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.Without the arbitration, insulted parties would resort to ritual vio-lence first, to avoid early prosecution by authorities, instead of as a lastresort as was traditionally suggested by the code of honor.On May 2,1888, the New York Times reported out of Jackson, Mississippi, that thelocal postmaster, General Wirt Adams, was involved in a duel with JohnH.Martin, editor of the New Mississippian.However, what the Timesdescribed was not a formal, arranged fight between two gentlemen:About 2:30 o clock this afternoon Gen.Wirt Adams, in company with Mr.Ned Farish, were passing north on President-street.They had reached andcrossed Amite street, when Mr.Martin was seen approaching from thenorth.The parties met very near the residence of Judge Brame, and therean encounter took place.Gen.Adams was going north and Mr.Martinsouth.Mr.Farish, who was walking with Gen.Adams, says that as theyapproached each other Gen.Adams accosted Martin, saying:  You d nrascal, I have stood enough from you! Martin replied:  If you don t likeit, and simultaneously with the remark drawing a pistol, he fired and gotbehind a large china tree on the outer edge of the pavement, half a foot indiameter.Gen.Adams also fired about the same time: but Farish, thoughnot certain, thinks that Martin shot first.75Both men died in a conflict that resembled more of a rencounter, or whatWild West mythology might describe as a showdown, than actual formalcombat under the Code Duello.76Rencounters, such as the Adams-Martin affair, were often triggeredSeven Decline of Dueling as a Resolution for Defamation 151by editorial remarks of the same sort that precipitated dueling.Becauseof its connection with honor, rencounters in cases of defamation becamesynonymous with dueling in some courts and newspapers.In events sim-ilar to the Adams-Martin affair, Jackson, Mississippi, editor RoderickGambrell was fatally shot on May 6, 1887, by Colonel Jones Hamilton afterrepeatedly assailing the colonel s personal character in his publication,Sword and Shield.77 Hamilton was arrested for Gambrell s death but waseventually acquitted.78So, it would seem that in incidences of defamation, the formality ofdueling became degraded in terminology and substance as the nineteenthcentury came to a close.A January 22, 1900, letter to the editor by EzraNat.Hill in the Washington Post illustrated the confusion between ren-counters and duels that existed at the time:Editor Post: Permit me to criticize a head-line in The Post of the 17th.It isthis:  Six Shot in Feud Duel. Webster [dictionary] defines a duel as  pre-meditated conflict between two persons, for the purpose of deciding someprivate difference or quarrel. The Encyclopedia [sic] Britannica says a duelis  A prearranged combat with deadly weapons between two private per-sons to settle some private quarrel. Webster, after giving the definitionquoted above, says:  a sudden fight, not premeditated, is called a ren-counter. 79Hill suggested that these definitions were not broad enough.He wrotethat the  combat between David and Goliath, often spoken of by thosewho do not know what a duel is, as a duel, was in no sense a duel. 80 Hewrote that even though Goliath had a standing challenge open to every-one in the Hebrew camp, the inequality of the weapons took this combatout of the class of duels.81The inequality that existed in rencounters between combatants, whichincluded journalists, in addition to the harm it posed to innocentbystanders, may have been the initial push that finally classified mortalcombat in honor disputes as murder.The Los Angeles Times on Septem-ber 15, 1894, reported that J.L.Goodman, editor of the People s Voice, andH.G.Armstrong, editor of the Star, were involved in a rencounter coinedas a  street duel. Both men died, including an innocent bystander, in thishonor dispute.82 Similarly, under the headline,  Fatal Duel in Waco, theWashington Post reported on April 2, 1898, that W.C.Brann, editor of theInconoclast, was involved in an honor dispute with Captain M.T.Davis.The Post reported the  combatants met just at 6 o clock this afternoon onSouth Fourth street, in front of the Cotton Belt ticket office, and afterexchanging a few words both began emptying their revolvers into each152 Pistols, Politics and the Pressother s body. 83 Both men were likely to die, according to the same report.Although termed a duel, this could be more accurately described as a ren-counter.There are other examples in major American newspapers that con-fused the terminology of dueling with rencounter in the late nineteenthcentury.On October 10, 1899, the Chicago Daily Tribune reported thatDominick O Malley, proprietor of the Evening Item, and C.HarrisonParker, editor of the Delta, fought a duel with each other in New Orleans.According to the Tribune:The trouble originated over a cartoon in the Item representing ColonelParker as a little dog being led by a string by Governor Foster and labeled, Me Too.About 3 o clock this afternoon O Malley came out of his office, accom-panied by Parson Davies, and had walked only a few yards when Parker,who was across the street, started towards him.Both drew revolvers andfiring, each continuing until his pistol was empty.84Both men, it was reported, were seriously wounded in the encounter.Post-Civil War dueling in cases of defamation differed from the ante-bellum years because it was no longer an unchecked part of Southernculture.85 But long after dueling was in steady decline, the language ofthe code of honor persisted in newspapers and publications of the Southwell into the late nineteenth century.When newspapers, such as the Wash-ington Post on August 24, 1897, tried to point out that the Americanpress were mistaken when they classed together street fights, familyfeuds and vendettas under the term dueling, they were accused of tryingto re-establish dueling as an institution.86 But the Post pointed out thateven though the Code Duello was probably dead in America forever, itsdeterioration and demise did nothing to curb the homicide rate in Amer-ica.The paper also suggested that with the decline of the code, the car-rying of concealed weapons became more prevalent, as did an increase inslanderous stories.87 If this was true, then anti-dueling laws in the latterhalf of the nineteenth century may have hurt journalism more than ithelped, at least in the interim.It may not have been detrimental to North-ern newspaper editors and reporters, but in Southern cities such as Rich-mond and New Orleans, where honor rituals persisted, dueling laws tookaway a valuable part of the editor s defense: the arbitration before the hos-tile encounter.Sanders Garland, a Washington Post correspondent, wrotein 1897:Those who have practical knowledge and experience of the code are per-fectly aware that its chief object is to prevent bloodshed.Those who are inSeven Decline of Dueling as a Resolution for Defamation 153a position to tell the truth about it will indorse [sic] our statement that itsoperation has nearly always been to realize that object.The code of honoris, in effect, a system of arbitration, and should its history ever be writtenby a person at once competent and honest, the world will admit that it hasforbidden a dozen encounters for every one it authorized.88And so the nineteenth century came to a close, with American journal-ism still struggling to untangle itself from ritual violence and the code ofhonor [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]