Bloody Island, where St. Louis settled its arguments with pistols
East St. Louis riverfront, St. Clair County, Illinois
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A wooded sandbar sat off this shore in water that neither Missouri nor Illinois claimed, so St. Louis men with a quarrel rowed out to it and shot at each other beyond the reach of either state. Thomas Hart Benton, who went on to spend thirty years in the US Senate, faced the lawyer Charles Lucas here twice in 1817 and killed him on the second meeting. In 1831 Congressman Spencer Pettis and Major Thomas Biddle fought over the Bank of the United States at a distance of about five feet, and both men died of their wounds. Lieutenant Robert E. Lee built dikes here in 1838 that swung the current away from the Illinois bank, and the island silted up against the shore until it stopped being an island at all.
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Location: approximate area
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