EARLY in the second winter of our residence in Richmond, the community
and the State were thrilled to painful interest by the most notable
duel recorded in the history of Virginia.
On the desk at my side lies a time-embrowned pamphlet, containing a
full report of the legal proceedings that succeeded the tragedy.
The leading Democratic paper of the State at that time was published by
Thomas Ritchie and his sons. The father, to whom was awarded the title
of “The Nestor of the Southern Press,” was a dignified gentleman who
had won the esteem of his fellow-citizens by a long life spent under
the limelight that beats more fiercely nowhere than upon a political
leader who is also an editor. In morals, stainless, in domestic and
social life, exemplary and beloved, the elder Ritchie enjoyed, in the
evening of his day, a reputation unblurred by the rancor of partisan
spite. The policy of his paper was fearless, but never unscrupulous. To
the Democratic party, the _Enquirer_ was at once banner and bulwark. Of
his elder son, William Foushee, I shall have something to say in later
chapters, and in a lighter vein. The second son, the father’s namesake,
was recognized as the moving spirit of the editorial columns.
John Hampden Pleasants was as strongly identified with the Whig party.
He was a man in the prime of life; like the Ritchies, descended from
an ancient and honorable Virginia family, noble in physique, and
courtly in bearing. He held a trenchant pen, and had been associated
from his youth up with the press. He had lately assumed the office of
editor-in-chief of a new paper, and brought it into notice by vigorous
and brilliant editorials that were the talk of both parties.
The opening gun of what was to be a sanguinary combat was fired by a
Washington correspondent of the _Enquirer_, under date of January 16,
1846:
“I am much mistaken if Mr. John Hampden Pleasants does not intend,
with his new paper, to out-Herod Herod—to take the lead of the
_Intelligencer_, if possible, in exciting Abolitionism by showing
Southern Whig sympathy in their movements; and thus, for the benefit
of Whiggery, to cheat them into the belief that the Southern patrons
of either of these gentlemen are ceasing to detest their incendiary
principles, and beginning, like the Whigs of the North, to coalesce
with them.
“They agitate to affect public opinion at the South, and Messrs. Gales
and Pleasants practically tell them to go on—that they are succeeding
to admiration.”
It was a poor shot—more like a boy’s play with a toy gun than a
marksman’s aim. But the bullet was poisoned by the reference to
Abolitionism. That was never ineffective. A friend in conservative
Philadelphia called Mr. Pleasants’ notice to the attack, which had up
to that time escaped his eyes:
“I have d——d this as a lie every time I had a chance, although I
believe that you, like myself—a Virginian and a slaveholder—regard
Slavery as an evil.”
Mr. Pleasants replied in terms that were singularly mild for a fighting
political editor.
I may say, here, that it is a gross blunder to compare the methods of
party-writers and orators of to-day with those of sixty years ago, to
the disadvantage of the former. They fought, then, without the gloves,
and as long as breath lasted.
“I confess my surprise, nay, my regret,” wrote Mr. Pleasants, “that
the present editors of the _Enquirer_ should, by publication, have
indorsed, so far as that sort of indorsement can go, and without
any explanatory remark, the misrepresentations of their Washington
correspondent. They ought, as public men, to know that I stand upon
exactly the same platform with their father in respect to this subject.
In 1832 we stood, for once, shoulder to shoulder, and since that time
we have both expressed, without intermission, the same abhorrence of
Northern Abolition, and the same determination, under no circumstances
which could be imagined, to submit, in the slightest degree, to its
dictation or intrusion....
“These were also the views—namely, that Slavery was an evil, and ought
to be got rid of, but at our own time, at our own motion, and in our
own way—of Washington, Jefferson, Henry, George Mason, the two Lees,
Madison, Monroe, Wirt, and all the early patriots, statesmen, and sages
of Virginia—WITHOUT EXCEPTION!
“Such are my opinions still, and if they constitute me an Abolitionist,
I can only say that I would go further to see some of the Abolition
leaders hanged than any man in Virginia, especially since their defeat
of Mr. Clay.
“In respect to Slavery, I take no pious, no fanatical view. I am
not opposed to it because I think it morally wrong, for I know the
multitude of slaves to be better off than the whites. I am against
it for the sake of the whites, my own race. I see young and powerful
commonwealths around us, with whom, while we carry the burden of
Slavery, we can never compete in power, and yet with whom we must
prepare to contend with equal arms, or consent to be their slaves and
vassals—we or our children. In all, I look but to the glory and liberty
of Virginia.”
