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Edward W. Carmack |
1858-1908 |
Columbia Herald, Columbia
Nashville American, Nashville
Nashville Democrat, Nashville
The Commercial Appeal, Memphis
The Tennessean, Nashville
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At a Christmas party this past weekend, I met two delightful Columbia natives who entertained many of us with their outrageous stories "off the record" of several notorious Columbia residents, both past and present. Unfortunately, neither would allow me to quote or photograph them. However, they did turn me on to some very interesting stories. None of which was more outrageous than Columibia's own Edward Ward Carmack. I knew nothing of Carmack Boulevard's namesake, until now. And what I learned is this... politics is an unseemly business today, but it was a deadly one 100 years ago.
Edward Ward Carmack was a writer, orator, lawyer, congressman, and editor whose habit of boldly expressing his opinions on public questions led to his assassination. He is the last Tennessee editor to be slain and the only one to be memorialized by a statue on the state capitol grounds.
Although born in Sumner County, Carmack attended school in Maury County at Webb School (now in Bell Buckle, TN), and went on to read law and be admitted to the bar in 1879. He practiced law in Columbia, served in the state legisiature, and became editor of the Columbia Herald in 1884.
Carmack moved to Nashville in 1886 and worked on the Union-American, then founded the Nashville Democrat. Those papers merged, and Carmack went to Memphis and became editor of the Commercial. Under his direction the Commercial merged with the Appeal-Avalanche, and Carmack became editor of the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
He left that paper and ran for Congress against the candidate the Commercial Appeal supported. He won by a narrow margin. He was re-elected to the House for a second term and in 1901 was elected to the Senate.
Carmack was named editor of the Nashville Tennessean and continued his blistering editorial attacks against the governor, bringing about a bitter dispute with Duncan Cooper, a friend of the governor's. As a result of these editorials he was shot and killed by Cooper on November 9, 1908.1
Duncan Cooper was a distinguished, proud man with a handlebar moustache that reminds you of someone from an Agatha Christy novel. During the Civil War Cooper had led his own detachment of Confederate cavalry until he was captured and spent time in a prisoner of war camp up North. After the war he mined silver, owned and operated newspapers and managed business interests in Central America and in general lived by his wits.
By 1908 he was a close advisor to Tennessee Governor Malcolm Patterson.
Carmack was 15 years Cooper’s junior. A native of Columbia, he had started as a newspaper man (Cooper gave him his first job as an editorial writer for the American) and shifted to politics, becoming a U.S. Congressman and a U.S. Senator. Politically he was against big business, opposed to American imperialism and against the mixing of the races.
In 1906, Carmack’s career hit a stumbling point when he lost his senatorial re-election campaign. Two years later he lost the gubernatorial race to Patterson. By the fall of 1908 he was back in journalism, playing the role of bitter critic of his former opponent. And it wasn’t just Patterson he was attacking; it was his old friend Duncan Cooper – an old man with a deep southern sense of honor.
In one editorial, published on October 21, 1908, Carmack compared Cooper to two Jewish men who ran a disreputable bar in the Black Bottom section of Nashville (which, within the white community of Nashville at that time, was about as nasty a thing as you could say). A few days later, Carmack again attacked Cooper on the editorial pages.
Cooper sent a message to Carmack, saying he wouldn’t take it anymore. “You have no right in this manner to annoy, insult or injure me than you would have to do so to my face,” he wrote in a letter to Carmack. “I notify you that the use of my name in your paper must cease.” The Tennessean editor ignored the warning and even wrote another editorial about Cooper.
The gauntlet had been thrown down. During the next few days, both Carmack and Cooper borrowed pistols from friends. Friends on both sides – among them Governor Patterson, James C. Bradford and Edward Craig – tried to get the two men to calm down. Nothing worked.
The Nashville Arcade in about 1900
PHOTO: Post Card
On Monday November 8, Cooper’s son Robin was doing his best to keep tabs on his father, and the two men were in young Cooper’s law office near the corner of Third and Church. That afternoon, Governor Patterson called (phones had been around for about 10 years at this time) and said he wanted to see young Cooper.
