The Story of the Outlaw Part 2

After a chase of about nine miles, Leeper came within gun-shot of the latter and fired. The ball entering his thigh, pa.s.sed through it and penetrated his horse and both fell. Harpe's gun escaped from his hand and rolled some eight or ten feet down the bank. Reloading his rifle, Leeper ran to where the wounded outlaw lay weltering in his blood, and found him with one thigh broken, and the other crushed beneath his horse. Leeper rolled the horse away, and set Harpe in an easier position. The robber begged that he might not be killed. Leeper told him that he had nothing to fear from him, but that Stagall was coming up, and could not probably be restrained.

Harpe appeared very much frightened at hearing this, and implored Leeper to protect him. In a few moments, Stagall appeared, and without uttering a word, raised his rifle and shot Harpe through the head. They then severed the head from the body, and stuck it upon a pole where the road crosses the creek, from which the place was then named and is yet called Harpe's Head. Thus perished one of the boldest and most noted freebooters that has ever appeared in America. Save courage, he was without one redeeming quality, and his death freed the country from a terror which had long paralyzed its boldest spirits.

"The 'Little Harpe' afterward joined the band of Meason, and became one of his most valuable a.s.sistants in the dreadful trade of robbery and murder. He was one of the two bandits that, tempted by the reward for their leader's head, murdered him, and eventually themselves suffered the penalty of the law as previously related."

Thus it would seem that the first quarter of the last century on the frontier was not without its own interest. The next decade, or that ending about 1840, however, offered a still greater instance of outlawry, one of the most famous ones indeed of American history, although little known to-day. This had to do with that genius in crime, John A. Murrell, long known as the great Western land-pirate; and surely no pirate of the seas was ever more enterprising or more dangerous.

Murrell was another man who, in a decent walk of life, would have been called great. He had more than ordinary energy and intellect. He was not a mere brute, but a shrewd, cunning, scheming man, hesitating at no crime on earth, yet animated by a mind so bold that mere personal crime was not enough for him. When it is added that he had a gang of robbers and murderers a.s.sociated with him who were said to number nearly two thousand men, and who were scattered over the entire South below the Ohio river, it may be seen how bold were his plans; and his ability may further be shown in the fact that for years these men lived among and mingled with their fellows in civil life, unknown and unsuspected. Some of them were said to have been of the best families of the land; and even yet there come to light strange and romantic tales, perhaps not wholly true, of death-bed confessions of men prominent in the South who admitted that once they belonged to Murrell's gang, but had later repented and reformed. A prominent Kentucky lawyer was one of these.

Murrell and his confederates would steal horses and mules, or at least the common cla.s.s, or division, known as the "strikers," would do so, although the members of the Grand Council would hardly stoop to so petty a crime. For them was reserved the murdering of travelers or settlers who were supposed to have money, and the larger operations of negro stealing.

The theft of slaves, the claiming of the runaway rewards, the later re-stealing and re-selling and final killing of the negro in order to destroy the evidence, are matters which Murrell reduced to a system that has no parallel in the criminal records of the country. But not even here did this daring outlaw pause. It was not enough to steal a negro here and there, and to make a few thousand dollars out of each negro so handled. The whole state of organized society was to be overthrown by means of this same black population. So at least goes one story of his life. We know of several so-called black insurrections that were planned at one time or another in the South--as, for instance, the Turner insurrection in Virginia; but this Murrell enterprise was the biggest of them all.

The plan was to have the uprising occur all over the South on the same day, Christmas of 1835. The blacks were to band together and march on the settlements, after killing all the whites on the farms where they worked. There they were to fall under the leaders.h.i.+p of Murrell's lieutenants, who were to show them how to sack the stores, to kill the white merchants, and take the white women. The banks of all the Southern towns were to become the property of Murrell and his a.s.sociates. In short, at one stroke, the entire system of government, which had been established after such hard effort in that fierce wilderness along the old Southern "traces," was to be wiped out absolutely. The land was indeed to be left without law. The entire fruits of organized society were to belong to a band of outlaws. This was probably the best and boldest instance ever seen of the narrowness of the line dividing society and savagery.

