DATE: Monday, June 9, 1997                  TAG: 9706060814

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: COLUMN 

SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER

                                            LENGTH:   81 lines

WASHINGTON STATUE WAS ONLY CASULATY IN 1866 CAPITOL SHOOTOUT

The rotunda of the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond is the last place that any sane person would visualize as the setting for a Wild West style shootout. Even so, that is exactly what happened there in 1866, at which time Jean-Antoine Houdon's celebrated life-size statue of George Washington was the only casualty.

The statue, long the sculptural chef d'oeuvre of the rotunda, was recently featured on PBS in one of the Robert Hughes ``American Vision'' surveys of significant national art treasures. Since the gunplay episode was not mentioned by Hughes, however, it is high time to give it a little publicity. Here are the fascinating and little-known facts.

Three principals were involved in the incident: Henry Rives Pollard, the hot-tempered editor of the Richmond Examiner, and William D. Coleman and Nathaniel Tyler, the owner and editor of the Richmond Enquirer. Pollard, a prime example of the gun-toting journalists of his era, had long detested Coleman and Tyler, but his rancor didn't reach the boiling point until he suspected the other two men of using undue political pressure to land the Enquirer the coveted and lucrative sinecure of handling what printing the state might require in line of its official business.

Taking up his pen on Jan. 3, 1866, Pollard wrote a vitriolic editorial against Coleman and Tyler that included this blast: ``The state treasury is empty. The credit of Virginia is a corpse, well picked and fleshless. Yet, where the carcass is, there the vultures will be gathered together. A couple of vultures (i.e., Coleman and Tyler), very hungry, very lean and very desperate are watching the Treasury with a wistful eye, anon flapping their fragrant wings, rising upon their perches, and stretching their attenuated necks eagerly out for the public printing.''

Two days later, when Pollard learned that Coleman and Tyler were closeted with the House of Delegates, then in session, he decided to confront them in the rotunda of the State Capitol for a showdown. When Coleman and Tyler walked out of the House chamber, Pollard positioned himself behind the cast iron railing surrounding Washington's statue, pulled out a revolver and blazed away in their direction. Not to be upstaged, Coleman whipped out his rod and fired in Pollard's direction.

No one was wounded during the gunplay, but when the smoke had cleared it was discovered that one of the marble tassels that Houdon had added as a decorative touch to Washington's cane had been truncated by one of the pistol blasts.

Needless to add, all hell broke loose and Pollard, Coleman and Tyler (who had not participated in the fusillade) were dragged into the House of Delegates chamber by the sergeant-at-arms for an interrogation. Finally, after a weeklong investigation, during which a great deal of contradictory evidence was introduced, the affair was shelved and Pollard, as the initiator of the gunplay, was let off the hook with only a small fine and a reprimand.

Meanwhile, the Richmond newspapers expressed far more concern over the damage to Washington's statue than the fact that the two hotheaded gunslingers might have been killed in the fracas.

In the meantime, Pollard had taken exception to the flippant way in which E.P. Brooks, the Richmond correspondent for The New York Times, had reported his role as an Old Dominion embodiment of Jesse James. Arming himself with a cowhide whip, Pollard ambushed Brooks in the lobby of the Spotswood Hotel intending to give him a tanning for his impudence. In the ensuing melee, Brooks wrenched the whip from Pollard's hand and gave him a dose of his own medicine until Pollard's friends intervened.

Undeterred, Pollard continued on his belligerent way. Two years later, after he had left the Examiner to become the editor of Southern Opinion, he deeply offended James Grant, a prominent Richmond citizen, by airing the spicy details of the elopement of the latter's sister. When Grant read what Pollard had written, he armed himself with a shotgun and took up a strategic position in a second-story window across from the Southern Opinion office. When Pollard arrived on the scene, Grant terminated his tempestuous career with a load of buckshot.

In commenting on the episode, Virginius Dabney in ``Richmond: The History of a City'' (1990) wrote: ``It took a jury only 45 minutes to acquit the assassin.'' As for the marble tassel on Washington's cane that was damaged during the impromptu shootout on Jan. 5, 1866, it was only partially repaired. As a result, the shortened ornament still remains visible to any sharp-eyed tourist as reminder of the days when Virginia newspaper editors didn't hesitate to punctuate their jotting with frequent blasts of pyrotechnical gunfire. ILLUSTRATION: [Washington statue]

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