Ned Buntline

Edward Zane Carroll Judson, Sr. (March 20, 1821 /1823 – July 16, 1886), known as E. Z. C. Judson and by his pseudonym Ned Buntline, was an American publisher, journalist, writer and publicist. He is best known for his dime novels and the Colt Buntline Special he is alleged to have commissioned from Colt's Manufacturing Company.

Early life
Judson was born in Harpersfield, New York, near Stamford. He moved with his parents to Bethany, Pennsylvania, in 1826 and Philadelphia in 1834. His father, Levi Carroll Judson, was a lawyer and wanted Judson to be a clergyman.

Naval and military experience
In November 1834, Edward Judson ran away to sea as a cabin boy and the next year shipped on board a Navy ship. A number of years later he rescued the crew of a boat that had been run down by a Fulton Ferry in New York's East River. As a result, he received a commission as midshipman in the Navy from U.S. President Van Buren on February 10, 1838, and was assigned to the USS Levant. He later served on the USS Constellation and the USS Boston.

As a seaman, he served in the Seminole Wars, though he saw little combat. After four years at sea, he resigned. During the Civil War, he served as an enlisted man in the 1st New York Mounted Rifles and rose to the rank of sergeant before he was dishonorably discharged for drunkenness.

Early literary efforts
Judson's first literary efforts began with a story of adventure in the Knickerbocker in 1838. He spent several years in the east starting up newspapers and story papers, only to have most of them fail. An early success that helped launch his fame was a gritty serial story of the Bowery and slums of New York City titled The Mysteries and Miseries of New York. An opinionated man, he strongly advocated nativism and temperance and became a leader in the Know Nothing movement. In 1844 he adopted the pen name "Ned Buntline" (buntline being the nautical term for a rope at the bottom of a square sail).

In 1845, Buntline's Cincinnati venture, Western Literary Journal and Monthly Magazine, was facing bankruptcy. Buntline fled from Ohio. In Eddyville, Kentucky, he collected a $600 bounty for single-handedly capturing two murderers. He moved on to Nashville, Tennessee and used the money to start his own magazine, Ned Buntline's Own.

Buntline had an affair with the teenaged wife of Robert Porterfield in Nashville in 1846. On 14 March 1846, Porterfield challenged Buntline to a duel; Buntline killed him. At Buntline's murder trial, Porterfield's brother shot and wounded Buntline. This allowed Buntline to escape in the chaos. He was subsequently captured by a lynch mob and hanged from an awning. He was rescued by friends, and the Tennessee grand jury refused to indict him for murder. He moved Ned Buntline's Own to New York City in 1848.

Through his writing in its columns and his association with New York City's notorious gangs of the early 19th century, he was one of the instigators of the Astor Place Riot which left twenty-three people dead. In September 1849, he was sentenced to a $250 fine and a year's imprisonment. After his release he devoted himself to writing sensational stories for weekly newspapers, and his income from this source is said to have amounted to $20,000 a year. He was later involved in a nativist riot in St. Louis, while he was a member of the Know Nothing Party.

Although a heavy drinker, he traveled around the country giving lectures about temperance, and was until the election of 1884, when he refused to support James G. Blaine, an ardent Republican. It was on one of his temperance lecture tours that he encountered William F. Cody.

Wild Bill Hickok
While traveling through Nebraska, Buntline heard that Wild Bill Hickok was in Fort McPherson. Having read a popular article about him, Buntline hoped to interview Hickok and write a dime novel about him. Finding Hickok in a saloon, he rushed up to him saying "There's my man! I want you!" By this time in his life, Hickok had an aversion to surprises. He threatened Buntline with a gun and ordered him out of town in twenty-four hours. Buntline took him at his word and left the saloon. Still looking to get information on his subject, Buntline took to finding Hickock's friends. It is likely that this is how he first met "Buffalo Bill".

