Captain C. Lee Moses, of Saco, Maine,
formerly United States astronomer, etc., was a party to a singular and not
unromantic affair of honor, which was fought on the Seine, near Paris, in
August, 1861, the particulars of this affair being as follows:
Captain Moses, although a South
Carolinian by birth, remained a strong and devoted adherent to the cause of
the Union, and during his journey through France made no hesitation in
expressing his sympathies and feelings for the United States Government, and
his abhorrence of the southern traitors and rebels who were engaged in
destroying the most enlightened, best administered and most prosperous
Government on the face of the globe.
Hon. F. G. Farquar, of Virginia, meeting
the Captain at a hotel in Paris, and knowing his parentage, reproached him in
opprobious terms as a renegade from his native State. He charged him with
being a traitor to the South, and a man of no honor because he abandoned her
when she needed the services of all her sons, particularly her seamen and
navigators. He took occasion also in his vituperation, to cast imputations
upon the character of Northern ladies, which, as the Captain had married a New
England wife, was resented on the spot by a tremendous blow, entirely doubling
up the chivalric Virginian, and laying him in ordinary for the balance of the
evening.
Farquar was taken charge of by his
friends, and when he had gathered his scattered faculties, he sent a challenge
to the Captain by the hands of his friend, Mons. Stephani. The challenge
received a prompt response, and not twenty-four hours from the first meeting
of the combatants, they stood on the banks of the Seine, prepared to take
each other's lives. The weapons selected were Derringer pistols, the distance
ten paces, the combatants being ordered to wheel and fire at the given signal. Farquar was boastful and coarse in his remarks and manners. The Captain was
calm, though determined.
All being ready, Captain Moses handed
two letters to his second, one addressed to the American consul at Liverpool,
and the other to his wife at Saco, Me., to be delivered in case he fell. He
then removed his coat, bandaged back the hair from his eyes, and took his
position. The word was then given, and with a simultaneous report of both
pistols the combatants fell to the ground. Both were shot through the head.
Farquar received a mortal wound, with which he lingered several days, finally
dying at a hamlet a few miles from Paris; where he had been removed to avoid
the noise of the city. Before dying, he solicited an interview with Captain
Moses, made an acknowledgment of his base conduct, and solicited the latter's
forgiveness, which was freely granted. The Captain, escaping from the French
police, took refuge at Liverpool, where he was concealed by the American
shippers of that city and sent on to New York, where he arrived in a very
critical condition, the ball of his adversary having passed just under the
ear, causing a severe concussion of the brain.