The confession of State’s Rights would seem strong enough to soften the
heart of an original Secessionist—a being as yet unheard of—and the
respectful mention of the Nestor of the _Enquirer_ might have drawn
the fire of the filial editor. How far these failed of their effect is
obvious in the return shot:
“Although the language used by Mr. Pleasants may not be considered
directly offensive, yet we are unwilling to allow him or others to make
hypotheses in regard to our veracity. When we desire lectures on morals
we hope to be allowed to choose our own preceptor. We certainly shall
not apply to _him_!”
In Mr. Pleasants’ rejoinder he again reminds the young men that their
father and himself had been of the same mind on the Slavery question
for twenty years:
“The correspondent may have believed what he said, in ignorance of
the facts, and may therefore be guiltless of premeditated injustice,
but the editors who indorse his calumny by printing it without any
explanation, either did know better, in which case their candor
and liberality are compromised, or ought to have known better, in
which case they themselves may say what responsibility they incur by
printing an accusation utterly false in fact, and calculated to infuse
the greatest possible prejudice against him respecting whom it is
promulgated.”
The answer of the _Enquirer_ was a sneer throughout:
“We doubt whether he knows, himself, what principles he may be disposed
to advocate. His most intimate friends are sometimes puzzled to
understand his position.... If our correspondent ‘Macon’ wishes it, he
will, of course, have the use of our columns, but if he will take our
advice, he will let Mr. J. H. P. alone. To use an old proverb—‘Give the
gentleman rope enough, and he will hang himself!’”
In a long letter to a personal friend, but published in the _News and
Star_—what would be called now an “open letter”—Mr. Pleasants sums up
the points of the controversy, and calmly assumes the animus of the
attack to be personal enmity, a sort of vendetta feud, against which
argument is powerless:
“Justice from the Richmond _Enquirer_ I have long ago ceased to
expect. For more than twenty years I have lived under its ceaseless
misrepresentations and malevolent misconstructions. I had hoped, when
the former editor removed to Washington to receive the rich rewards of
his devotion to party, to live upon better terms with his successors,
and I have studied to cultivate better relations by respectful
consideration and undeviating courtesy; but I have found that other
passions besides the love of liberty are transmitted from sire to
son.... Calmly reviewing this piece of impertinence, I should be of
opinion that this assailant meditated fight, if I could think that a
young brave would seek, as an antagonist upon whom to flesh his maiden
sword, a man so much older than himself as I am, and with dependent
children.”
In allusion to a former altercation with “Il Secretario,” a “foe
illustrious for his virtues and talents, whom this aspirant after
knighthood” declined to encounter—the senior combatant concludes:
“Battle, then, being clearly not his object, I must suppose that he
meant no more than a little gasconade, and the recovery, at a cheap
rate, of a forfeited reputation for courage.”
With the, to modern taste, odd blending of personality with editorial
anonymity that characterized the professional duel throughout, “We, the
junior editor,” retorts:
“This letter affords strong corroborative evidence of our opinion
expressed in our article of the 27th ultimo, and from Mr. J. H.
Pleasants’ communication, evidently understood by him to the extent
we intended—namely, that facts within our knowledge proved him to be a
COWARD.
“He appeals to the confines of age and dependent children. Let it be!
We shall not disturb him.”
Ten years after the correspondence and the “affair” to which it was the
prelude, an eminently respectable citizen of Richmond told my husband
of a street-corner scene, date of February 21, 1846, the day on which
the last contribution to the war of words above recorded, appeared in
the _Enquirer_.
“One of the groups one saw on all sides, in heated discussion of the
newspaper controversy and the probable outcome, was collected about
Doctor ——, then, as now, pastor of the —— —— Church. He read out the
last sentences of Ritchie’s ultimatum with strong excitement. Then he
struck the paper with his finger, and said: ‘That settles the matter!
Pleasants must fight! There is no way out of it!’
“One of the party ventured a remonstrance to the effect that ‘Pleasants
was not a hot-headed boy to throw his life away. He might be made to
see reason, and the matter be smoothed over,’ etc.
“The minister broke in warmly, with—
“‘Impossible, sir, impossible! No honorable man could sit down quietly
under the insult! He must fight! There is no alternative!’
