Drowning on the James
Was One of the Early Republic's Most Hated Newspaper Publishers James Thomson Callender Murdered by a Powerful Group of Lawyers and Newspapermen with Ties to President Thomas Jefferson?
On a cold December day in 1802 one of the nation’s most hated newspaper publishers was attacked inside a Richmond store.
Beaten over the head several times with a bludgeon - his left hand almost crippled - James Thomson Callender had attempted to use a nearby package to shield himself from the blows.
When a crowd began to gather to watch the beating the assailant - future United States Attorney George Hay - disappeared into the crowd.
Taken into custody following the attack a mob surrounded the mayor’s court forcing Callender to be moved to the jail for his protection.
Jailed when he was unable to post bond to prevent him from libeling Hay in the future Callender was eventually released from jail.
Six months later Callender’s lifeless body was discovered in the James River.
A coroner’s jury determined that Callender had accidentally drowned while bathing. Witnesses had claimed to have seen Callender highly intoxicated that same morning.
The details surrounding Callender’s death however were suspicious.
The despised publisher was discovered in three feet or less of water. His body was so quickly interred there wasn’t enough time to hold a funeral. It wasn’t until a day after his burial that a ceremony was conducted at his graveside.
Seven months before his death, Callender’s former colleague at the Richmond Examiner turned enemy - who had bailed out a group of young lawyers that had threatened to burn down Callender’s offices and hurled a stone at two of his employees after drinking and celebrating at George Hay’s home earlier that evening - had written an open letter in the newspaper seemingly predicting the very manner in which the publisher would die.
Had Callender been murdered? He certainly had no shortage of enemies.
At the age of 34 the Scottish born publisher was forced to flee Great Britain after writing a pamphlet criticizing the government. In 1792 he arrived in Philadelphia where his pro-democratic views caught the attention of Thomas Jefferson. Over the course of the next decade Jefferson fed Callender dirt he then used to attack the Federalists. It was Callender who broke the story of Alexander Hamilton’s illicit affair with Maria Reynolds.
Callender’s pamphlet The Prospect Before Us, attacking President John Adams, led to his conviction for sedition.
He was sentenced to nine months in prison. During his trial Callender was represented by George Hay.
When Jefferson was elected president he pardoned Callender who was made editor of the Richmond Examiner - a pro-Jefferson newspaper published by Meriwether Jones.
During his time at the Examiner a mob of 53 conspirators planned to raid the newspaper’s offices and kidnap Callender, take him from Richmond and potentially murder him. The plot however was foiled when Jones was made aware and posted armed guards around his building.
Callender’s support of Jefferson however was short lived. When the president failed to appoint Callender postmaster of Richmond – a job that would have netted the publisher $1,500 a year – Callender turned on Jefferson and joined the Richmond Recorder. There he published allegations that Jefferson had a child with one of his slaves. The allegations so enraged Thomas Jefferson’s son-in-law Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., that he threatened to “thrash” Callender.
Callender eventually had a falling out with his fellow publisher at the Recorder Henry Pace whom he claimed had kept the lion’s share of the $4,000 the paper had made during the year he wrote for it. Callender called Pace a “pimp.” Pace accused Callender of attempting to sodomize his brother.
Eventually the two agreed to mediate their differences. Pace chose a former New Yorker named Richard D. Croucher to represent him. Croucher had been forced to leave New York after being convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl named Margaret Miller. Croucher had visited Miller’s home to sell stockings and convinced her mother to allow Margaret to go to Croucher’s home to scrub his room on Greenwich Street. Once there he forced himself on the young teenager in an upstairs bedroom. He was later pardoned by the Governor of New York under the condition he leave the state.
While there were no shortage of people with reason to harm Callender none perhaps were more violent or more powerful than the group of publishers, politicians and lawyers surrounding George Hay. Twice married during his lifetime – the second time to the daughter of President James Monroe – Hay was one of the commonwealth’s most distinguished lawyers. Hay would serve as prosecuting attorney in Aaron Burr’s trial for treason and was a district attorney under Thomas Jefferson.
“A man of fine personal appearance, of very dignified manners” and somewhat “pompous” according to one contemporary account, Hay was “one of the president’s most devoted vassals” according to Callender and guilty of “ignorant and dastardly conduct.” Among his many allegations Callender accused Hay of suppressing testimony in a trial involving a Norfolk magistrate named Dr. John K. Read. In December of 1802 Hay finally caught up with Callender at a Richmond store while he was seeking to have a Dutch newspaper translated into English.
“I felt a violent stroke on my forehead. The blow was repeated three or four times. An immediate effusion of blood was so violent that for some seconds it was impossible for me to distinguish who my adversary was. The cowardly villain (it was George Hay) came behind my back,” Callender wrote following the attack.
According to Callender Hay provided no warning before striking him over the head with his bludgeon.
“I had hitherto considered that high crowned hats were a mere species of froppery but it was this kind of hat which saved my life,” Callender later claimed.
He was struck as many as six times.
“I endeavored to collar the ruffian. He started back, with a view to keep out of my grasp, and at the same time repeated his blows as fast as possible. Upon this I threw myself on the ground and took hold of a bundle or package of some sort,” Callender recalled.
Soon a crowd had begun to gather to witness the beating. Hay then fled.
According to Callender Hay had attacked him because he feared the publisher was in possession of “the most unanswerable, of the most blasting, of the most defamatory documents concerning his behavior in Dr. Read’s business. The wretched, theoretical and almost practical assassin concerted that by knocking out my brains he would extinguish the source of information,” Callender wrote following the attack.
