Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/464

 454 ^- ^^- Lcverniore of pecuniary resources enabled Webb to command efficient service and thus the Courier acquired a dignity and importance to which the mercurial, impulsive temperament of the proprietor and senior editor was always the principal drawback. Col. Webb's West Point education did not tend to curb his ebullient spirits or to diminish his punctilious sensitiveness concerning his honor. The sword, the pistol, the walking-cane and the fist were all handier if not mightier weapons than the pen to him. Several times he as- saulted the proprietor of the Herald in the street. More than once he journeyed post-haste to Washington to pull the nose or let the blood of some magnate who had breathed too carelessly upon the name of Webb. Only the interposition of Governor Seward's pardon in 1842 saved Webb from serving two years in the state's prison for fighting a duel on a Sunday with Hon. Thomas F. Mar- shall of Kentucky. The elaborate bombast and grandiloquence with which Webb described these encounters are among the most amusing reminiscences of New York journalism.' If Col. Webb's excitable energy could have been legitimately and sensibly directed in the field of his ostensible profession, he might have founded a great newspaper. Even as it was, a very consider- able stimulus in newspaper enterprise was derived from him. The Courier and Enquirer Qniere.d into lively competition with the Journal of Commerce for the first possession of news from Europe. From 1830 to 1834 these papers kept fast-sailing schooners and clipper ships off Sandy Hook to intercept incoming steamers and to carry up the harbor if possible some "exclusive" news. The Courier and the Journal of Coinuicrce during the years named spent from $15,000 to |20,000 a year on their news-schooners. Their rivalries occasionally contributed to the gayety of the town. Once when the clipper Ajax was about due from Europe, the Courier printed a postscript to the effect that the Ajax had come and brought news, a summary of which followed. A few copies were printed with this postscript and left at doors near the office of the' Journal of Commerce. Watchers saw when one was "borrowed" and the others were taken up and destroyed. The Courier's reg- ular edition was then printed without the postscript. The Journal, 1 Witness the laborious elegance of his account of the famous assault upon Duff Green, editor of the Washington Telfgraph : " After looking at him in silence for some seconds, I placed under my arm the walking-cane which I used, and leaned against the south jamb of the door, addressing him in the follo%ving terms which are still fresh in ray recollection : ' You poor contemptible, cowardly puppy, do you not feel that you are a coward and that every drop of blood that courses through your veins is of the same kind of hue as your complexion? Contemptible and degraded as you are," etc., etc, ad libitujii.