“Now,” continued the narrator, “I am not a church-member, and I had
no overstrained scruples against duelling at that time. But it sent a
queer shock through me when I heard a minister of the gospel of peace
take that ground. I felt that I could never go to hear him preach
again. And I never did! I heard he made a most feeling allusion to poor
Pleasants in a sermon preached shortly after his death. That didn’t
take the bad taste out of my mouth.”
How general was the sympathy with the incautiously expressed opinion of
the divine can hardly be appreciated now that the duello is reckoned
among the errors of a ruder age. The city was in a ferment for the
three days separating the 21st of February and the 25th, on which the
memorable encounter took place. If any friend essayed to reconcile the
offending and offended parties, we have no note of it.
The nearest approach to arbitration recorded in the story of the trial
is in the testimony of a man well-acquainted with both parties, who
was asked by one of Mr. Ritchie’s seconds to “go upon the ground as a
mutual friend.”
He testified on the stand: “I declined to do so. I asked him if the
matter could be adjusted. I asked if Mr. Ritchie would not be willing
to withdraw the epithet of ‘coward,’ in case Mr. Pleasants should come
upon the field. His reply was that Mr. Ritchie conscientiously believed
Mr. Pleasants to be a coward.”
The persuasions of other friends to whom he spoke, at an evening
party(!), of the affair to come off on the morrow, overcame the
scruples of the reluctant pacificator. He accompanied the surgeon
(the most eminent in the city, and one of the Faculty of Richmond
Medical College) to the ground next morning. The meeting was no secret,
except—presumably—to the authorities who might have prevented it. Going
up to Mr. Ritchie’s second, he made a final effort to avert the murder:
“I renewed the application I had made the evening before, telling him
that Mr. Pleasants was on the field, and asking him if he would not
withdraw the imputation of cowardice. He replied that he would keep his
friend there fifteen minutes, and no longer.”
The morning was raw, and the wind from the river was searching. There
had been rain during the night, and the ground was slippery with
sleet. The principals were equipped with other arms than the duelling
pistols.
“Mr. Pleasants put a revolver into the left pocket of his coat; then he
took two duelling pistols, one in his right, and the other in his left
hand.” At this point the witness interpolates: “I looked away about
that time.” (As well he might!) “The next weapon I saw him arm himself
with was his sword-cane under his left arm. He had a bowie-knife under
his vest.”
Of Mr. Ritchie it was testified:
“He had four pistols and also a revolver. He had the larger pistols in
his belt. I did not see his sword until after the rencontre. He had it
drawn when I came up to him. I supposed it was a bowie-knife.”
After a brief parley as to the disadvantages of a position first
selected, and the choice of a second, the word was given to advance and
fire. The principals were two hundred yards apart when the word was
given.
“Mr. Ritchie fired at the distance of twenty-five or thirty yards. Mr.
Pleasants fired his first pistol within about fifteen or twenty feet of
Mr. Ritchie.... At the third shot they were more rapid. Mr. Pleasants
advanced. At the third fire Mr. Ritchie’s form became obscure; Mr.
Pleasants still advancing, I saw him within six or seven feet of Mr.
Ritchie. It was then that Mr. Pleasants fired his second pistol.”
Thus the eminent surgeon, who had refused to come to the field as
the friend of both parties, but yielded when asked to serve in his
professional capacity. He remarks, parenthetically, here:
“I am now giving my recollection of events transpiring in a short time
and under great excitement.”
Perhaps, in spite of the great excitement, the training of his calling
held his senses steady, for his story of the fight is graphic and
succinct.
“I saw Mr. Pleasants level his second pistol; I heard the report; I
saw Mr. Ritchie stagger back, and I remarked to Mr. D.” (the man who
had been overpersuaded to witness the murder as a “mutual friend”),
“‘Ritchie is a dead man!’ I so inferred, because he had staggered back.
Then I heard several discharges without knowing who was firing. I saw
Mr. Pleasants striking at Mr. Ritchie with some weapon—whether a cane
or a pistol, I do not know. I also saw him make several thrusts with a
sword-cane. He gave several blows and two or three thrusts. I do not
know if the sword was sheathed. During this part of the affair I saw
Mr. Ritchie with his sword in his hand. I did not see him draw it. I
saw him in the attitude of one making a thrust, and did see him make
one or two thrusts at Mr. Pleasants. I remarked to Mr. D., ‘Let us go
up, or he’ll be stabbed!’ Two or three times the cry was made, ‘Stop,
Pleasants! Stop, Ritchie!’ We went up. Mr. Pleasants was tottering; Mr.
