Withlacoochee expedition. Read’s political connec
tions not only spared him punishment, but secured
him a brigadier generai's commission.
The Democratic party dominated Florida and
American politics in the 1830s through the person and
policies of Andrew Jackson, the Tennessee slave
dealer, Indian killer and duelist, idolized by frontiers
men and the urban working classes, Jackson was
mistrusted by most men of property and education :
who put aside regional and economic rivalries to form
the Whig party, a united front against Jackson and his
Democratic hordes In Florida the Democrats were well
reoresented among men of wealth and position who I
were mindful that Old Hickory had brought the terri
tory under the American flag and that no man was
more devoted to exterminating the Seminoles. The j
leader of the Democratic faction in Tallahassee was
General Leigh Read; his opposite number on the Whig i
i
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side was Colonel Augustus A. Alston
While Augustus awaited his rematch in the duel
with Colonel George Ward, the Alstons continued to
intermarry with leading families throughout the region.
Augustus’s sister Sarah Clementina married Dr. John
Bacon of Decatur, Ala., in the spring of 1837. His sis
ter Ann, the widow of Major John Floyd, married D. A
Gaillard of Charleston. S.C . in the fall of the same
year In May. 1839, another sister. Philoclea Edgworth
Alston, married David S Walker a prominent Talla
hassee lawyer who would three decades later become
governor of the state. Willis, the biack sheep brother,
had followed the Alstons southwestermg impulse
and taken his young family to the new Republic of
Texas, settling in the port town of Brazoria
As the 1839 eiecticn for Florida s territorial legis
lature approached many new fortunes were disap
pearing in the aftermath of the nationwide financial
collapse of 1837 while the Second Seminole War
dragged on: Florida Whigs hoped that widespread
disillusionment w'th the Democrats would sweep their
party into power. Augustus Alston, one of the Whig
leaders, made some public comments on the situa
tion which the pugnacious General Leigh Read, now
a Democratic candidate for the legislature, found ob
jectionable. Alston objected to Read’s objections and
challenged him to a duel. Read had by this time come
to oppose dueling, but public opinion demanded that
he fight or be condemned to social disgrace along
with his entire family. Alston issued another chal
lenge, which Rsad accepted
Augustus Alston was married ana had two young
children, Joseph — whom we shail encounter again
in the course of this narrative — and Henrietta. On
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the mghi before the duel Augustus was sitting up
with wife when a chunk of plaster fell at their feet
from the ceiling. Mary Alston took this as a bad omen
and begged her husband to remain at home. The
encounter took place Dec. 12,1839, at Mannington,
north of Tallahassee near the Georgia line. Read, as
i the challenged party, had the choice of weapons
j He chose rifles, weapons which hardly fit our roman
tic notions of the duel but were common among
Southern duelists and a good deal more refined than
I the occasional shotguns at 15 paces which appear
in the records of this period. When the signal to fire
was given Augustus Alston, in what one write 1, called
‘ over-confident haste.” turned quickly and lost his bal-
j ance. His shot went wide Read calmly leveled and
fired into Alston's chest, killing him It was ten years
to the day since bis brother Gideon had been shot
to death.
The killing seems to have been conducted within
the bounds of propriety prescribed by the Code
Duello, but the Alstons felt that Read had taken un-
gentlemanly advantage of Augustus^ misstep Ann
Hunt Macon Alston Floyd Gaillard was outraged
j Described by a childhood friend as “brilliant and
eccentric,' Ann was passionately devoted to her
j brothers, one of whom was already dead by gunfire,
■ as was her first husband. She had the fatal bullet cut
! out of Augustus’s body, remolded into usable form,
and sent this emissary of death to Willis in Texas with
the demand that he, as the sole remaining Alston
brother, return to Florida and exact vengeance for
: Augustus.
Continued Next Week.
©1996 John Ryan Seawngh:
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