Departures of note

In 1838, William J. Graves, a Kentucky congressman, killed fellow Representative Jonathan Cilley in a duel at the Bladensburg dueling grounds in Maryland. Graves acted as a stand-in for New York newspaper editor James Watson Webb, whom Cilley had called corrupt. Cilley, inexperienced with guns, chose rifles at 80 yards to offset Graves' skill as a crack pistol shot. The actual distance at the first exchange was 94 yards; both missed. After shortening the distance twice, Graves hit Cilley in the femoral artery on the third fire, and Cilley bled to death in ninety seconds.

The duel prompted Congress to pass an act on February 20, 1839, prohibiting the issuing or accepting of a challenge within the District of Columbia, even if the duel was to be fought outside the district. Graves, born in New Castle, Kentucky, in 1805, had studied law and practiced in Kentucky before serving in the state house of representatives in 1834. He was elected as an Anti-Jacksonian to the Twenty-fourth Congress and reelected as a Whig to the Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth Congresses, serving from March 4, 1835, to March 3, 1841.

Graves did not seek renomination in 1840 and returned to the state house of representatives in 1843. He died in Louisville, Kentucky, on September 27, 1848, and was interred in the private burial grounds at his former residence in Henry County, Kentucky.