Ritchie was standing a few feet away, the point of his sword on the
ground; he was perfectly quiet. Mr. Archer took Mr. Pleasants’ arm and
laid him down. He was on the ground when I reached him. Before I got to
him I saw Mr. Ritchie leaving the ground. He walked a short distance,
and then ran.”
It transpired afterward that not one of Pleasants’s balls had struck
Ritchie. The presumption was that the elder man was wounded by his
opponent’s first fire, and fired wildly in consequence. He received six
balls in various parts of his body. But one of his bullets was found,
and that in the gable of a building out of the line of the firing. The
ball was embedded in the wood, nine feet above the ground. Mad with
pain and blinded by rage, the wounded man struck at the other’s face
when they were near together—some said, with the useless pistol, others
with his sword-cane or bowie-knife. When the fugitive reached the
carriage in waiting at the foot of the hill, his face was covered with
blood. His physician was in the carriage, and examined him at once. But
for the cut lip he was absolutely uninjured.
The sun was just rising when John Hampden Pleasants was lifted into the
carriage and borne back to the city. He knew himself to be mortally
wounded from the moment he fell.
This was on Wednesday, February 25th. Before the short winter day
neared its noon, the tale was known from one end of Richmond to the
other, and the whole population heaved with excitement. Business was
practically suspended while men talked over the terrible event; the
sidewalks were blocked by gossiping idlers.
Our school was called to order at nine o’clock daily. On this morning,
teachers and pupils were unfit for lessons. For Mr. Pleasants’ only
daughter was one of us, and a general favorite. His niece was likewise
a pupil, and the two had the same desk. Their vacant chairs made the
tragedy a personal grief to each of us. When Mrs. Nottingham bade us
get our Bibles ready for the morning service, not a girl there could
read without a break in her trembling voice, and when the dear old lady
made tender mention in her prayer of the “sorrowing,” and for “those
drawing near unto death,” our sobs drowned the fervent tones.
I recall, as one of the minor incidents of the dreadful day, that when
I went home in the afternoon, my grandmother insisted I should read the
newspaper correspondence aloud to her. She was a captious tyrant at
times, and, like many another deaf person, sensitive as to the extent
of her infirmity. She “was not so very deaf, except in damp weather,
or when she had a cold. If people would only speak distinctly, and not
mumble, she would have no trouble in understanding what was said.”
In this connection she often made flattering exception of myself as
the “one girl she knew who could speak English.” In this capacity
she summoned me to her side. She had the week’s papers on her lap. I
must pick out the articles “that were responsible for this scandalous
affair.”
Down I sat, close beside her “good ear,” and read, with precise
articulation and right emphasis, the editorials from which I have made
excerpts in this chapter.
In copying them to-day, the strait-laced New-Englander’s classification
of the awful event is in my mind and ear. Every detail of the duel and
the cold-blooded preparations therefor—the deadly weapons borne by,
and girt about the principals; the sang-froid of seconds and attendant
“friends”; the savagery of the combat; the tone of public sentiment
that made the foul fight within sight of the steeples of the city
practicable, although the leading men of the place were cognizant
of each step that led to the scene on the river-bank before sunrise
that gray morning—can we, in these later times we are wont to compare
regretfully with those, sum up the details and the catastrophe in
phrase more fit and true?
I resented it hotly, if silently, then. Even my father, who always
spoke of duelling as a “remnant of Middle Age barbarism,” shared in
the universal grief for his party leader laid low in the prime of his
useful manhood, and would suffer no censure of the challenge that had
made the fight inevitable.
“Pleasants is a brave man, and a proud. He could not endure to sit down
quietly under the aspersion of cowardice.”
Another terrible day of suspense dragged its slow length along. Hourly
bulletins from the chamber where the wounded man was making his last
struggle with Fate, alternately cheered and depressed us. He was
conscious and cheerful; he had exonerated his opponent from blame in
the matter of the duel:
“I thought I had run him through. It was providential that I did not.
Ritchie is a brave man. I shall not recover. You will be candid with
me, Doctor? It is all right.”
These were some of the sentences caught up by young and old, and
repeated with tearful pride in the dying hero. That was what they
called him; and when on Friday morning the flag on the capitol hung
at half-mast, the mourners who went about the streets were his
fellow-townsmen, who had no word of condemnation for him and the rash
act that ended his career.
