This 1886 edition of the Fairfield News and Herald is consumed with a lengthy, blood-soaked feature on the history of Southern dueling—a practice that, while barbarous, apparently produced excellent soldiers. The main story chronicles several legendary duels from the antebellum South, including the notorious encounter between Major Henry and Joe Howell (a brother-in-law of Jefferson Davis) at the "Half Way" near Natchez, where the two men blazed away at each other six times, both wounded, before Howell's second knocked up his pistol to prevent a final, fatal shot. Perhaps most famous was the Prentiss-Foote duel of 1833, where an accusation that Prentiss had used his cane as a rest during their first meeting sent him into such a fury that he demanded a second encounter—and this time, his pistol cap mysteriously failed to fire on the first attempt, every single cap in the box subsequently working perfectly. Buried on the same page is a charming anecdote about President Cleveland's bride-elect, Miss Folsom, then in Paris, who when told by a European aristocrat that she would have "no title" as a Republican president's wife, replied that Cleveland had already conferred upon her the greatest title of all: "his darling."

In 1886, the South was still grappling with its identity sixteen years after Appomattox. This extended meditation on the "code duello" reveals how white Southern elites were mythologizing their antebellum past—transforming dueling from a brutal, often senseless practice into a marker of honor and courage. By reprinting these stories in 1886, the paper was helping construct the "Lost Cause" narrative that would define Southern identity for generations. The mention of Jefferson Davis (still alive, and increasingly revered in the South) underscores how the South was rehabilitating its defeated leaders. Meanwhile, the sweet story about President Cleveland's betrothal shows the North and South were slowly reconciling—a Republican president's marriage was deemed worthy of European aristocratic attention and American provincial celebration.

• Dr. Carver and Buffalo Bill are casually mentioned as pistol-shooting benchmarks: 'His skill with the pistol was fully up to that of Dr. Carver or Buffalo Bill with the rifle'—suggesting that by 1886, Buffalo Bill's Wild West show (which debuted in 1883) had already become the standard reference for American marksmanship prowess.
• The paper reports that at the Prentiss-Foote rematch, the principals' names were literally being wagered on in a cockfighting pit: 'two cocks were put down, one named Prentiss, the other Foote, in honor of the duelists'—a darkly comic detail showing how spectator-obsessed these duels had become.
• One duel participant, Marsteller, extracted a bullet from his own hip wound with his bare hands and never missed a day of work, which the paper proudly calls 'nerve'—illustrating the almost inhuman stoicism expected of Southern gentlemen.
• The paper includes a recipe-style agricultural feature on clover varieties with specific albuminoid ratios (1:5.9), showing that even as it romanticizes dueling, the paper was also modernizing Southern agriculture and promoting scientific farming.
• The entire duel narrative is framed as a reprinting from 'The Agriculturist'—meaning a farm journal was publishing these violent historical anecdotes, suggesting rural readers were as invested in gentlemanly honor mythology as anyone else.

• Joe Howell is identified as 'a brother-in-law of Mr. Jefferson Davis' and a veteran of William Walker's filibustering expedition in Nicaragua—Walker's private invasion of Central America in the 1850s was one of the most audacious (and illegal) military adventures in American history, showing how the antebellum South's elite adventurers operated.
• The paper mentions that one participant, McClung, had become so lethal with a pistol that refusing to duel him was socially unacceptable but accepting meant death—he had effectively held Mississippi's elite hostage through pure marksmanship. This was published just as the West was being 'tamed': Wild West gunfighters operated under identical logic.
• The Prentiss-Foote duel occurred in 1833, but the paper is publishing this account in 1886—53 years later—as living nostalgia. This tells us the South was actively curating and republishing its violent past during Reconstruction's aftermath, turning duels into founding mythology.
• Miss Folsom (soon to be Mrs. Cleveland) was completing her trousseau in Paris when aristocrats questioned whether a Republican president's wife would have sufficient social standing—but she turned the tables with romantic sentiment, showing how American democratic values were beginning to outpace European aristocratic snobbery.
• The paper includes an agricultural section noting that clover hay produces cows with milk of 'exceptionally good quality'—in 1886, scientific feeding practices were revolutionizing dairy farming in America, yet this same newspaper was still printing multi-page romance with antebellum shooting contests.