Buffalo Bill
Traveling with William Cody, Buntline became enamored with the gregarious man and would claim that he devised the nickname "Buffalo Bill" for the hero of his serial novel Buffalo Bill, the King of the Border Men, published in the New York Weekly beginning 23 December 1869. Originally Buntline was going to cast Cody as a sidekick to "Wild Bill" Hickok, but found his character more interesting than Hickok's. Buntline presented Cody as a "compendium of cliches", however this did not stop New York Playwright Frank Meader from using Buntline's novel as the basis of a play about Cody's life in 1872. In that same year Buntline and James Gordon Bennett Jr. invited Cody to New York City, where Cody saw the play at the Bowery Theater. In December of that year, Buntline wrote a Buffalo Bill play of his own called Scouts of the Prairie starring Cody himself, Texas Jack Omohundro, the Italian ballerina Giuseppina Morlacchi and Buntline. For some time the then six-year-old Carlos Montezuma also was featured in the show as Atzeka, the Apache-child of Cochise, being the only genuine Native American on stage, while his adoptive father, the Italian photographer Carlo Gentile, was hired to produce and sell promotional cartes de visite of the cast members.

Cody at first was a reluctant actor, but then decided he enjoyed the spotlight. Scouts of the Prairie opened in Chicago in December 1872 and starred Cody and although panned by critics, the play was a success. It was performed to packed theaters across the country for years. Cody served as a scout for the Army in the summer; when campaigning stopped for the winter, he would head to the stage. Buntline's play served as a training aid for Cody's later Wild West show.

Later work
Buntline continued to write dime novels, though none was as successful as his earlier work. Later in life he embellished his military career, claiming to have been chief of scouts in the Indian Wars, with the rank of colonel, and to have received twenty wounds in battle. He also used the following pseudonyms: Captain Hal Decker, Scout Jack Ford, and Edward Minturn. He settled into his home in Stamford, New York, where he died of congestive heart failure in 1886. Although he was once one of the wealthiest authors in America, his wife had to sell his beloved home "The Eagle's Nest" to pay his debts.

Buntline's novels often had unintended consequences. Some avid readers became thrilled with the exploits even of western outlaws and as a result glamorized crime. The female bandits, Little Britches and Cattle Annie, for instance read dime novels which aroused their interest in the Doolin gang and may have propelled them into a youthful life of crime.

The Buntline Special
According to Wyatt Earp's biographer, Stuart N. Lake, Earp and four other well-known western lawmen - Bat Masterson, Bill Tilghman, Charlie Bassett, and Neal Brown - each received a Colt Single Action Army revolver as a gift from Ned Buntline. The revolvers were chambered in .45 Colt, had 12 in barrels, a removable shoulder stock, standard sights, wooden grips into which the name “Ned” was ornately carved and came to be known collectively as "The Buntline Special".

According to Lake, Earp kept his at the original 12" length but the four other recipients of the Buntline Specials cut their barrels down to 7½". Lake spent much effort trying to track these guns through the Colt company, Masterson, and Earp's contacts in Alaska. Researchers have never found any record of an order received by the Colt company, and Buntline's alleged connections to Earp have been largely discredited. Schillingberg states that there is solid proof that Buntline was in the Eastern United States during the time the presentation was supposed to have happened. There is also no evidence that Buntline wrote about the occasion, and Buntline wrote about everything.

In Massad Ayoob's Greatest Handguns of the World Volume 2, Ayoob states "Historians debate whether Wyatt Earp owned a 'Buntline Special' (author is inclined to believe that he did), but Colt manufactured many in the latter half of the 20th Century."

The actor Lindsay Workman played the role of Buntline in the ABC/Warner Brothers western television series, Colt .45 in the 1959 episode entitled "A Legend of Buffalo Bill." Britt Lomond was cast as Cody. In the story line, while investigating a series of raids on the railroad, series character Christopher Colt, portrayed by Wayde Preston, meets Cody, who offers to sell Colt .45 pistols. The episode falsely implies that Colt gave Cody his nickname of "Buffalo Bill.

From 1955 to 1958, actor Lloyd Corrigan played Buntline in three episodes of the ABC western series, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, starring Hugh O'Brian.