Bedford Inquirer

POTTER AND PRYOR.

"The sequel will demonstrate," said Roger A. Pryor, of Virginia. "Let it demonstrate," said John F. Potter, of Wisconsin. "It has demonstrated," responds everybody everywhere.

The person who will needlessly provoke a controversy, and taunt his adversary with a lack of courage, and then on the flimsiest pretense, peremptorily invite him to mortal combat, and when his challenge is accepted, refuse to fight on the allegation that the weapons selected are unusual, they affording to each party an equal advantage, must, by the general judgement of men, be written down a braggart and a coward.

To go back a little. Roger A. Pryor brought into the House of Representatives a reputation for rare skill in the duello. His friends and backers also pretended that he was a man of extraordinary steadiness of nerve, and of the most unquestionable courage. Early in the session, he gave indications that he was eager to enhance this reputation, and was ready to put his nerve and courage to the trial, on all occasions, suitable and unsuitable. It was evident from the outset of the struggle for the Speakership that the more turbulent and vituperative class of Southern members regarded Pryor as their organ and leader. He was thrust forward in every exigency to utter the sharp sayings, to give the lie, and deal out the general abuse toward the Opposition side of the chamber. In these occasions he openly or covertly alluded to the dueling code, sometimes giving his opponents to understand, in the most patronizing style, that he had no intention of invoking its aid, in that particular instance, in his own behalf; and then, again informing his antagonists, in the haughtiest manner, that if they felt aggrieved they had their remedy under the code.

Following this general line of policy, and being careful always to pick his quarrels with those who eschewed the code, his first encounter was with Mr. Nelson, a quiet, elderly member from Tennessee. He came out of this contest crestfallen, and with the laugh of the House ringing pitilessly in his ears. He afterward made a most abusive assault upon Mr. Sherman, using toward him, and at a time when that gentleman, from the delicacy of his position as a candidate for the chair, could not reply, language that outraged all the canons of parliamentary law and good breeding. His next attack was upon Mr. Hickman, whom he called, in substance, a liar; and, when mildly rebuked for it by his senior colleague, Mr. Millson, repeated the insult with a menace, and referred Hickman for redress to the code. Not long after, he set all the rules of social decency at defiance by an assault, alike vulgar and brutal, on the floor of the House, upon the wife of the editor of one of our city contemporaries. The violent blows he received in return for this scandalous proceeding kept him rather quiet for a while. But, panting for notoriety, he made his recent attack upon Mr. Lovejoy, which led, by a plain path, to his affair with Mr. Potter.

The principles of this journal, in regard to the code recognized among duelists are well understood, and need not now be repeated. We leave those principles to vindicate themselves, while we contemplate, from its own exceptional stand-point, the peculiar case of Mr. Potter.

Doubtless his prompt acceptance of Mr. Pryor's peremptory challenge will be condemned by many persons whose good opinion he would not willingly forfeit. All such persons should know that Mr. Potter, so far from being a duelist, sincerely regards the code as a relic of barbarism. But, so baseless were the grounds, even within the canons of the code, upon which Pryor challenged him to combat, that he and his friends believed that a deliberate purpose was formed to take his life, and that, therefore, it was a mere question whether he would fight according to prescribed rules, or, declining to do so, would subject himself to the hazards of a street assault, at an unguarded moment, after the manner of Edmundson's attack upon Hickman. Reasons, not patent to all, but known to him, induced Potter to believe that, if he declined the duello, he would be liable to assassination; and, therefore, he accepted Pryor's challenge.

But Mr. Potter was actuated by motives higher and broader than any mere personal considerations. We doubt whether a braver man lives. He has that calm, self-reliant courage that always measures its words and deeds, that never acts upon unreasoning impulse, that moves forward to its position after a considerate estimate of ultimate consequences; and, once having taken its ground, never yields it but with life.

He felt that in this case, a deliberate effort was being made to sacrifice freedom of speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, and to dishonor and disgrace the Republican portion of the chamber; and that each of these interests was, for the time, committed to his keeping, and was sought to be imperiled in his person. He thereupon determined to meet the exigency, and defend, at every hazard his own rights, and the rights of his constituents, and also, and more especially, the freedom of debate on the Republican side of the hall, which this pestilent Pryor and his brawling backers had for four months been trying to strike down.

