Button Gwinnett: Failed Merchant, Plantation Owner, Mountebank, Opportunist Politician and Founding Father

Button Gwinnett was a signatory to the Declaration of Independence. His short-lived but meteroic political career has invited much conjecture but the lack of any obvious legacy has since condemned him to semi-oblivion - apart from his signature which is now the most sought after in the United States. This book fills a gap in our knowledge. It tells the story of Gwinnett's life in gripping detail: from 1762 and his arrival in America as a bankrupt Englishman, to Founding Father in 1776, and finally to his death in a duel the following year. It examines how he rose by dubious means to become one of the largest landowners in the State of Georgia and leader of the Popular Party, and it lays out the complex steps by means of which, in 1776, he placed his signature on the Declaration of Independence and became successively Speaker, Commander-in-Chief and President of Georgia - before an untimely death in an unnecessary duel.