Assassination of Henry Rives Pollard.

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ball struck the pantaloons of Mr. Hueston, and passed through the knees of them without touching the flesh.

Third round. Mr. Labranche fired both barrels at the same time; the balls passed through the hat of Mr. Hueston about two inches apart.

Fourth round. Mr. Hueston fired first. Mr. Labranche's shot took effect in the left side, on the last rib, and passed out on the other side, ranging low down. He threw his gun forward and fell back at full length on the ground. The wound was pronounced fatal by the physicians in attendance. He expired shortly after, in full possession of his mental faculties.

The parties exhibited on the ground the utmost coolness and fortitude.

Henry Rives Pollard, brother of Edward A. Pollard, of "The Lost Cause," was shot in Richmond, Virginia, on the 24th of November, 1868. On the previous Saturday a report was published in the Southern Opinion of the elopement of the daughter of William H. Grant, of that city. About ten o'clock on the morning of the 24th, as Pollard, the editor of the paper, was near his office door, a shot was fired from the upper window of an opposite building. Pollard was instantly killed, eleven buckshot having entered his body, one passing through his heart. On searching the opposite building, James Grant, a brother of the young lady named, was found in one of the rooms. There was a double-barreled gun, with one barrel discharged, in the same room. On the day before the assassination young Grant had called on Pollard and demanded a retraction. Not obtaining this satisfaction, he said he would shoot him at sight. Mr. J. M. Hanna, the assistant editor of the Opinion, thus described the shooting of his principal:

At about a quarter before nine o'clock the vehicle was announced as ready to carry us into the city and to the office of the Opinion. The presentiment of trouble yet strong on my mind, I said to Mr. Pollard," Suppose you do not go into town to-day; I can supply the printers." "No," he answered, "I must go in. Besides, I must see that man to-day."

That ride was not more eventful than many other rides we had taken together. Mr. Pollard sat on the front seat with Mr. Redford, the driver; I behind him. Of conversation, save casual remarks, there was none until the vehicle had passed into the city on Main Street. We passed the residence of Rev. Dr. Hoge, and I observed that there was crape on the door. "Who is dead?" inquired Mr. Pollard. "Not Dr. Hoge, I hope." Mr. Redford said the party deceased was a female member of the family, which appeared to relieve greatly the sudden anxiety of Mr. Pollard.

On down Main Street, past the Spotswood, we drew swiftly towards the spot where death lay in wait watching for the coming of the victim.

Sitting behind him, I noticed that Mr. Pollard bowed occasionally to persons on the street. Once, after a salute, he turned to me and said, "There goes a man who I know hates me."

On we were driven-one of us to death. The assassin's eye, peering from the curtained window, is already fastened upon its mark, coming nigher and nigher, charmed with the circle of death. We alight-Mr. Pollard first, I after him.

One eye of the garreted assassin is closing, the other glances along the charged barrel; his forefinger presses the deadly trigger. Providence separates us by a little time and space-a moment-a few feet; another second, there is a flash, a crack, sharp and sudden, a splash of buckshot against the brick wall, and H. Rives Pollard lies dead, stretched at my feet.

Grant was tried on a charge of murder and acquitted.

These affairs are not confined to our native editors. On a beautiful June Sunday in 1869, Señor Jose Ferrer de Canto, editor of El Cronista, a Spanish paper printed in New York, and Señor Francisco Porto, a wealthy Cuban, met at Lundy's Lane, in Canada. The Cuban received a pistol ball through both legs at the first fire. Señor Porto was one of the writers for the Cuban organ, La Revolucion, and the affair grew out of the rebellion on the "ever-faithful isle," the Queen of the Antilles.

Charles Wallace, editor of the Warrenton (Ga.) Clipper, was shot and instantly killed on the 12th of March, 1869. Wallace had applied for admission into the Masonic lodge at Warrenton, and was black-balled by Dr. G. W. Darden, who had promised not to oppose his application. Wallace then attacked Darden through the columns of his paper, denouncing him as a liar and a villain. As Wallace was passing Darden's office, the latter shot him from his window with a rifle, the ball passing through Wallace's head and causing instant death. Wallace was a Democrat and Darden a Republican. Darden surrendered himself to the authorities and was placed in jail. Sheriff Norris, fearing that Darden would not be safe there, called upon the citizens to act as a posse to guard the jail over night; but they declined to act, being overawed by a band of Ku-Klux, numbering about one hundred, who took immediate possession of the town. They then demanded the keys from the sheriff, and, on his refusal to deliver them, became so violent that he was compelled to seek safety in flight, taking the keys with him. The band then returned to the jail. Fearing that Darden had a pistol, the mob built a fire at the door and smoked him out. Dr. Darden asked time to make a will, which was granted. He was then taken out, and, in presence of his wife and children, barbarously murdered, not less than one hundred and fifty pistol balls piercing his body.

