Riordan did not remain long with the _Examiner_ after I left it,
and had been at work in Washington. Occasionally he wrote to me,
and assured me that he had not given up the newspaper project for
Charleston, and that he would put a “peg in” in that direction
whenever he had an opportunity. With this in view, he accepted a
position offered him on the Charleston _Courier_, and went back to
Charleston. In October, Colonel R. Barnwell Rhett was preparing
to resume the publication of the _Mercury_, and asked Riordan to
take his old place on that paper. Riordan declined to do this, and
advised Colonel Rhett to take me if I would come. It was only a
day or two after I had finished my work with the National Express
Company that I received a letter from Riordan, telling me what
he had done; and on the heels of his letter came a telegram from
Colonel Rhett, offering me an engagement on the _Mercury_ and
asking me to come to Charleston immediately. There was nothing to
require me to remain in Richmond, so I accepted Colonel Rhett’s
offer, and after a round of leave-taking started for Charleston,
where I arrived on November 10th, 1866.
My first visit was to Riordan, whom I found in the _Courier_ office
in East Bay Street. The next day I went to work in the _Mercury_
office, and remained on that paper until Riordan and I bought
one-third of the Charleston _News_ in the autumn of 1867. On May
1, 1867, I was married to Miss Virginia Fourgeaud, a faithful and
loving wife. Her health unhappily failed fast, and she died in
December, 1872.
In the waning fortunes of the Charleston _News_ was the opportunity
that we had long desired of becoming managers of a newspaper of
our own; an object which Riordan had kept unflaggingly in view from
the moment that he had first talked the project over with me in the
_Examiner_ office at Richmond. It was his foresight, of course, in
seizing the opportunity to bring me to Charleston, that put us both
in the position to take the chance which was presented to us by the
decline of the Charleston _News_. The paper had been exceedingly
successful under extravagant and careless management, and we could
not, of course, expect to obtain control of it until those who
were managing it in Charleston were willing to give it up. Captain
James F. McMillan and Mr. R. S. Cathcart had been controlling the
paper. Cathcart withdrew, and the condition of the paper grew
worse. It was heavily in debt, and the proprietors of the _Courier_
and _Mercury_ looked cheerfully forward to the time when it should
quietly expire. We found that the real owner of the property was
Mr. Benjamin Wood, of New York, and Riordan went on to New York to
open negotiations with him. This ended in Mr. Wood buying out Mr.
McMillan, and in our purchasing one-third of the property at the
rate of $18,000 for the whole. The new concern, of which Benjamin
Wood was a member, as the representative of Henry Evans, a person
in his employment, assumed all the liabilities of the old concern.
Riordan and I, therefore, found ourselves owners of one-third of
a newspaper which had a _bona fide_ circulation of twenty-five
hundred, or three thousand, copies daily, with debts amounting to
nearly $20,000, and property consisting of two very old presses,
a broken down engine, and a suit of badly worn type. But we were
very cheerful about it, and our confident expectation was that, in
about five years, we should be able to retire from newspaper work,
in part, and live at our ease on the property we had accumulated.
It did not turn out exactly in that way; but, as all the subsequent
operations of the concern are set forth in general terms in the
record of the litigation in which we were involved by Mr. Wood’s
rascality, it is not necessary to describe them here. I should,
however, record the fact, that the money with which I paid for my
share of the paper was borrowed from Mr. W. J. Magrath. He advised
me strongly against embarking in the venture, but, when I insisted
upon doing so, he gave me every assistance in his power.
Some day, perhaps, I may undertake to write the inside history of
my connection with the Charleston _News_, and THE NEWS AND COURIER,
and give my experiences in South Carolina politics from 1867 down
to the present time. But I cannot do it now; and, indeed, I am too
near to the events, and to the persons I should describe, to write
as candidly as would be necessary to bring out the whole truth, and
make it entirely clear. It would be, I fancy--if I had the time
to refresh my memory, by looking over the newspapers for the last
fifteen years--a narrative, in its way, quite as interesting, to my
friends at least, as the incidents of Confederate service which I
have attempted to portray.