An angry John Hemphill demanded satisfaction in an Aug. 27, 1832 letter to the editor of his hometown newspaper.
Dueling was a rite of passage for male South Carolinians, and at age 28 the future chief justice of justice of Texas qualified as a late bloomer.
His quarrel with the local newspaperman grew out of the violent debate over “nullification,” the eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation between the P…
