I want to come back to Forrest's language as an attempt to provoke the Mayor into a duel - which would immediately cause him (the Mayor) to lose his office. Knowing Google is my friend try these:
Duels with Thomas Hart Benton[edit]
In August 1817 Lucas and Benton as attorneys were opposite sides of a court case and accused each other of lying.
When they encountered each other again in an August 1817 election, the 24-year-old Lucas challenged whether 35-year-old Benton owned property and could legally vote. Benton replied he owned slaves and paid taxes on them and could vote and then called Lucas according to one version an "insolent puppy." Another slightly different said Benton told the judges:
Gentlemen, if you have any questions to ask, I am prepared to answer, but I do not propose to answer charges made by any puppy who may happen to run across my path.
Lucas then challenged Benton on August 11 to a duel with a note:
I am informed you applied to me on the day of the election the epithet of 'Puppy.' If so I shall expect that satisfaction which is due from one gentleman to another for such an indignity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lucas_(Missouri)
and listed in:
Uncle Tom Mania: Slavery, Minstrelsy, and Transatlantic Culture in the 1850s
By Sarah Meer p 174
and in the shooting Jefferson Davis vs Nelson
He lost
him because the Indiana brigadier Jefferson Davis, home from the Transmississippi on a sick leave, had come down to ... and when Nelson called
him an "insolent puppy,” flipped a wadded
calling-card in his face; whereupon Nelson laid the back of a ... Buell had Davis placed in arrest, intending to try
him for
murder, but
before he could appoint a court or even prepare
The Civil War: A Narrative: Volume 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville
By Shelby Foote p. 714
I recall a few more but can't find them at the momment