Murrell was finally brought to book by his supposed confederate, Virgil A. Stewart, the spy, who went under the name of Hues, whose evidence, after many difficulties, no doubt resulted in the breaking up of this, the largest and most dangerous band of outlaws this country ever saw; although Stewart himself was a vain and ambitious notoriety seeker.

Supposing himself safe, Murrell gave Stewart a detailed story of his life. This was later used in evidence against him; and although Stewart's account needs qualification, it is the best and fullest record obtainable to-day.[C]

[Footnote C: "Life and Adventures of Virgil A. Stewart." Harper and Brothers, New York. 1836.]

"I was born in Middle Tennessee," Murrell personally stated. "My parents had not much property, but they were intelligent people; and my father was an honest man I expect, and tried to raise me honest, but I think none the better of him for that. My mother was of the pure grit; she learned me and all her children to steal as soon as we could walk and would hide for us whenever she could. At ten years old I was not a bad hand. The first good haul I made was from a pedler who lodged at my father's house one night.

"I began to look after larger spoils and ran several fine horses. By the time I was twenty I began to acquire considerable character, and concluded to go off and do my speculation where I was not known, and go on a larger scale; so I began to see the value of having friends in this business. I made several a.s.sociates; I had been acquainted with some old hands for a long time, who had given me the names of some royal fellows between Nashville and Tuscaloosa, and between Nashville and Savannah in the state of Georgia and many other places. Myself and a fellow by the name of Crenshaw gathered four good horses and started for Georgia. We got in company with a young South Carolinian just before we reached c.u.mberland Mountain, and Crenshaw soon knew all about his business. He had been to Tennessee to buy a drove of hogs, but when he got there pork was dearer than he calculated, and he declined purchasing. We concluded he was a prize. Crenshaw winked at me; I understood his idea. Crenshaw had traveled the road before, but I never had; we had traveled several miles on the mountain, when we pa.s.sed near a great precipice; just before we pa.s.sed it, Crenshaw asked me for my whip, which had a pound of lead in the b.u.t.t; I handed it to him, and he rode up by the side of the South Carolinian, and gave him a blow on the side of the head, and tumbled him from his horse; we lit from our horses and fingered his pockets; we got twelve hundred and sixty-two dollars. Crenshaw said he knew of a place to hide him, and gathered him under the arms, and I by his feet, and conveyed him to a deep crevice in the brow of the precipice, and tumbled him into it; he went out of sight. We then tumbled in his saddle, and took his horse with us, which was worth two hundred dollars. We turned our course for South Alabama, and sold our horse for a good price. We frolicked for a week or more and were the highest larks you ever saw. We commenced sporting and gambling, and lost every cent of our money.

"We were forced to resort to our profession for a second raise. We stole a negro man, and pushed for Mississippi. We had promised him that we would conduct him to a free state if he would let us sell him once as we went on our way; we also agreed to give him part of the money. We sold him for six hundred dollars; but, when we went to start, the negro seemed to be very uneasy, and appeared to doubt our coming back for him as we had promised. We lay in a creek bottom, not far from the place where we had sold the negro, all the next day, and after dark we went to the china-tree in the lane where we were to meet Tom; he had been waiting for some time. He mounted his horse, and we pushed with him a second time. We rode twenty miles that night to the house of a friendly speculator. I had seen him in Tennessee, and had given him several lifts. He gave me his place of residence, that I might find him when I was pa.s.sing. He is quite rich, and one of the best kind of fellows. Our horses were fed as much as they would eat, and two of them were foundered the next morning. We were detained a few days, and during that time our friend went to a little village in the neighborhood, and saw the negro advertised, with a description of the two men of whom he had been purchased, and with mention of them as suspicious personages. It was rather squally times, but any port in a storm; we took the negro that night to the bank of a creek which runs by the farm of our friend, and Crenshaw shot him through the head. We took out his entrails and sunk him in the creek; our friend furnished us with one fine horse, and we left him our foundered horses. We made our way through the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, and then to Williamson county, in this state. We should have made a fine trip if we had taken care of all we got.

