Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1883-07-06

VA.
|AY MORNING.. JULY 6. 1888.

l4X<AN
IA UNTON. VA.
Az MORNING, JULY 6. 1888.
U TELLING IN VIRGINIA.
hard to decide which has been the
disgusting incident attending the
which we publish the particulars
,ther column-the fippant and I'M
illusions by some of the American
10 it, or the morbid anxiety for
ending which has been exhibited
many in our own State. There
be, in the opinion of many reasonabl
ast men, no excuse for deadly combat
settlement of public or private dis
ment but it is far from creditable to
letter feelings of any man to make
cts Of two honest and brave gentle
who are willing to and do stake their
on the conviction that they are right,
1ject of levity. We by no means be-
that duelling is to be taken as test
courage to the extent of inferring
man who wont fight in that
does not possess the highest
fscter of courage. There lives in
ginia now a Christian gentleman
has frowned down duelling and re-
ed challenges without hesitation and
is yet man Of unquestioned cour-
on all occasions, and who on one occa
in, in the most fatal fight that ever &C.
rred ii Virginia developed it to such an
tent that since that no man has doubted
There are plenty of men like him in the
orld. But notwithstanding this, public
oinioa in this State has always leaned to-
ards making hero of the duelist and, by
APPLICATION, coward of a man who hav-
g put himself in position to be chal'
nged should refuse on the plea of nom
lief IN that mode. This matter can be
Try easily settled by the public itself
ithout single law on the statute book.
let that public crowd around and congra-
Hate the man who refuses to fight a duel
|, it does the man who comes out alive
rom one, and the dimin ution Of the
humber of combats will soon be made ap-
parent. Or ever let it treat the man who
even goes to the field, with the same quasi
ostracisn that it, so inexplicably, does that
man who kills his antagonist on the
|seld. What an inscrutable. unfathomable
ublie it is The man who, as he sincere
II believes, in indicating his own honor.
gounds his antagonist in duel but
81 ~ Il; ic and
crowned with laurels; let the bullet vary
an eighth of an inch and be fatal and the
IMAM who fired it is afterward treated by
Ibis fellow-men with an impalpable sort OF
avoidance to the day of his own death.
Now if the public proposes to have no
share in the fatal results of the field OF
honor let it make known in spirit and
in truth by its own acts that the
field of honor is out of fashion. The
sight of peaceable citizens crowding
around newspaper bulletins elated at
The fact chat ''Our man" showed
great courage, or that ''our man" was the
BEST shot and struck his antagonist, is not
evidence that public opinion is against
.our man. having gone to the field. The
|sight Of men who profess to have found
The great secret of higher and better life,
red hot in pursuit of news from the field
bnd boiling over with citation at the sue
ess of s'our man., and then joining in
ant about the crime of duelling is not in
isputable evidence that even the best of
e people are opposed to duelling ; or
least are not at times SO decidedly mis-
llaneous in their frames of mind that
ey run the risk of being mistaken for
) friends.
In our opinion public sentiment in Vir-
MIA is undergoing gradual though slow
hange in regard to duelling. One indi
cation is that a peace loving and peace
uracticlng man will be respectfully and
It tentively heard in the expression of any
opinions or convictions be may have in
opposition to duelling, and his final con-
cAusion that he would not countenance it
by participating in one, is heartily endorsed
by his hearers. as to himself. Such man
can and does make and is making the
change which is going on in the public
opinion. This change is more marked in
times of peace than in times Of politics.
which in this State of late have almost
come to mean war. Most of the hostile
meetings grow out of political excitement
and partizanry: for it is thing OF the
rarest occurrence to find business men
settling difficulties on the field. in the
last ten years we can recellect OF but one
such attempt in the State. But in times
of political excitement the masses of the
people forget their better judgment and
seem fairly to revel in personalities and
demand them if they are not furni shed.
Even men of education and rehnemen t..
carried away by the whirlwind, find, at
such times palatable food in the crudest
matter if it only contains the spice of per-
sonality. Il is as general thing under
such periodical pressures as these that
most of the hostile meetings occur in this
Commonwealth, and it will only be when
the public men and the press have the in
dependence to resist these pressures. that
they will diminish the number of the Oc-
currences. There is hardly man in the
State that would not TO- day be in mourn
ing had the young and gallant Beirne fallen
at Waynesboro the other morning. and
there is hardly man in Virginia who does
not to-day give his sympathy to the equal
" brave gentleman who is stretched on
bed of suffering attended by wife whose
only relief from the intense mental strain
of the eight days which ended Saturday,
is te be found in taking up another burden
OF anxiety at her husbands bedside.
If this mourning which has been aver
ted by the variation of scarcely an inch in
a bullet, and this sympathy which exists