AMERICAN SCHEMERS
Tall Tale Teller Feller hauled Buntline out, and hanged him from a storefront awning. But somebody cut the rope and cops hauled Buntline back to confinement. Newspapers reported that Buntline died that night. They were wrong. He lived another four decades, during which he published a scandal-sheet newspaper, blackmailed brothel owners, led an anti-immigrant movement, incited two riots, spent a year in prison, married six women, and wrote more than 300 pulp adventure novels. Born Edward Zane Carroll Judson in 1823, he ran away at 12 from his Philadelphia home and stowed away on a ship. He spent seven years at sea, first on merchant vessels sailing the Caribbean, then as a U.S. Navy midshipman. He began writing seafaring adventure stories and sold several under the pen name “Ned Buntline,” the latter word a nautical term referring
14 AMERICAN HISTORY
AMHP-220400-SCHEMERS.indd 14
1/18/22 2:54 PM
HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS
King of Content Buntline never let the truth get in the way of telling a ripping good story, as when he made a dimenovel hero of his pal William Cody.
Ned Buntline is the only American novelist who was lynched by an angry mob and lived to tell the tale, although he much preferred telling fictitious tales that made him seem heroic. In 1846, Buntline, 23, was in Nashville, Tennessee, trying to raise money for his magazine, Ned Buntline’s Own, and romancing a local teenager. Her husband, Robert Porterfield, took umbrage and fired a pistol at Buntline. Porterfield missed, fired again, missed again. Buntline shot back, killing Porterfield. When the publisher was arraigned, a mob of Porterfield’s friends invaded the courtroom, shooting. A bullet pierced Buntline’s chest. He fled the courthouse into a nearby hotel, the horde in pursuit. Cornered on the third floor, Buntline leaped out a window. Police picked the stunned, bleeding writer off the ground and carried him to jail. Porterfield’s pals broke into the hoosegow,
MCCRACKEN RESEARCH LIBRARY AT THE BUFFALO BILL CENTER OF THE WEST (2)
BY PETER CARLSON
