Alexander Keith McClung (14 June 1811 – 23 March 1855) was an attorney from Vicksburg, Mississippi, who briefly served as US chargé d'affairestoBolivia in President Zachary Taylor's administration.[1] An "inveterate Southern duelist"[2] nicknamed "The Black Knight of the South", he killed as many as fourteen men in duels during his life.[3] He was also a poet. James H. Street used him as the model for the character Keith Alexander in his novel Tap Roots (1942).
^Holland, Barbara (October 1997). "Bang! Bang! You're Dead". Smithsonian magazine. The Smithsonian. p. 4. Archived from the original on 18 December 2011. Retrieved 3 June 2012. Hair triggers fell into disrepute, but speed and accuracy continued to improve, particularly for shooting at greater distances. (In 1834 Alexander McClung, inveterate Southern duelist, set a new record by fatally shooting his man in the mouth with a percussion pistol at over a hundred feet.)
^Roger Roots, When Lawyers Were Serial Killers: Nineteenth Century Visions of Good Moral Character, 22 N. ILL. U. L. REV. 19 (2001).
^WILLIAM 0. STEVENS, PISTOLS AT TEN PACES: THE STORY OF THE CODE OF HONOR IN AMERICA 127 (1940). Among McClung's victims were seven members of one family.
United States
United States Army
Lieutenant colonel
