Address of Armistead T. Mason on Dispute with John M. McCarty.
- imprint_number: 1818.071
- title: To the public. I had hoped, most sincerely hoped, that I was done with newspaper controversies …
- sequence_number: 71
- year: 1818
- place_issued: Leesburg
- issuing_press: Samuel B.T. Caldwell
- author: Mason, Armistead Thompson (1787-1819).
- notes: Only known copies are held by the Virginia Historical Society.
Sheet lacks colophon; text is a summarization of charges exchanged from November 1817 to May 1818, in Leesburg's two newspapers; Mason published his side in Caldwell's Genius of Liberty, while McCarty published in The Washingtonian of Patrick McIntyre; as this item was Mason's view of the dispute, it is undoubtedly a Caldwell title as well, so the attribution here.
The controversy between Mason and McCarty resulted from Mason's loss in congressional election of spring 1817 to incumbent Charles Fenton Mercer; Mason charged that Mercer had rigged the election in Loudon County by bringing in unqualified voters, McCarty among them; that charge impelled McCarty to engage in the newspaper exchange that led to this broadside retort from Mason; eventually, the two challenged each other to a duel over the overt disrespect evinced in their extended exchange, which ended with Mason's death on the Bladensburg, Maryland, dueling ground in February 1819.
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