New York State. Several duels resulted from this bitter warfare. Coleman challenged Cheetham, who displayed good sense by refusing to take the matter too seriously, and the differences were temporarily adjusted.
A harbor-master named Thompson, resenting the suggestion that Cheetham had weakened, declared that it was Coleman who had backed down. Coleman immediately sent him a challenge; the next day they met on the outskirts of the city, in a place called "Love Lane," now the foot of Twenty-first Street, and exchanged two shots without effect; because of the growing darkness the opponents moved closer, and at the next shot Thompson was mortally wounded. The editor of the Evening Post was at his office the next day as if nothing had occurred, at least nothing unusual in the life of an editorial publisher.[1]
It all seemed in the day's work, and no one recalled that an editor, not a hundred years before, had been threatened with imprisonment for printing; the community had progressed so far that now, not only was an editor printing his paper without let or hindrance, but he was supported by the government in so doing. What was more remarkable still, the editor now had the satisfaction of knowing that he might kill or be killed according to the Code.
Coleman's duel is a milestone in journalistic history, viewed in its relation to the Hamilton-Burr duel that resulted in the death of one of America's ablest statesmen. The Code itself was one evidence of the weaknesses of the Federalist cause, conveying the idea that the well-born had a code of their own that was superior to the laws that governed the common herd.
In 1804 came up the Croswell case, growing out of the
- ↑ Alexander, Political History of New York State, i, 128.
