The Northern papers have been teeming with reports respecting the movements and intentions of this warlike individual. One while, it was said, that he could not leave his room for fear of being butchered in the streets of Washington, then again, that he had paraded the avenue, surrounded by armed friends and put Brooks and Keitt and defiance, and all South Carolina at their backs; then, that he had been graciously permitted by Keitt to walk abroad; then the Rev. Mr. Parker told us that Wilson had paraded before Keitt’s lodgings and was not hurt; then we had a letter from Wilson himself, to the effect that he had walked pretty much all over Washington, for the two days after he declined fighting Brooks, sometimes alone, and sometimes attended by friends. The last version of the matter, we find, as reported below, in the N. Y. Courier:
WILSON AND BROOKS.
To the Editors of the Courier & Enquirer:
I perceive in the N. Y. Commercial Advertiser, of last evening the following telegraphic despatch from Boston:
BOSTON, June 3.—Senator Wilson denies unequivocally the statement telegraphed from Washington to a N. York paper, that Colonel Lane had called on him from Mr. Brooks, with an assurance that he (Brooks) intended to make an assault on him. Mr. Wilson says, “I have sought no controversy and shall seek none, but I shall go where duty requires, uninfluenced by threats of any kind.”
I am enabled to endorse the statement made by Mr. Wilson. The facts are, that Mr. Buffington, the colleague and friend of Senator Wilson, when he bore the refusal of Wilson to fight Brooks, expressed a desire to know whether it was the intention of Brooks to assault Wilson in the street. After some little hesitation, Gen. Lane promised that there should be no attempt to whip Wilson for a week; and subsequently he assured him that Mr. Brooks desired him to say that he did not intend to make any attack whatever upon Mr. Wilson at any time for what was past; and Mr. Buffington so reported before he left the city. The limitations of a week, within which no attack was to be made upon Wilson, was a piece of fun on the part of Gen. Lane and got up a laugh at Buffington’s expense, for making so strange a request.
It was indeed a strange application, and by its extraordinary character, no doubt prevented a street fight, in which, probably, both the principals would have lost their lives.
SOURCE: Richmond Daily Whig, Richmond Virginia, Monday Morning, June 9, 1856, p. 2