"I had become a considerable libertine, and when I returned home I spent a few months rioting in all the luxuries of forbidden pleasures with the girls of my acquaintance. My stock of cash was soon gone, and I put to my s.h.i.+ft for more. I commenced with horses, and ran several from the adjoining counties. I had got a.s.sociated with a young man who had professed to be a preacher among the Methodists, and a sharper he was; he was as slick on the tongue as goose-grease. I took my first lessons in divinity from this young preacher. He was highly respected by all who knew him, and well calculated to please; he first put me in the notion of preaching, to aid me in my speculations.

"I got into difficulty about a mare that I had taken, and was imprisoned for near three years. I s.h.i.+fted it from court to court, but was at last found guilty, and whipped. During my confinement I read the scriptures, and became a good judge of theology. I had not neglected the criminal laws for many years before that time. When they turned me loose I was prepared for anything; I wanted to kill all but those of my own grit; and I will die by the side of one of them before I will desert.

"My next speculation was in the Choctaw region; myself and brother stole two fine horses, and made our way into this country. We got in with an old negro man and his wife, and three sons, to go off with us to Texas, and promised them that, if they would work for us one year after we got there, we would let them go free, and told them many fine stories. The old negro became suspicious that we were going to sell him, and grew quite contrary; so we landed one day by the side of an island, and I requested him to go with me round the point of the island to hunt a good place to catch some fish. After we were hidden from our company I shot him through the head, and then ripped open his belly and tumbled him into the river. I returned to my company, and told them that the negro had fallen into the river, and that he never came up after he went under. We landed fifty miles above New Orleans, and went into the country and sold our negroes to a Frenchman for nineteen hundred dollars.

"We went from where we sold the negroes to New Orleans, and dressed ourselves like young lords. I mixed with the loose characters at the _swamp_ every night. One night, as I was returning to the tavern where I boarded, I was stopped by two armed men, who demanded my money. I handed them my pocketbook, and observed that I was very happy to meet with them, as we were all of the same profession. One of them observed, 'D--d if I ever rob a brother chip. We have had our eyes on you and the man that has generally come with you for several nights; we saw so much rigging and glittering jewelry, that we concluded you must be some wealthy dandy, with a surplus of cash; and had determined to rid you of the trouble of some of it; but, if you are a robber, here is your pocketbook, and you must go with us to-night, and we will give you an introduction to several fine fellows of the block; but stop, do you understand this motion?' I answered it, and thanked them for their kindness, and turned with them. We went to old Mother Surgick's, and had a real frolic with her girls. That night was the commencement of my greatness in what the world calls villainy. The two fellows who robbed me were named Haines and Phelps; they made me known to all the speculators that visited New Orleans, and gave me the name of every fellow who would speculate that lived on the Mississippi river, and many of its tributary streams, from New Orleans up to all the large Western cities.

"I had become acquainted with a Kentuckian, who boarded at the same tavern I did, and I suspected he had a large sum of money; I felt an inclination to count it for him before I left the city; so I made my notions known to Phelps and my other new comrades, and concerted our plan. I was to get him off to the _swamp_ with me on a spree, and when we were returning to our lodgings, my friends were to meet us and rob us both. I had got very intimate with the Kentuckian, and he thought me one of the best fellows in the world. He was very fond of wine; and I had him well fumed with good wine before I made the proposition for a frolic. When I invited him to walk with me he readily accepted the invitation. We cut a few s.h.i.+nes with the girls, and started to the tavern. We were met by a band of robbers, and robbed of all our money.

The Kentuckian was so mad that he cursed the whole city, and wished that it would all be deluged in a flood of water so soon as he left the place. I went to my friends the next morning, and got my share of the spoil money, and my pocketbook that I had been robbed of. We got seven hundred and fifty dollars of the bold Kentuckian, which was divided among thirteen of us.

"I commenced traveling and making all the acquaintances among the speculators that I could. I went from New Orleans to Cincinnati, and from there I visited Lexington, in Kentucky. I found a speculator about four miles from Newport, who furnished me with a fine horse the second night after I arrived at his house. I went from Lexington to Richmond, in Virginia, and from there I visited Charleston, in the State of South Carolina; and from thence to Milledgeville, by the way of Savannah and Augusta, in the State of Georgia. I made my way from Milledgeville to Williamson county, the old stamping-ground. In all the route I only robbed eleven men but I preached some fine sermons, and scattered some counterfeit United States paper among my brethren.