The business of which Callender referred was the recent prosecution of Read over which Hay had presided.
Three years earlier, Read – then a magistrate in Norfolk – had turned over to the British Consul a sailor who confessed to mutiny aboard the frigate Hermione. The sailor was transported by the British to the West Indies, tried and executed.
Read had no legal authority to turn over the sailor since the accused had never been brought to a federal court.
Upon learning of the incident President James Monroe – then Governor of Virginia – suggested the Virginia General Assembly pass a law penalizing such future actions and appointed Hay to investigate the incident.
While Read had initially denied turning over the sailor, while on trial he claimed he had a duty under treaty to turn him over and if any error had been made it was one of judgment only. He was found not guilty.
Callender claimed to have obtained a document proving that Hay had suppressed “decisive testimony” in the Read case.
The animosity toward Callender eventually spilled over into the streets. In another incident a group of young lawyers - after a night of celebrating and drinking at Hay’s home - had visited Callender’s offices at the Recorder and threatened to burn down the building and hurled a rock at his employees.
Following a celebration that night in Richmond, this “battalion of boys” as Callender called them, had gone to Hay’s home where “after accepting the landlord’s bottle there was a natural transition” to the offices of the Recorder he wrote.
Once at the offices “there was a prodigious batter of the street door before the noise was noticed, as our young men were all in the printing office at some distance off in the yard,” recalled Callender.
Muskets were brought and the boys ran off with three waiting accomplices on the street.
“A proper inquiry will be made about these ruffians,” Callender promised following the attack.
That same night this same group of boys allegedly smashed the windows of a lighthouse and forced a woman to strip naked and then burnt her shift.
Callender’s old colleague, Meriwether Jones bailed the boys out and Hay – or “the King of Clubs” as Callender called him – was said to have been heard on the street praising the young men for their exploits.
According to Callender the young men were either lawyers or law students and he soon had obtained their names: John Baker – a “cripple that hobbles about the street upon crutches”; William Lindsay of Norfolk “the worthless son of a very respectable father” ; John Harvie “ a little humped back creature that has lost half his teeth and is as wicked as his constitution will permit him to be”’; Peyton Randolph; Thomas Jefferson’s grand-nephew and lastly the son of John Pendleton “remarkable to the slenderness of his understanding and his legs” who had been wounded in a duel in Richmond.
The young men were among some of the most powerful in Virginia with close personal ties to Thomas Jefferson himself.
Harvie’s grandfather had been appointed guardian to Thomas Jefferson following the death of Jefferson’s father. Harvie’s father was also close friends with Jefferson throughout his life.
Harvie’s brother Lewis was Jefferson’s private secretary who threatened to shoot two newspaper editors after they attacked Jefferson and to “instantly put to death” anyone who published an attack on his father.
Peyton Randolph was the son of General George Washington’s aide-de-camp Edmund Randolph – who served as the nation’s first Attorney General and as Governor of Virginia.
William Lindsay’s grandfather was the wealthy owner of a fleet of merchant ships whose son inherited his fortune and resided in an estate in Norfolk.
Meriwether Jones for his part was close personal friends with Dr. Read.
In a letter to James Madison in July of 1801 Jones referred to Read as “one of my particular friends.”
Jones was a powerful, well connected, dangerous man. His sister Jane had married Judge John Monroe (a relation of the president of the same last name). Thomas Jefferson’s wife was also the widow of his father’s brother-in-law.
The Jones family lived in an estate in Hanover County called Spring Garden. Jones and every one of his five brothers was said to have participated in at least one duel and he and his brother Skelton were said to have been killed in one. The brothers were so familiar with the dueling ground they were known as the “duelists.”
Known for the “cheerfulness of his disposition, the promptitude of his wit, the frankness of his manners, the ardor and intrepidity of his temper” Jones was said to oversee the Examiner with two loaded pistols always close by.
In April of 1800 Jones wounded James Rind in a duel in Richmond.
Jones’ brother Skelton was also a frequent duelist. In April 1801 Skelton killed his dear friend Gil Armisted Selden in a duel involving a romantic liaison of Skelton’s. Callender accused Skelton of murder for his role in the affair.
In 1805 Skelton participated in another duel. On the shores of Maryland he was wounded by Dr. William Upshaw. The bullet entered his forehead and exited the back of his head. Initial reports indicated that the wound was not life threatening. Upshaw had allegedly fired prematurely. “It was an accident! It was an accident!” he was said to have shouted after mistakenly firing. Skelton’s second at the duel was Dr. Read’s son. According to Meriwether Jones, Read’s son “would have shot Upshaw on the spot” if he had not screamed that the firing had been accidental.
It was Meriwether Jones who in November of 1802 wrote an open letter appearing to prophesize the very manner in which Callender would be die.
“Oh could a dose of the James River, like Lethe, have blessed you with forgetfulness,” he wrote Callender.
Lethe in Greek mythology was a river in the underworld the waters of which – if drank by the dead – would erase all memory of their past life.
Within seven months the waters of the James would do just that.
The Examiner (now apparently under the editorship of Skelton Jones) explained their own theory regarding Callender’s death.
“Our own opinion is that Callender’s drowning was not ‘accidental’ but voluntary,” the Examiner claimed.
Others theorized that Callender may have suffered cramps or fits before he drowned.
One letter writer claimed that boatmen from a nearby ferry had seen Callender fall into the water “and from his long stay, conjectured the consequence but before they could reach him he was lifeless.”
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