The New Orleans Picayune of April 6, 1869, thus sketches a journalistic rencontre in Louisiana a few days previously:

It appears that some time since the editor of the Advocate (Republican), Mr. Swords, inserted an article in his paper reflecting upon Judge Pintado, a Republican, but belonging to a separate wing of the party. In this article the editor stated that Judge Pintado had been seen lurking about the office of the Pioneer (the Democratic paper), and that such an office was a fit refuge for such vermin, or words in substance to that effect. The editor of the Pioneer (Mr. Duppaty) thereupon demanded a retraction of the article, or satisfaction in accordance with the rules of the code. The editor of the Advocate replied that he was opposed to dueling, and would not accept a challenge. Mr. Duppaty then informed him that if the article was not retracted in Saturday morning's issue of the Advocate he would shoot him on sight. At about eleven o'clock on last Saturday forenoon, the Advocate having appeared without any apology, and while the citizens of the town, apprised of the expected difficulty, were gathered about in groups, Mr. Swords appeared upon the streets armed with a revolver, walking up and down, as if awaiting the coming of Duppaty. Upon being informed, however, that his antagonist had been seen with a double-barreled gun, he retired, and

Another Richmond Affair.

767

soon reappeared, armed in a similar manner. The parties soon came in sight of each other, and, when at about one hundred yards' distance, commenced firing at the same time, yet, strange to say, although the pieces were loaded with buckshot, neither the principals or any one in the crowd were injured by the discharges. After discharging both barrels of his gun, Mr. Swords drew his revolver and fired once, but, before Mr. Duppaty could use his revolver in return, he was arrested by the sheriff, a brother of Swords, and about the same moment Swords was arrested by a justice of the peace, and the difficulty, for the time, brought to a close. The origin of the difficulty grew out of a split in the Republican ranks, which splits at present seem to furnish material for all the lively disputes now going on in the South.

Mr. Robert W. Hughes, the editor of the State Journal, published in Richmond, Virginia, in 1869, had been very severe in his comments on the Conservatives. The extreme bitterness of his articles attracted considerable attention. On the 7th of June the Petersburg (Va.) Index noticed one of these articles in the following sharp style:

There is an article in the Friday evening's State Journal which, in its vileness and virulence, betrays its parentage. Hell has no fury like a woman scorned, perhaps, but humanity knows no hatred so bitter, so reckless, so unrelenting as that the traitor feels towards those whom he has betrayed. None but a renegade Virginian, smarting under the sense of his own shameless treachery, and brimming with enmity to all that is better and truer than himself-an Arnold seeking to cloak his baseness by slander of the cause he has sold-could have penned such language in regard to Virginia gentlemen as that which we quote:

"If names could typify the meaning of words, the mene, mene, tekel, upharsin, which a bloody and destructive history has pronounced upon the sectional party that has so long ruled and ruined in Virginia is especially expressed in such names as Bocock, Douglass, and Aylett. These are but types of the class who have gone forth to reinvoke the people to courses of treason. It is well for the cause of loyalty, reconstruction, and state regeneration that a class of parricides so notorious, with the mark of Cain upon their foreheads, and the guilt of Cain upon their consciences, have gone out as the champions of a discontented, remonstrant, and incorrigible sectionalism. They know that the ascendency of national ideas and loyal sentiments must consign them to fixed and branded obscurity; and in the spirit of Beelzebub, 'Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven,' they are ready to drag down the Commonwealth into a deeper damnation than that in which she already writhes and perishes."

There is only one journalist in this state who is at the same time sufficiently capable as a writer and utterly degraded enough in character to have indited those lines. He is one of those who lent truculent and almost inhuman bitterness to the Richmond Examiner during the war-the man upon whom John M. Daniel chiefly relied for his strongest appeals to the worst passions of our people. He sat at the feet of John B. Floyd, a disciple who forgot all that was good in the lessons of his master, but seized upon the bad with the instinct of natural depravity, cultivating and developing it until he has sunk to a depth which Peter in his denial never knew. His first act after the war was to connect himself with the dirtiest of all the poisonous sheets which have disgraced Richmond since 1864-the Richmond Republic — and his undeniable versatility as a writer was there employed to brand as infamous all that he had advocated for six years previous. Since then he has played a part which is, thank God! stranger to Virginia journalism. His venal pen has been sold to the highest bidder to bolster any and every cause whose directors were willing to buy his brains. He has said that his artícles were merchandise, and that if sufficiently remunerated he would feel warranted in arguing for polygamy. And the time came when his former friends, finding how valueless were words which the public knew were bought and sold like herrings in the market, ceased to remember his talent in the presence of his want of principle. He is now contributing editorially to the Richmond State Journal, which has lost thereby four fifths of its previous claim to respectability. The people of Virginia want no stronger evidence of unreliability in a public print than to know that its sentiments flow from the purchased pen of Robert W. Hughes.

