A Councillor Settles a Political Argument With Clubs, Then Leaves Town
A quarrel over loyalty to the mayor ends in a back-lot club fight, a wounded stranger, and a town official who vanishes from the city.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Herald gives the following account of a singular duel said to have been fought in this city on the 15th of June:
Councillor Auchire, while walking in McGill Street, was accosted by a stranger, who said he did not know him, but who, a day later, came forward. This stranger told the Councillor that his conduct on the night previous, in supporting the Mayor, was not becoming for a gentleman. To this Councillor Auchire replied that he had a right to think and act as he pleased.
The stranger, it is said, then observed that Auchire had abused him, to which the Councillor answered: "You may prove that if you like, but not in my presence." The stranger said he had proof; and both he and the Councillor afterwards took a club and drew in the direction of the field near the site of the College. The word was given and they closed. The stranger fell wounded in the thigh; his opponent was uninjured, and Auchire ... is now a fugitive from the city.
“"Your conduct on the night previous, in supporting the Mayor, was not becoming for a gentleman."”
In a town of a few hundred people, a vote at the council table could follow a man down the street — and a dispute over who backed the mayor ended with clubs in an empty field. Steilacoom's politics were personal because the stakes were everything: the town was bidding to be the terminus of the railroad and the seat of the territory. Two centuries on, small-town civic quarrels still turn on loyalty and patronage; the difference is that the fight now happens in a comment thread rather than a vacant lot.
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