Last month’s column dealt with nineteenth century political duels in Louisiana, but politics was not the only profession that often became violent. Newspaper editors frequently found themselves the victim of their readers’ wrath.
An incident involving Daniel Weisger Adams comes to mind. “Dan” Adams was born in Frankfurt, Kentucky, on May 1, 1821, but moved with his family to Natchez, Mississippi, as a child. The Adams family was well known in Mississippi. Dan’s father, George, was active in Democratic Party politics, and President Andrew Jackson appointed him a federal judge.
During a contentious investigation of the state treasurer in 1843, Dr. James Hagan, editor of the Vicksburg Sentinel, published a piece that called into question the judge’s own conduct. On the afternoon of June 7, twenty-two-year-old Dan took it upon himself to defend his father’s honor and confronted Hagan near the latter’s boarding house. A scuffle ensued in which Adams pulled out a pistol and fatally shot Hagan in the head.
Dr. Hagan was a respected journalist, but also a noted hothead who had already fought a duel with another newspaper editor and pulled a pistol on fellow passengers on a train when they objected to his opening a window. His death stirred partisan passions, and conflicting accounts of the shooting quickly filled the newspapers.
A reporter for the New Orleans Courier claimed Adams walked up behind Hagan and hit him with his cane without provocation. The two men then grappled and fell to the ground, with Hagan on top. According to the reporter, “Adams drew a pistol from his pocket while down, and placed it at the back of Hagan’s head; the ball, entering the spine, caused instant death. Dr. Hagan was unarmed.”
The Washington Globe, however, told a different tale. It claimed Adams walked up to Hagan and “asked of him nothing but the author’s name, or a retraction of the foul charge against his father. Instead of answering the demand, Dr. Hagan flew at him, seized him, and threw him.” Adams shot Hagan only after the editor had wrestled him to the ground and began fighting.
The Southron, a Jackson, Mississippi, publication, supported this self-defense claim. It reported that Hagan charged Adams when Adams demanded to know the editorial’s author. Adams swung his cane, but Hagan deflected the blow with his arm, grabbed Adams around the waist, and pulled him to the ground. When Hagan mounted Adams and started choking him, Adams pulled his pistol and fired.
Despite the conflicting accounts of the fight, authorities charged Adams with murder, but the jury accepted the claim of self-defense and acquitted him. Adams subsequently moved to New Orleans to practice law and became colonel of the 1st Louisiana Infantry when the Civil War began. He rose to the rank of brigadier general and was wounded three times while fighting in some of the war’s bloodiest battles.
The Adams-Hagan affair is a reminder of just how dangerous antebellum journalism could be. Numerous newspapermen were involved in similar incidents, but the Vicksburg Sentinel’s staff seems to have been a particularly quarrelsome lot. Just a year earlier, Hagan’s predecessor fought a duel with a banker, but neither was hurt. The man who replaced Hagan engaged in fisticuffs with a rival before both men pulled pistols, and the editor mortally wounded his opponent. Afterward, a Sentinel employee was wounded in a brawl, and then another editor was killed in a duel with a rival Vicksburg newspaperman. That editor’s replacement suffered several wounds in various fights before being killed in Texas. His successor was jailed because of some articles he wrote, and his replacement was killed in another street brawl. The Sentinel dutifully replaced the last fallen editor, only to have him commit suicide by drowning.
Coincidently, Adams’ older brother, William Wirt Adams, also served as a Confederate general and had his own deadly brawl with a journalist. In 1888, Wirt was walking down a street in Jackson, Mississippi, when he saw John H. Martin, the editor of The New Mississippian.
Martin had written some articles that were critical of the former general, and Adams angrily yelled, “You damn rascal, I have stood enough of you.” Martin responded, “If you don’t like it. . . .” and the two men drew their pistols and fired nine shots at short range while circling a giant chinaberry tree.
The shootout ended when both Adams and Martin were mortally wounded. Wirt Adams was buried in the Greenwood Cemetery, and it is believed that his brother Dan lies next to him in an unmarked grave.
Dr. Terry L. Jones is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. For an autographed copy of “Louisiana Pastimes,” a collection of the author’s stories, send $25 to Terry L. Jones, P.O Box 1581, West Monroe, LA 71294.
