American Folk Figure. A nephew of Chief Justice John Marshall, McClung moved to Mississippi in 1832. Although his career included serving as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Mexican War and as the U.S. Charge d'Affaires to Bolivia between 1849 and 1851, McClung's chief fame in nineteenth-century America was for his dueling. One famous series of duels involved the Menifee family of Kentucky. It is said that after killing John Menifee in Vicksburg, McClung, who was called "The Black Knight of the South," went on to kill six other Menifees in separate duels. Ross Drake, in Smithsonian Magazine, calls McClung "a hard-drinking homicidal miscreant" who "behaved like a character out of Gothic fiction, dressing from time to time in a flowing cape, giving overripe oratory and morbid poetry, and terrifying many of his fellow Mississippians with his penchant for intimidation and violence." McClung was also a lawyer, an editor, and a poet, leaving behind a poem titled "Invocation to Death" when he committed suicide with a dueling pistol in a Jackson hotel room.
American Folk Figure. A nephew of Chief Justice John Marshall, McClung moved to Mississippi in 1832. Although his career included serving as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Mexican War and as the U.S. Charge d'Affaires to Bolivia between 1849 and 1851, McClung's chief fame in nineteenth-century America was for his dueling. One famous series of duels involved the Menifee family of Kentucky. It is said that after killing John Menifee in Vicksburg, McClung, who was called "The Black Knight of the South," went on to kill six other Menifees in separate duels. Ross Drake, in Smithsonian Magazine, calls McClung "a hard-drinking homicidal miscreant" who "behaved like a character out of Gothic fiction, dressing from time to time in a flowing cape, giving overripe oratory and morbid poetry, and terrifying many of his fellow Mississippians with his penchant for intimidation and violence." McClung was also a lawyer, an editor, and a poet, leaving behind a poem titled "Invocation to Death" when he committed suicide with a dueling pistol in a Jackson hotel room.
Bio by: NatalieMaynor
Gravesite Details
* Date of birth is in dispute
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