"After I returned home from the first grand circuit I made among my speculators, I remained there but a short time, as I could not rest when my mind was not actively engaged in some speculation. I commenced the foundation of this mystic clan on that tour, and suggested the plan of exciting a rebellion among the negroes, as the sure road to an inexhaustible fortune to all who would engage in the expedition. The first mystic sign which is used by this clan was in use among robbers before I was born; and the second had its origin from myself, Phelps, Haines, Cooper, Doris, Bolton, Harris, Doddridge, Celly, Morris, Walton, Depont, and one of my brothers, on the second night after my acquaintance with them in New Orleans. We needed a higher order to carry on our designs, and we adopted our sign, and called it the sign of the Grand Council of the Mystic Clan; and practised ourselves to give and receive the new sign to a fraction before we parted; and, in addition to this improvement, we invented and formed a mode of corresponding, by means of ten characters, mixed with other matter, which has been very convenient on many occasions, and especially when any of us get into difficulties. I was encouraged in my new undertaking, and my heart began to beat high with the hope of being able one day to visit the pomp of the Southern and Western people in my vengeance; and of seeing their cities and towns one common scene of devastation, smoked walls and fragments.

"I decoyed a negro man from his master in Middle Tennessee, and sent him to Mill's Point by a young man, and I waited to see the movements of the owner. He thought his negro had run off. So I started to take possession of my prize. I got another friend at Mill's Point to take my negro in a skiff, and convey him to the mouth of Red river, while I took pa.s.sage on a steamboat. I then went through the country by land, and sold my negro for nine hundred dollars, and the second night after I sold him I stole him again, and my friend ran him to the Irish bayou in Texas; I followed on after him, and sold my negro in Texas for five hundred dollars. I then resolved to visit South America, and see if there was an opening in that country for a speculation; I had also concluded that I could get some strong friends in that quarter to aid me in my designs relative to a negro rebellion; but of all people in the world, the Spaniards are the most treacherous and cowardly; I never want them concerned in any matter with me; I had rather take the negroes in this country to fight than a Spaniard. I stopped in a village, and pa.s.sed as a doctor, and commenced practising medicine. I could ape the doctor first-rate, having read Ewel, and several other works on primitive medicine. I became a great favorite of an old Catholic; he adopted me as his son in the faith, and introduced me to all the best families as a young doctor from North America. I had been with the old Catholic but a very short time before I was a great Roman Catholic, and bowed to the cross, and attended regularly to all the ceremonies of that persuasion; and, to tell you the fact, Hues, all the Catholic religion needs to be universally received, is to be correctly represented; but you know I care nothing for religion. I had been with the old Catholic about three months, and was getting a heavy practice, when an opportunity offered for me to rob the good man's secretary of nine hundred and sixty dollars in gold, and I could have got as much more in silver if I could have carried it. I was soon on the road for home again; I stopped three weeks in New Orleans as I came home, and had some high fun with old Mother Surgick's girls.

"I collected all my a.s.sociates in New Orleans at one of my friend's houses in that place, and we sat in council three days before we got all our plans to our notion; we then determined to undertake the rebellion at every hazard, and make as many friends as we could for that purpose.

Every man's business being a.s.signed him, I started for Natchez on foot.

Having sold my horse in New Orleans with the intention of stealing another after I started, I walked four days, and no opportunity offered for me to get a horse. The fifth day, about twelve o'clock, I had become very tired, and stopped at a creek to get some water and rest a little.

While I was sitting on a log, looking down the road I had come, a man came in sight riding a good-looking horse. The very moment I saw him I determined to have his horse if he was in the garb of a traveler. He rode up, and I saw from his equipage that he was a traveler. I arose from my seat and drew an elegant rifle pistol on him, and ordered him to dismount. He did so, and I took his horse by the bridle, and pointed down the creek, and ordered him to walk before me. We went a few hundred yards and stopped. I hitched his horse, then made him undress himself, all to his s.h.i.+rt and drawers, and ordered him to turn his back to me. He asked me if I was going to shoot him. I ordered him the second time to turn his back to me. He said, 'If you are determined to kill me, let me have time to pray before I die.' I told him I had no time to hear him pray. He turned round and dropped on his knees, and I shot him through the back of the head. I ripped open his belly, and took out his entrails, and sunk him in the creek. I then searched his pockets, and found four hundred and one dollars and thirty-seven cents, and a number of papers that I did not take time to examine. I sunk the pocketbook and papers and his hat in the creek. His boots were brand new, and fitted me very genteelly, and I put them on, and sunk my old shoes in the creek to atone for them. I rolled up his clothes and put them into his portmanteau, as they were quite new cloth of the best quality. I mounted as fine a horse as ever I straddled, and directed my course to Natchez in much better style than I had been for the last five days.