At that time the governor’s mansion was across Seventh Avenue from where the Tennessee Tower is today, on the site now occupied by the War Memorial Building. Taking his father with him, Cooper took the same route you might today. They went up Church to Fourth, then right on Fourth to the Arcade, then through the Arcade, then right on Fifth to Union, and left on Union and up the hill. They stopped and chatted with several people as they went. In fact, a man named John Sharp joined them in the Arcade and walked with them.
The Nashville Arcade today
Robin Cooper walked closely with his aged father, keeping an eye out to make sure they didn’t run into Carmack. But, as they headed up the hill on Union Street, fate played a trick. At the time the Hermitage Hotel was under construction, and large construction projects in 1908 were conversation pieces. When they got next to the Hermitage site, the young Cooper stopped to chat with someone, perhaps about the big hole where the hotel was going to go. Duncan Cooper kept walking, perhaps because, at his age, he didn’t think he would make it up the hill if he stopped to rest. When the older Cooper got to the corner of Seventh and Union, he saw Carmack, walking south to north on Seventh. Cooper crossed the street and walked toward him.
What took place next – including who said what, how the various individuals approached each other and who fired first – was the subject of a long murder trial. What we do know is that five shots were fired – two by Carmack, and three by Robin Cooper, who came running up a few seconds behind his father. When it was over, Cooper was injured, shot twice, while Carmack was dead.
Carmack's murder took place on this block of Seventh Avenue in Nashville
Since there were hundreds of homes and businesses within a few blocks, people rushed up the crime scene almost immediately. After the bodies had been removed, they still came up; bystanders came by all night, in groups of one or two, striking matches so that they could see all the blood on the street and the sidewalk.
Duncan Cooper was taken to jail that night; Robin Cooper to the hospital; and Sharp went home. During the next few days all three of them would be charged with Carmack’s murder. And since the dead man was the editor of the Tennessean, there was no doubt in the mind of those who wrote that publication about the guilt of the accused. Not only did Duncan Cooper, Robin Cooper and John Sharp all conspire to kill Carmack, the Tennessean argued, but Governor Patterson was probably in on it as well.
Never mind the idea that the meeting had been a spontaneous one. Never mind that Sharp had only joined the group a few minutes earlier, and then on a whim. Never mind the idea that Carmack had likely fired first. This was trial by newspaper, and the newspaper’s editor was the victim and the martyr.
On January 20, 1909, the case against Duncan Cooper, Robin Cooper and John Sharp began. In the days before radio, television and the Internet, criminal cases were all the rage – and never in Nashville history had one garnered as much attention as this one. Attorneys called witness after witness – among them, the physician who conducted Carmack’s autopsy, various people who had spoken to both Carmack and Duncan Cooper in the days leading up to the crime and even a young boy who said he overhead things that the Coopers and Sharp said to each other as they walked through the Arcade. It is some indication of the times, the skill of the attorneys and the attention span of the audience to say that one of the closing speeches lasted nine and a half hours.
In hindsight, the most important witness was Mrs. Charles Eastman, a respectable middle-aged woman who happened to be walking down Seventh Avenue at the exact moment of the shooting. As best we can tell (her account of the crime was broken down fairly well when she testified), Carmack greeted Mrs. Eastman before he saw Duncan Cooper coming in his direction. When the older Cooper called out to Carmack, the Tennessean editor jumped behind Mrs. Eastman, leading Cooper to cry out, “damned cowardly to get behind a woman with a pistol in your hand!” Mrs. Cooper then jumped aside, and Carmack got between two utility poles located side by side on the street and took aim at Duncan Cooper, right about the time the younger Cooper jumped in front of his father.
Both Duncan and Robin Cooper were found guilty of murder in the second degree and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Sharp was found not guilty of all charges.
A few months after this verdict, the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the elder Cooper’s conviction but dismissed the younger Cooper’s conviction. But then, only minutes after this decision was announced, Governor Patterson pardoned Duncan Cooper.
The story doesn’t end there. In 1919 Robin Cooper was murdered, his body found in Richland Creek. The crime was never solved, and for years many people in Nashville believed that Carmack’s friends, or even family, reaped their revenge.2
And the controversy continues today. On the grounds of the state capital is a monument to Carmack, a man who dispite is noted accomplishments, was also a rebel rouser and extreme racist.
2 Carmack's murder riveted Tennessee in 1907
http://www.tnhistoryforkids.org/stories/carmack_murder