What was the result of such a publication? Satisfaction was im

mediately demanded of Wm. E. Cameron, the editor of the Index. Cameron accepted the challenge, and the parties met at Chester Station, on the Petersburg Railroad; but, before they could exchange a shot, the police made their appearance, and caused a flight of the parties. They passed into North Carolina, where they fought on the 12th of June with pistols. Cameron was hit in the breast at the first fire, the ball striking a rib and glancing. Hughes demanded another fire, but the surgeons declared that Cameron could not deliver another shot, and the affair ended "to the satisfaction of all parties."

While Virginia is not free of affairs of this kind, as the above meeting indicates, there are editors in that state who are opposed to dueling. There has lately been a difficulty between the editors of the Richmond Whig and Richmond Enquirer, both belligerent journals. The last quarrel of these papers arose from a controversy on the Funding Bill before the Legislature. The Whig asserted that the Enquirer was the hired organ of the Pennsylvania Central Railroad. The latter retorted that the Whig was under the pay of the "Virginia Railroad Ring." It was expected that a duel would have been the result. On the 6th of March, 1872, the Enquirer uttered the following sentiments :

The Inquirer of Saturday contained an article in reference to the Whig and its editor which, according to our understanding of the use of language, was, as it was intended to be, as insulting as genteel words could make it. To that article the editor of the Whig has replied by recrimination, and stating that the charges made against Mr. Moseley were true to the letter, and most of them can be substantiated by testimony. If he considered himsef aggrieved he should have sought redress otherwise than through the columns of the Whig. Mr. Moseley doubtless knew what all know who have been at all conversant with my life-long opinions, that I would neither give nor accept a challenge to fight a duel, but he no doubt knew as certainly that I am always ready to resist in a proper manner any attack made upon my character or person, and knowing that, he has chosen to defend himself by cowardly recriminations against charges which he knew to be true and declined to resent.

James C. Southall is the Moseley editor of the Whig. ed and held to bail.

editor of the Enquirer, and Alexander Both parties were subsequently arrest

These are instances and incidents enough to illustrate our point. It is probable that the details of all the duels, assaults, and assassinations in the journalistic world would fill several volumes like this. But these affairs are closing up in this country. Our journalists find that they can manage their papers without these episodes, and live longer by the peaceful code than by that of the duello.

Newspaper Statistics.

769

CHAPTER LVI.

THE END.

STATISTICS OF THE PRESS IN THE UNITED STATES.-OUR Progress.-NEWSPAPERS A HALF CENTURY OLD.-NUMBEr of Periodicals in the World. -THE FUTure.

How many papers are published in the United States? How many in the world?

Our statistics of American newspapers are mainly correct; those of other nations are an approximation only. Our returns, however, give the reader an idea of the number of journals throughout Christendom. Our pages show the beginning, in 1457, in Germany, and in 1690 in the United States; the progress to the era of the Cheap and Independent Press in 1835, and the wonderful growth of journalism since then to 1872. Is it not all full of incident and promise?

After nearly two hundred years of subserviency to kings, governors, cliques, cabals, Essex Juntas, Kitchen Cabinets, Richmond Juntas, Albany Regencies, Tammany Rings, and Union Leagues, the Press in the United States may now be considered free and independent. They represent the people and the wants of the people. In these two centuries newspapers have passed through their different epochs as creditably as laws, customs, and circumstances would permit.

First. The Colonial Press was one of neutrality. It obeyed the authorities. It was thrust into prison if it did not. It, therefore, published the news when it did not conflict with the opinion of the magistrate. It had no opinions of its own.

Second. The Revolutionary Press was one of action. It subordinated every thing to the one glorious idea. It was full of independence the independence of the country. But this class of papers could not last beyond that great struggle. Third. The Party Press was the natural consequence of the Revolution. The nation had to be organized. The transition from dependence to independence created parties. There is always a difference of opinion on the polity and policy of a government, but in the process of organizing the United States there were more crude than ripe opinions. There were plenty of conflicting views in 1783.

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