"I reached Natchez, and spent two days with my friends at that place and the girls under the Hill together. I then left Natchez for the Choctaw nation, with the intention of giving some of them a chance for their property. As I was riding along between Benton and Rankin, planning for my designs, I was overtaken by a tall and good-looking young man, riding an elegant horse, which was splendidly rigged off; and the young gentleman's apparel was of the gayest that could be had, and his watch-chain and other jewelry were of the richest and best. I was anxious to know if he intended to travel through the Choctaw nation, and soon managed to learn. He said he had been to the lower country with a drove of negroes, and was returning home to Kentucky. We rode on, and soon got very intimate for strangers, and agreed to be company through the Indian nation. We were two fine-looking men, and, to hear us talk, we were very rich. I felt him on the subject of speculation, but he cursed the speculators, and said he was in a bad condition to fall into the hands of such villains, as he had the cash with him that twenty negroes had sold for; and that he was very happy that he happened to get in company with me through the nation. I concluded he was a n.o.ble prize, and longed to be counting his cash. At length we came into one of those long stretches in the Nation, where there was no house for twenty miles, on the third day after we had been in company with each other. The country was high, hilly, and broken, and no water; just about the time I reached the place where I intended to count my companion's cash, I became very thirsty, and insisted on turning down a deep hollow, or dale, that headed near the road, to hunt some water. We had followed down the dale for near four hundred yards, when I drew my pistol and shot him through. He fell dead; I commenced hunting for his cash, and opened his large pocketbook, which was stuffed very full; and when I began to open it I thought it was a treasure indeed; but oh! the contents of that book! it was richly filled with the copies of love-songs, the forms of love-letters, and some of his own composition,--but no cash. I began to cut off his clothes with my knife, and examine them for his money. I found four dollars and a half in change in his pockets, and no more. And is this the amount for which twenty negroes sold? thought I. I recollected his watch and jewelry, and I gathered them in; his chain was rich and good, but it was swung to an old bra.s.s watch. He was a puff for true, and I thought all such fools ought to die as soon as possible. I took his horse, and swapped him to an Indian native for four ponies, and sold them on the way home. I reached home, and spent a few weeks among the girls of my acquaintance, in all the enjoyments that money could afford.

"My next trip was through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland, and then back to South Carolina, and from there round by Florida and Alabama. I began to conduct the progress of my operations, and establish my emissaries over the country in every direction.

"I have been going ever since from one place to another, directing and managing; but I have others now as good as myself to manage. This fellow, Phelps, that I was telling you of before, he is a n.o.ble chap among the negroes, and he wants them all free; he knows how to excite them as well as any person; but he will not do for a robber, as he cannot kill a man unless he has received an injury from him first. He is now in jail at Vicksburg, and I fear will hang. I went to see him not long since, but he is so strictly watched that nothing can be done. He has been in the habit of stopping men on the highway, and robbing them, and letting them go on; but that will never do for a robber; after I rob a man he will never give evidence against me, and there is but one safe plan in the business, and that is to kill--if I could not afford to kill a man, I would not rob.

"The great object that we have in contemplation is to excite a rebellion among the negroes throughout the slave-holding states. Our plan is to manage so as to have it commence everywhere at the same hour. We have set on the 25th of December, 1835, for the time to commence our operations. We design having our companies so stationed over the country, in the vicinity of the banks and large cities, that when the negroes commence their carnage and slaughter, we will have detachments to fire the towns and rob the banks while all is confusion and dismay.

