May 14, 1969

Journalism Once A Dangerous Business

Another year has gone by without me getting horse-whipped — though on two occasions I was threatened with that or some other physical violence approximating it.

A few years ago some disgruntled reader tossed a brick through my office window which cost me $230 in damages. Looking back on it, however, it was money well spent. It brought me a nomination for the Lovejoy Journalism Award — the Pulitzer prize of weekly newspapering. I had been writing a series of editorials about a bitter labor strike and it appeared that a partisan reader disagreed with my views.

I didn't win the award that year, the honor going to an editor in Texas badly beaten up by a John Birch member after a series of editorials condemning the Society. It was just my usual bad luck not to have been in my office the time the brick came sailing in. If I could have been conked out by the missile I could have won the Lovejoy award hands down. Such is the fickleness of fate.

Newspapering has tamed down a good deal in my day, but fighting, whipping and shooting was a regular part of journalism in past years.

Samuel Clemens, alias Mark Twain, made the perils of journalism the subject of a delightful spoof about a mythical Tennessee paper called the "Morning Glory and Johnson County War-Whoop." Included among the weapons used by, and on, the War-Whoop's subscribers were revolvers, clubs, cowhide whips and hand grenades.

Clemens reported that when the frock-coated cigar-puffing editor left the office for a short while he told Sam to expect several complaining readers: "Jones will be here at three o'clock, cowhide him. Gillespie will call earlier, perhaps, throw him out the window. Ferguson will be along about four, kill him. That is all for today, I believe."

That was all for Mark Twain, too. After the smoke of battle had cleared, he "took an apartment at the hospital." Begging French leave, he said, "I came South for my health, I will go back on the same errand, and suddenly. Tennessean journalism is too stirring for me."

Twain's account was exaggerated, but not much. The vicissitudes of old-time editors was ably chronicled a few years ago by Gabriel M. Gelb, a former Louisiana newspaper man. His history of the Vicksburg, Mississippi, "Sentinel" records the deaths of five editors in 10 years for their outspoken views.

"For a time, shooting editors seemed to be the favorite amusement of the Mississippians," declared one of its editors, Lambert A. Wilmer during the bloody decade beginning in 1836.

The editor who started the Sentinel on its spectacular career was a former Philadelphia doctor, James Hagen. His stories about cotton speculation stirred up impromptu duels between the paper's editors and cotton brokers.

Dr. Hagen was challenged to his first duel in 1838. He proved that his steady surgeon's hands were well suited to pistoling at 25 paces when he shot his first broker, Arthur Seldikopy, right through the heart.

Soon Hagen gave up the practice of carrying arms and resorted to his own brand of jujitsu when attacked. This saved many lives until 1843 when Hagen was shot dead one morning while hurrying to work. The killer was Daniel W. Adams, who dispatched the editor because of an article which he said reflected discredit on his father, a judge.

The year before, another Sentinel writer, James Fall, had fought an inconclusive duel with a bank president. Neither was killed — to the regret of a crowd of onlookers.

During the spring of 1844, Col. Thomas Robins, a Sentinel columnist, was attacked for a statement on real estate. He shot challenger James M. Downs, but not fatally.

Two days later, Vicksburg again rang out with pistol shots when amiable Captain Walter Hickey, another Sentinel editor, stopped to greet Dr. Henry Macklin, Down's second at the duel earlier. The doctor struck Hickey, asserting that his friend had been wronged. After a few blows both men resorted to revolvers and Macklin was killed by a bullet in his stomach.

These furious scrapes were not the end of the bloody record sported by the Sentinel. A few years after the Civil War, the paper carried a short history of its recent personnel and included these bits of news:

"Dr. J. S. Fall, an assistant, had a number of fights in one of which he was badly wounded. James Ryan, an editor, was killed by R. E. Hammett of the Whigs, and next came Walter Hickey, who had several rows and was repeatedly wounded; he was soon after himself killed in Texas. John Lavis, an editor, was imprisoned for the violence of his articles. Mr. Jenkins, his successor, was killed in the street by H. A. Crabbe; Crabbe was afterwards murdered in Sonora. F. C. Jones succeeded Jenkins but soon drowned himself."

Duels resulting from newspaper articles were nothing new to the American scene although they reached their height during the heyday of the party papers in the early 1800's when no holds were barred in name calling.

Dr. Frank L. Mott, newspaper history authority, points out that the most famous duel in American history was the direct result of a press statement.

When Alexander Hamilton, first Secretary of the Treasury, helped defeat Aaron Burr's bid for the governorship of New York, he made some scathing comments about Burr's political aims. The remarks were printed in the Albany "Register" where Burr saw them and immediately challenged the elderly Hamilton to a duel.

The two prominent men met across the Hudson River from New York City at Weehawken, New Jersey. There Burr ended the life of Hamilton, the financial wizard of the young American republic.

Burr's alleged conspiracy sometime' later to separate the western states from. the Union was exposed by Joseph M. Street, editor of the "Western World" at Frankfort, Ky. Street was challenged to many duels by irate Kentuckians because of the Burr articles. He fought two duels and escaped an assassin's bullet to continue the crusade which helped force two grand jury investigations and a trial of Burr for treason.

Author: Lindsey Williams