The explanatory debate on Wednesday between Pryor and Potter, respecting what occurred on the day Lovejoy spoke, was a culminating point in the series of outrages heaped by the Chivalry upon the Republicans from the commencement of the session. "Thieves," "traitors," "murderers," incendiaries," were the common current of epithets which had been poured upon them for weeks. Lovejoy was repelling these assaults, with glowing words and emphatic gestures. Pryor, advancing toward him in the most insolent manner, told him he should not stand in the area, in front of the Chair and shake his fists in a ruffianly manner at members. Potter simply responded, "You are doing the same thing." That Potter thus said, and that it was a faithful statement of what Pryor was then doing, is unquestionable. And for these words Pryor challenged him. It is alleged at Washington that the challenge was sent after a conference between some ten or a dozen Democratic members, of whom Potter's colleague was one, at which the opinion was expressed that Potter would not accept a challenge. If this be so, then it is a striking proof of the oft-asserted fact that no Southern man will "call out" a Northerner whom he undoubtedly believes will respond to his call.

It also presents in its true light the valor of Roger A. Pryor. But, at all events, and whether the off spring of a Democratic conspiracy, or the mere impulse of the disgraced braggart who sent the hostile missive, it was an attempt to bully and browbeat, and, if possible, disgrace, every Republican who maintained and was determined to practice freedom of debate in the House. And most effectually has this attempt been crushed by the undaunted conduct of John F. Potter.

Of Roger A. Pryor there can be but one opinion among sensible men. He has been seeking a fight with somebody all Winter. He has had an opportunity to mingle in one on equal terms, and under the rules of his much cherished "code," and he has shown the white feather. By one of the recognized canons of that code, everybody is authorized to post him as "a poltroon and a coward." It is in vain for Pryor and his patrons to attempt to creep out of this dilemma through the small crevice of the alleged unusual character of the weapons, proposed by the second of Potter. Knives are a recognized, and not an unusual dueling weapon, in all the States along the Mississippi Valley. We care nothing about the custom in Virginia. Potter lives in Wisconsin, near the Mississippi River, and is not amenable to the code as construed in Virginia, but rather on the banks of that river.

But we care nothing about the weapons, except that they give an equal chance to both parties. This latter point being secured, a really courageous man, yea, anybody but the veriest poltroon, would, after doing and saying what Pryor had done and said, have fought Potter with any weapon. He had, in the presence of the House of Representatives, impliedly charged Potter with cowardice, in telling him in substance that the sequel would demonstrate that he would not stand by his words; that he (Pryor) would make him eat them, rather.

Pryor, too, was told by practiced duelists, that there was no sufficient ground for a challenge. And, yet, without first demanding an explanation of the words claimed to be offensive, he sends Potter a peremptory summons to the field. Potter avows his readiness to go, and promptly proceeds to exercise his undoubted privilege of choosing the weapons. Now, any creature, after proceeding by such a path, to such a position, and with such a flourish of taunts and innuendoes, would, if he had the courage of a louse, fight his foe with any death-dealing instrument that could be brought upon the field. No! the defeat is not in the canons of the code, but in the pluck of Pryor. He is a dainty assassin, who affects hair-triggers, because his fingers have been trained to their use; but he has no stomach for a fair fight, which might result in his being carved up for worms.

But, we are forgetting that Col. Lander, the second of Mr. Potter, acting strictly within the code, took offense at the suggestion that the kind of weapon which his principal had, through him, selected, was barbarous; and thereupon, proceeding upon the celebrated precedent of the Graves and Cilley duel, he proposed to fight Pryor with any weapon which that fastidious gentleman might select. Whereupon this stickler for the tenets of the code, this punctilious Pryor, not relishing the whistling of bullets any more than the gleaming of knives, conceived a sudden prejudice against pistols, and informed Col. Lander that he had no controversy with him! And so, Roger A. Pryor, not to put too fine a point upon it, who had gone swaggering into this quarrel, skulked out of it a doubly disgraced man.—N. Y. Tribune.