The rebellion taking place everywhere at the same time, every part of the country will be engaged in its own defence; and one part of the country can afford no relief to another, until many places will be entirely overrun by the negroes, and our pockets replenished from the banks and the desks of rich merchants' houses. It is true that in many places in the slave states the negro population is not strong, and would be easily overpowered; but, back them with a few resolute leaders from our clan, they will murder thousands, and huddle the remainder into large bodies of stationary defence for their own preservation; and then, in many other places, the black population is much the strongest, and under a leader would overrun the country before any steps could be taken to suppress them.

"We do not go to every negro we see and tell him that the negroes intend to rebel on the night of the 25th of December, 1835. We find the most vicious and wickedly disposed on large farms, and poison their minds by telling them how they are mistreated. When we are convinced that we have found a bloodthirsty devil, we swear him to secrecy and disclose to him the secret, and convince him that every other state and section of country where there are any negroes intend to rebel and slay all the whites they can on the night of the 25th of December, 1835, and a.s.sure him that there are thousands of white men engaged in trying to free them, who will die by their sides in battle. We have a long ceremony for the oath, which is administered in the presence of a terrific picture painted for that purpose, representing the monster who is to deal with him should he prove unfaithful in the engagements he has entered into.

This picture is highly calculated to make a negro true to his trust, for he is disposed to be superst.i.tious at best.

"Our black emissaries have the promise of a share in the spoils we may gain, and we promise to conduct them to Texas should we be defeated, where they will be free; but we never talk of being defeated. We always talk of victory and wealth to them. There is no danger in any man, if you can ever get him once implicated or engaged in a matter. That is the way we employ our strikers in all things; we have them implicated before we trust them from our sight.

"This may seem too bold, but that is what I glory in. All the crimes I have ever committed have been of the most daring; and I have been successful in all my attempts as yet; and I am confident that I will be victorious in this matter, as in the robberies which I have in contemplation; and I will have the pleasure and honor of seeing and knowing that by my management I have glutted the earth with more human gore, and destroyed more property, than any other robber who has ever lived in America, or the known world. I look on the American people as my common enemy. My clan is strong, brave, and experienced, and rapidly increasing in strength every day. I should not be surprised if we were to be two thousand strong by the 25th of December, 1835; and, in addition to this, I have the advantage of any other leader of banditti that has ever preceded me, for at least one-half of my Grand Council are men of high standing, and many of them in honorable and lucrative offices."

The number of men, more or less prominent, in the different states included: sixty-one from Tennessee, forty-seven from Mississippi, forty-six from Arkansas, twenty-five from Kentucky, twenty-seven from Missouri, twenty-eight from Alabama, thirty-three from Georgia, thirty-five from South Carolina, thirty-two from North Carolina, twenty-one from Virginia, twenty-seven from Maryland, sixteen from Florida, thirty-two from Louisiana. The transient members who made a habit of traveling from place to place numbered twenty-two; Murrell said that there was a total list of two thousand men in his band, including all cla.s.ses.

To the foregoing sketch of Murrell's life Mr. Alexander Hynds, historian of Tennessee, adds some facts and comments which will enable the reader more fully to make his own estimate as to this singular man:

"The central meeting place of Murrell's band was near an enormous cottonwood tree in Mississippi county, Arkansas. It was standing in 1890, and is perhaps still standing in the wilderness shortly above Memphis. His widely scattered bands had a system of signs and pa.s.swords. Murrell himself was married to the sister of one of his gang. He bought a good farm near Denmark, Madison county, Tennessee, where he lived as a plain farmer, while he conducted the most fearful schemes of rapine and murder from New Orleans up to Memphis, St. Louis and Cincinnati.

"Nature had done much for Murrell. He had a quick mind, a fine natural address and great adaptability; and he was as much at ease among the refined and cultured as with his own gang. He made a special study of criminal law, and knew something of medicine. He often palmed himself off as a preacher, and preached in large camp-meetings--and some were converted under his ministry! He often used his clerical garb in pa.s.sing counterfeit money. With a clear head, cool, fine judgment, and a nature utterly without fear, moral or physical, his power over his men never waned. To them he was just, fair and amiable. He was a kind husband and brother, and a faithful friend. He took great pride in his position and in the operations of his gang. This conceit was the only weak spot in his nature, and led to his downfall.

