"As soon as the firing commenced, he left the lines, and retreated to Parson Gwinn's quarters, pretending to be SICK--although he could Eat, Sleep & Laugh more than any man in the Army! As dangers thickened, he pretended to get worse, retreated farther up the country; stood disgraced as a professional man, and as a patriotic citizen, and now to vent his spleen, he fills the columns of a filthy newspaper with his more filthy effusions."
So wrote the editors of the Jackson Gazette (Jackson, Tenn.) regarding the conduct of Dr. James L. Armstrong of Bedford County, Tenn., during the Battle of New Orleans. They published their opinion over 13 years later on May 3, 1828, in response to a series of Armstrong's letters to the editor published by the Kentucky Reporter. In those letters, which he signed as "the Tennessean," Armstrong objected to the execution of John Wood, a Creek War deserter, and to Andrew Jackson's dealings in land.
As far as anyone can tell, Armstrong also implied that Malcolm Gilchrist (1744-1821) had been a Tory during the Revolutionary War. His sons Malcolm Gilchrist (1786-1845) and William M. Gilchrist (1791-1843) took offense at the "base and unmanly attack" on the character of their deceased father.
On July 16, 1828, accompanied by Archibald Yell and Jesse Taylor, the brothers ventured to Armstrong's farm. The Nashville Republican published accounts of the ensuing altercation by Jesse Taylor and by Armstrong himself; those were republished by the National Banner and Nashville Whig.
The editors of the Banner and Whig could not find any explicit statement by Armstrong about the Revolutionary War sympathies of the elder Malcolm Gilchrist in either the Kentucky Reporter or the Shelbyville Intelligencer, and surmised that the offensive remarks were "merely understood in the press."
Armstrong, according to his letter, was "sitting in the front piazza of my dwelling house" when Taylor, Yell, and the two Gilchrists rode up to his shop, dismounted, and entered. Thinking they might have business with him, Armstrong walked over to his shop, unarmed and alone, to discover that the four had seated themselves and were armed with large clubs. "In the bosoms of some," he added, "I saw the handles of dirks or pistols."
Armstrong recognized all four men and knew why they had come. They produced a certificate for him to sign (retracting what he had implied about the elder Malcolm Gilchrist), and he refused to read it.
"I'll have nothing to do with it!" cried Armstrong, according to Taylor's letter. Armstrong then "broke ground like a quarter horse, hallooing murder! murder! murder!!"
He fell three times as Taylor, Yell, and the Gilchrists pursued him, finally falling into the Duck River "when the water flew at least 10 feet high." That is where one of the Gilchrists "boarded him and gave him one of the most genteel flagellations I ever saw."
The editors of the Nashville Republican broke into Taylor's narrative at this point to state that they had published it to make clear that the Gilchrists had not punished Armstrong "for anything he may have said or written about General Jackson, or the presidential election; but for an attack upon a deceased person."
The genteel flagellation left Armstrong, according to his letter, "much bruised and mangled, with my head cut deeply."
"My assailants were all comparatively young men," he wrote. "I am old and have grandchildren."
Armstrong surmised that the Gilchrists had seen him the previous week in Shelbyville, "procuring documents for another number of the Tennessean," and that the sighting had provoked their attempt "to assassinate or disgrace me."
If he could be prevented by force from "giving information to the public," he wrote, "then I must, as a parting word of caution, beg my countrymen to pause--and solemnly to reflect on the consequences of entrusting supreme power in the hands of such a man as General Jackson, when he is supported by means such as these."
...
The assault made the pages of the New York Commercial Advertiser, the Marylander, and the National Intelligencer. Archibald Yell had served in the Tennessee legislature and did not return after the assault.
Yell made his first venture into the Arkansas Territory in 1831 after being appointed Receiver of Public Monies by Andrew Jackson. In 1832, he was appointed Adjutant General of the Territorial Militia, but he suffered from malaria and soon returned to Tennessee.
Yell and William Gilchrist announced their law partnership in the National Banner and Nashville Daily Advertiser on Dec. 11, 1832. Gilchrist was to practice in Shelbyville and Yell in Fayetteville, Tenn.
Appointed a territorial circuit judge, Yell made his second venture into Arkansas in 1835, settling in Fayetteville.
In 1837, Gilchrist "removed with his family to this city [Little Rock]," according to his obituary in the Arkansas Banner. He died on Sept. 5, 1843 (aged 53) after traveling to his plantation about 15 miles south of town. On the day he died he had "taken more than ordinary exercise in the hot sun." He came in to dinner, lay down, and died.
His obituary notes his "sound and discriminating judgment" and his "sterling honor and integrity." Is it too modern to ask whether his sense of honor prevailed over his sound judgment in the matter of the "genteel flagellation" of Armstrong?
Sam McMorrin and Robert Brownlee carved William Gilchrist's monument "with all the Masonic Emblems," wrote Brownlee in his autobiography, "for which we got $800, I think. It was cut from free stone."
I've walked by that monument in Mount Holly scores of times. James McVicar and my buddy Joe Clements are buried in the same plot. Each time I've meant to find out if William Gilchrist was related to Ellen Gilchrist. He was; her great-great-grandfather Daniel Gilchrist (1788-1855) was another brother of William and the younger Malcolm. I looked it up only after passing Archibald Yell's third and final grave in Evergreen Cemetery in Fayetteville, on my way to look at some of Ellen's typescripts and letters.
As she says in her preface to "Riding out the Tropical Depression," an unpublished collection of poems: "Of such fine coincidences are the real pleasures of a writer's life concocted."