On Saturday morning it began to snow. By Sunday afternoon the streets
were eighteen inches deep on the level, with the heaviest snow-fall
of the season. Mrs. Pleasants, the widow of a governor of Virginia,
and the mother of the slain editor, was a member of the Grace Street
Presbyterian Church, of which Reverend Doctor Stiles was then pastor.
The funeral services were held there on Sunday, at 3 o’clock P.M. By
two the sidewalks were blocked by a crowd of silent spectators, and,
half an hour later, every seat in the church, except those reserved for
the family and immediate friends of the deceased, was filled. After
these had taken their places, there was not standing-room in aisles or
galleries. The sermon was an eloquent tribute to the private virtues
and the public services of the deceased. One memorable extract is
inscribed upon the monument erected by admirers and friends over his
grave in Shockoe Hill Cemetery:
With a Genius above talent, a Courage
above Heroism
None ever forgot the scene who saw the long line of funeral carriages
winding, like a black stream, through streets where the snow came up to
the axles, under the low-hanging sky that stooped heavily and gloomed
into leaden gray by the time the cortége reached the cemetery. And all
the afternoon the brooding air throbbed with the tolling bells.
We said and believed that Richmond had never known so sad a day since
she went into mourning for the threescore victims of the burning of the
theatre in 1811.
The trial of Thomas Ritchie for murder in the first, and of the seconds
as “principals in the second degree,” followed the duel with swiftness
amazing to the reader of criminal cases in our age. On March 31, 1846,
four of the ablest lawyers in Virginia appeared in court to defend the
prisoner.
The old brochure which records the proceedings is curious and deeply
interesting reading; in nothing more remarkable than in the defence of
what was admitted to be “an unhappy custom” and directly opposed to the
laws of the country.
“_The letter of the law is made to yield to the spirit of the times_”
is an italicized sentence in the principal speech of the defence. The
same speaker dwelt long and earnestly upon precedents that palliated,
excused, and warranted the time-honored (although “unhappy”) practice.
Not less than fifteen instances of the supremacy of the higher law of
the “spirit of the times” were drawn from English history.
“In not one of which had there been any prosecution.
“And now, gentlemen of the jury, does any one suppose that duelling
can be suppressed, or capitally punished, when the first men in the
kingdom—such men as Pitt and Fox, and Castlereagh and Canning and
Grattan, and Nelson and Wellington, lend the high sanction of their
names, and feel themselves justified and compelled to peril their lives
upon a point of honor? And I would ask my friend, the Commonwealth’s
Attorney, if such men as these constitute the ‘swordsmen of England,’
and were alone worthy of the times of Tamerlane and Bajazet?...
“Was Andrew Jackson regarded as a ‘swordsman’ and duellist because
he fought, not one, but three duels, and once shed the blood of a
fellow-man in single combat? He was twice elected to the first office
in the world, and died a Christian.... How many of Henry Clay’s
numerous friends in Virginia, and, especially, the religious portion of
them (including ministers of the Gospel), refused to vote for him as
President of the United States because he had fought two duels?...
“The coroner’s inquest held on the body of General Hamilton brought in
a verdict of wilful murder against Aaron Burr, Vice-President of the
United States.
“Colonel Burr afterward took his seat in the Senate of the United
States as Vice-President; his second, afterward, became a judge; and
the second of General Hamilton—a most amiable and accomplished man—I
served with in Congress, some years ago....
“I call upon you, then, gentlemen, by every motive that can bind you to
a discharge of your duty, to do justice to my unfortunate young friend.
Bind up the wounds of his broken-hearted parents; carry joy and peace
and consolation to his numerous family and friends; wash out the stain
that has been attempted upon his character and reputation, and restore
him to his country—as, in truth, he is—pure and unspotted.”
The address of the Commonwealth’s Attorney is comparatively brief
and emphatically half-hearted. We are entirely prepared for the
announcement in smaller type at the foot of the last page:
“The argument on both sides” (!) “having been concluded, the jury took
the case, and, without leaving the box, returned a verdict of ‘Not
guilty!’
“The verdict was received by the large auditory with loud
manifestations of applause. Order was promptly commanded by the
officers of the court.
“Mr. Ritchie then left the court-house, accompanied by the greater
portion of the spectators, who seemed eager to shake hands with him and
to congratulate him upon his honorable acquittal.”