"Stewart, who purports to be Murrell's biographer, made Murrell's acquaintance, pretended to join his gang, and playing on his vanity, attended a meeting of the gang at the rendezvous at the Big Cottonwood, and saw the meeting of the Grand Council. He had Murrell arrested, and he was tried, convicted and sent to the Tennessee penitentiary in 1834 for ten years. There he worked in the blacksmith shops, but by the time he got out, was broken down in mind and body, emerging an imbecile and an invalid, to live less than a year.

"Stewart's account holds inconsistencies and inaccuracies, such as that many men high in social and official life belonged to Murrell's gang, which his published lists do not show. He had perhaps 440 to 450 men, scattered from New Orleans to Cincinnati, but his downfall spread fear and distrust among them.

"At Vicksburg, on July 4, 1835, a drunken member of the gang threatened to attack the authorities, and was tarred and feathered.

Others of the gang, or at least several well-known gamblers, collected and defied the citizens, and killed the good and brave Dr. Bodley. Five men were hung, Hullams, Dutch Bill, North, Smith and McCall. The news swept like wildfire through the Mississippi Valley and gave heart to the lovers of law and order. At one or two other places some were shot, some were hanged, and now and then one or two were sent to prison, and thus an end was put to organized crime in the Southwest forever; and this closed out the reign of the river cutthroats, pirates and gamblers as well."

Thus, as in the case of St.u.r.devant, lynch law put an effectual end to outlawry that the law itself could not control.

Chapter V

The Vigilantes of California--_The Greatest Vigilante Movement of the World_--_History of the California "Stranglers" and Their Methods_.

The world will never see another California. Great gold stampedes there may be, but under conditions far different from those of 1849.

Transportation has been so developed, travel has become so swift and easy, that no section can now long remain segregated from the rest of the world. There is no corner of the earth which may not now be reached with a celerity impossible in the days of the great rush to the Pacific Coast. The whole structure of civilization, itself based upon transportation, goes swiftly forward with that transportation, and the tent of the miner or adventurer finds immediately erected by its side the temple of the law.

It was not thus in those early days of our Western history. The law was left far behind by reason of the exigencies of geography and of wilderness travel. Thousands of honest men pressed on across the plains and mountains inflamed, it is true, by the madness of the l.u.s.t for gold, but carrying at the outset no wish to escape from the watch-care of the law. With them went equal numbers of those eager to escape all restraints of society and law, men intending never to aid in the uprearing of the social system in new wild lands. Both these elements, the law-loving and the law-hating, as they advanced _pari-pa.s.su_ farther and farther from the staid world which they had known, noticed the development of a strange phenomenon: that law, which they had left behind them, waned in importance with each pa.s.sing day. The standards of the old home changed, even as customs changed. A week's journey from the settlements showed the argonaut a new world. A month hedged it about to itself, alone, apart, with ideas and values of its own and independent of all others. A year sufficed to leave that world as distinct as though it occupied a planet all its own. For that world the divine fire of the law must be re-discovered, evolved, nay, evoked fresh from chaos even as the savage calls forth fire from the dry and sapless twigs of the wilderness.

In the gold country all ideas and principles were based upon new conditions. Precedents did not exist. Man had gone savage again, and it was the beginning. Yet this savage, willing to live as a savage in a land which was one vast encampment, was the Anglo-Saxon savage, and therefore carried with him that chief trait of the American character, the principle that what a man earns--not what he steals, but what he earns--is his and his alone. This principle sowed in ground forbidding and unpromising was the seed of the law out of which has sprung the growth of a mighty civilization fit to be called an empire of its own.

The growth and development of law under such conditions offered phenomena not recorded in the history of any other land or time.

In the first place, and even while in transit, men organized for the purpose of self-protection, and in this necessary act law-abiding and criminal elements united. After arriving at the scenes of the gold fields, such organization was forgotten; even the parties that had banded together in the Eastern states as partners rarely kept together for a month after reaching the region where luck, hazard and opportunity, inextricably blended, appealed to each man to act for himself and with small reference to others. The first organizations of the mining camps were those of the criminal element. They were presently met by the organization of the law and order men. Hard upon the miners'