1840: The Habit of Wearing Weapons

“We want no better proof, that a community is infested with blackguards and knaves, than to know that its members are in the habit of wearing weapons. Robbers, pirates, and assassins, wear weapons constantly, as much for the purpose of defending themselves from each other, as for that of conducting their criminal avocations. These wretches have no confidence in each other, and, knowing that the same propensities that induce them to murder the innocent unoffending traveler, would induce them to murder a comrade when expedient or convenient; they live together in a state of constant suspicion and dread. Gamblers, also, whose sole business is to cheat and defraud, knowing that they deserve the severest chastisements foo their villainies, and suspecting that all around them are knaves like themselves, wear weapons for a similar reason. The pistol and bowie knife, therefore, when worn in times of peace, may justly be considered as the best evidences of a depraved and villainous society. True gentlemen must ever look upon them with abhorrence and contempt, and will as readily shun those who wear them as they would shun the dirty drunken loafer, when bedaubed with filth.

Let us visit the fashionable circles of Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, or any other city of the United States, noted for good society, and we find no weapons exhibited; the individual who should venture to attend a respectable party in those cities with a dagger or pistol in his bosom or pocket, would be regarded as an intruding blackguard, and treated with that cutting and cold contempt which the well-bred, only know how to accord to the vulgar and base. The man who appears in the crowded streets of a peaceful city or village with weapons, tacitly insults every respectable individual he meets, for by wearing these, he intimates as plainly as language can express, that he distrusts everybody around him.

There was a time when it was not only proper, but a duty for our citizens to wear weapons; and we well recollect when we felt a pleasure at seeing almost every individual we met, armed and ready to repel at a moments warning, the incursions of the invader; but that day has long since gone by, and truly brave men have cast their weapons aside as now useless; blackguards and villains, however, who dared not show their faces when danger threatened, have crept in since, and wear weapons, not to defend their country against the enemy, but to redden our streets or grog shops with the blood of their fellow citizens! Wherever these cowardly miscreants appear, they should be frowned down by every respectable citizen as the pest and bane of society."

~From Telegraph and Texas Register (Houston, Tex.), June 24, 1840

Turns out the open carry debate isn't a very new thing.

1840: Outrageous

"We are informed by a gentleman from Fort Towson, that two or three weeks since, a Citizen of the United States, at the head of eight or ten men, had occasion to go into Texas, for some purpose, where he came across a party of Cherokee Indians, on the borders of Texas, who kept in sight of him for two or three days, without manifesting any hostility. One night after the Cherokees had encamped, the whites stole upon them and killed seven or eight of their number, when the Indians returned the fire, killing one or two of the whites, and then fled. The cause assigned by the commander of the whites, for attacking the Indians, was that he was afraid they intended to attack him, and therefore took the start of them. If this is the true state of the case, we think the U. States should punish the aggressor, and prevent, if possible, any further outrages of the kind. Our informant states that the officers and agents at Fort Towson consider it an outrageous and unprovoked murder. Will they not have the matter investigated, and justice rendered to the Indians."

~From Brazos Courier. (Brazoria, Tex.), April 7, 1840

Sharing because of how rarely I come across articles in which outrages against Native Americans were actually viewed as outrages.

1840: Romantic Love

~From Telegraph and Texas Register (Houston, Tex.), July 29, 1840