As South Carolina struggled to overcome the destruction caused during and after the Civil War and to regain law and order, Francis W. Dawson traded his Confederate sword for a pen at the News and Courier in Charleston, S.C., where he began a new battle against the state’s most debilitating sins: whiskey, gambling, dueling, lynching and hip-pocket justice. Dawson, who once wrote that he "could wait a century patiently to have one more blow at them (Yankees) before I die," did not move seamlessly into his new role as the state’s champion of law and order. Described as a man who still "had the smell of battle about him," Dawson served as a "best friend" for Henry Rivers Pollard, editor and publisher of The (Richmond, Va.) Examiner, in various duels and fistfights and had challenged others to duels before moving to Charleston, S.C., in 1866.
This paper is a study of the practice of dueling in South Carolina, particularly as it affected editors in the 19th Century, and Dawson’s anti-dueling editorial campaign which culminated with the passage by the General Assembly of a tough anti-dueling law in 1880. As a result, murder charges were brought against a duelist for only the second time in South Carolina’s history. Even though the duelist was found not guilty, Dawson’s efforts moved Pope Leo XIII to confer knighthood on the Charleston editor for his anti-dueling campaign. Dawson is believed to be the only newspaper editor ever so honored. The honor was ironic considering the tragic and bizarre circumstances in 1889 that led to the murder of the unarmed Dawson by a doctor, who was found not guilty by reason of self-defense. This is a discussion of the ultimate and ironic final effect of Dawson’s editorials when the mob who gathered to lynch his killer voluntarily disbanded after they were reminded of Dawson’s anti-lynching editorials.
Dr. Kittrell Rushing or Dr. David Sachsman 311 Frist Hall Communication Department The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Chattanooga, Tennessee 37403-2598 http://www.utc.edu/commdept/conference/
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