Wild Bill Hickok shoots former Confederate soldier…

Wild Bill Hickok shoots former Confederate soldier Davis Tutt dead on July 21 in a "quick draw duel", in the market square of Springfield, Missouri; it is regarded as the first true western showdown.

Hickok had first met Tutt in early 1865, while both were gambling in Springfield.

Hickok has often borrowed money from Tutt and they were originally friends, but they had had a falling out over a woman. (It is also rumored that Hickok once had an affair with Tutt's sister, perhaps fathering a child.)

There is also a long-standing dispute over Hickok's girlfriend, Susannah Moore.

Hickok had refused to play cards with Tutt, who had retaliated by financing other players in an attempt to bankrupt him.

Fiction will later popularize Hickok's "quick draw gunfight" as typical, but Hickok's is the first one on record to fit the portrayal.

During the duel, rather than the face-to-face fast-draw as is commonly shown in movies, the two men had faced each other sideways in the historic dueling stance, drawing and aiming their weapons before firing.

Tutt's shot missed, but Hickok's did not, piercing Tutt through the heart from about seventy-five yards away.

Tutt called out, "Boys, I'm killed" before he collapsed and died.

Two days later Hickok will be arrested for murder (the charge will be later reduced to manslaughter).

Released on two thousand dollars bail, he will stand trial on August 3, 1865.

At the end of the trial, Judge Sempronius H. Boyd will give the jury two contradictory instructions, first instructing the jury that a conviction is its only option under the law, then instructing them that they can apply the unwritten law of the "fair fight" and acquit.

The jury will vote for acquittal, a verdict that is unpopular.