From the Richmond Dispatch, 7/16/1866, p. 1, c. 3

COMMONWEALTH VS. R. D. OGDEN. – This case was taken up in the Hustings Court on Saturday. Mr. James Lyons appeared as counsel for the defendant, and a motion made by him to quash the indictment was overruled.

The evidence for the prosecution was materially the same as that in the case of J. Marshall Hanna, already published; but the evidence for the defence appeared to prove conclusively that Hanna was deliberately the aggressor. At the close of the examination for the defence, Mr. Lyons called Mr. William Ira Smith to the stand.

The witness was duly sworn, and was then asked if he knew anything in relation to a paragraph published in the Richmond Whig concerning Chester, a colored correspondent of a Northern paper, the authorship or sanction of which had been attributed to Mr. Smith, and to which allusion was made in the card published by R. D. Ogden, which led to the shooting affray.

Mr. Smith, in reply, stated that he knew nothing of the paragraph in question except that he held a paper from Mr. W. A. R. Nye, who was foreman of the Whig at the time, certifying that J. Marshall Hanna was the author of the paragraph in question.

Mr. Nye was then sent for, and when duly sworn he deposed that he was the foreman of the Whig at the time referred to, received and gave out all copy, and that J. M. Hanna was the author of the paragraph concerning the negro Chester.

The jury then retired, and after an absence of a few minutes returned a verdict of acquittal in favor of R. D. Ogden.

We append a copy of the paragraph in allusion to Chester contained in Mr. Ogden’s card, and also a copy of the original paragraph upon which it was founded.

* * * * “who wrote in the columns of the Whig while Mr. Smith was in New York a complimentary notice of one Chester, a negro correspondent of the Philadelphia Press, whom he pronounced a gentleman, and to whom he extended editorial courtesies.” * * * - From the card published by R. D. Ogden in the Richmond Enquirer of March 2, 1866.
“A Colored Correspondent. – Mr. Chester, a gentleman of color, dark as any Ethiopian in the land, is in Richmond acting as the correspondent of the Philadelphia Press. We have met Mr. Chester; he is a very intelligent man, modest, assumes nothing neither in conversation nor in manners, but talks and acts like a gentleman. He is stopping at the Ballard Hotel.” – From the Richmond Whig of April 11, 1866.

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