A Decent, Orderly Lynching

A Decent, Orderly Lynching PDF Author: Frederick Allen
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806189886
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
The deadliest campaign of vigilante justice in American history erupted in the Rocky Mountains during the Civil War when a private army hanged twenty-one troublemakers. Hailed as great heroes at the time, the Montana vigilantes are still revered as founding fathers. Combing through original sources, including eye-witness accounts never before published, Frederick Allen concludes that the vigilantes were justified in their early actions, as they fought violent crime in a remote corner beyond the reach of government. But Allen has uncovered evidence that the vigilantes refused to disband after territorial courts were in place. Remaining active for six years, they lynched more than fifty men without trials. Reliance on mob rule in Montana became so ingrained that in 1883, a Helena newspaper editor advocated a return to “decent, orderly lynching” as a legitimate tool of social control. Allen’s sharply drawn characters, illustrated by dozens of photographs, are woven into a masterfully written narrative that will change textbook accounts of Montana’s early days—and challenge our thinking on the essence of justice.

A Decent, Orderly Lynching

A Decent, Orderly Lynching PDF Author: Frederick Allen
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806189886
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 460

Get Book Here

Book Description
The deadliest campaign of vigilante justice in American history erupted in the Rocky Mountains during the Civil War when a private army hanged twenty-one troublemakers. Hailed as great heroes at the time, the Montana vigilantes are still revered as founding fathers. Combing through original sources, including eye-witness accounts never before published, Frederick Allen concludes that the vigilantes were justified in their early actions, as they fought violent crime in a remote corner beyond the reach of government. But Allen has uncovered evidence that the vigilantes refused to disband after territorial courts were in place. Remaining active for six years, they lynched more than fifty men without trials. Reliance on mob rule in Montana became so ingrained that in 1883, a Helena newspaper editor advocated a return to “decent, orderly lynching” as a legitimate tool of social control. Allen’s sharply drawn characters, illustrated by dozens of photographs, are woven into a masterfully written narrative that will change textbook accounts of Montana’s early days—and challenge our thinking on the essence of justice.

The Montana Vigilantes

The Montana Vigilantes PDF Author: Mark C. Dillon
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1457183935
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 716

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Book Description
Historians and novelists alike have described the vigilantism that took root in the gold-mining communities of Montana in the mid-1860s, but Mark C. Dillon is the first to examine the subject through the prism of American legal history, considering the state of criminal justice and law enforcement in the western territories and also trial procedures, gubernatorial politics, legislative enactments, and constitutional rights. Using newspaper articles, diaries, letters, biographies, invoices, and books that speak to the compelling history of Montana’s vigilantism in the 1860s, Dillon examines the conduct of the vigilantes in the context of the due process norms of the time. He implicates the influence of lawyers and judges who, like their non-lawyer counterparts, shaped history during the rush to earn fortunes in gold. Dillon’s perspective as a state Supreme Court justice and legal historian uniquely illuminates the intersection of territorial politics, constitutional issues, corrupt law enforcement, and the basic need of citizenry for social order. This readable and well-directed analysis of the social and legal context that contributed to the rise of Montana vigilante groups will be of interest to scholars and general readers interested in Western history, law, and criminal justice for years to come.

Race and the Wild West

Race and the Wild West PDF Author: Laura J. Arata
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806168161
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Winner of the Western Writers of America “SPUR Award” and the Western Association of Women Historians “Gita Chaudhuri Prize”! Born a slave in eastern Tennessee, Sarah Blair Bickford (1852–1931) made her way while still a teenager to Montana Territory, where she settled in the mining boomtown of Virginia City. Race and the Wild West is the first full-length biography of this remarkable woman, whose life story affords new insight into race and belonging in the American West around the turn of the twentieth century. For many years, Sarah Bickford’s known biography fit into a single paragraph. By examining her life in all its complexity, Arata fills in what were long believed to be unrecoverable “silent spaces” in her story. Before establishing herself as a successful business owner, we learn, she was twice married, both times to white men. Her first husband, an Irish immigrant, physically abused her until she divorced him in 1881. Their three children all died before the age of ten. In 1883, she married Stephen Bickford and gave birth to four more children. Upon his death, she inherited his shares of the Virginia City Water Company, acquiring sole ownership in 1917. For the final decade of her life, Bickford actively preserved and promoted a historic Virginia City building best known as the site of the brutal lynching in 1864 of five men. Her conspicuous role in developing an early form of heritage tourism challenges long-standing narratives that place white men at the center of the “Wild West” myth and its promotion. Bickford’s story offers a window into the dynamics of race in the rural West. Although her experiences defy easy categorization, what is clear is that her navigation of social norms and racial barriers did not hinge on exceptionalism or tokenism. Instead, she built a life that deserves to be understood on its own terms. Through exhaustive research and nuanced analysis, Laura J. Arata advances our understanding of a woman whose life embodied the contradictory intersections of hope and disappointment that characterized life in the early-twentieth-century American West for brave pioneers of many races.

Vigilante Days and Ways

Vigilante Days and Ways PDF Author: Nathaniel Pitt Langford
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Frontier and pioneer life
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description


A Tenderfoot in Montana

A Tenderfoot in Montana PDF Author: Francis McGee Thompson
Publisher: Montana Historical Society
ISBN: 9780972152228
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Frank Thompson vividly recalls his experiences in gold-rush era Montana, where sought his fortune, served in the first territorial legislature, and met some of the territory's most notorious road agents.

The Irish General

The Irish General PDF Author: Paul R. Wylie
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806182636
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
Irish patriot, Civil War general, frontier governor—Thomas Francis Meagher played key roles in three major historical arenas. Today he is hailed as a hero by some, condemned as a drunkard by others. Paul R. Wylie now offers a definitive biography of this nineteenth-century figure who has long remained an enigma. The Irish General first recalls Meagher’s life from his boyhood and leadership of Young Ireland in the revolution of 1848, to his exile in Tasmania and escape to New York, where he found fame as an orator and as editor of the Irish News. He served in the Civil War—viewing the Union Army as training for a future Irish revolutionary force—and rose to the rank of brigadier general leading the famous Irish Brigade. Wylie traces Meagher’s military career in detail through the Seven Days battles, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. Wylie then recounts Meagher’s final years as acting governor of Montana Territory, sorting historical truth from false claims made against him regarding the militia he formed to combat attacking American Indians, and plumbing the mystery surrounding his death. Even as Meagher is lauded in most Irish histories, his statue in front of Montana’s capitol is viewed by some with contempt. The Irish General brings this multi-talented but seriously flawed individual to life, offering a balanced picture of the man and a captivating reading experience.

Montana's Righteous Hangmen

Montana's Righteous Hangmen PDF Author: Llewellyn Link Callaway
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806129129
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
This is the story of Montana Territory in the last half of the nineteenth century, when a massive influx of gold seekers brought murderers and robbers into the region and forced the creation of an organization of law-abiding citizens known as the Vigilantes. Led by Captain James Williams, the Vigilantes sought to stop the blatant activities of more than fifty road agents in the Bannack-Virginia City mining area, who were secretly directed and protected by a local sheriff, Henry Plummer. The first instance of taking the law into their own hands occurred when an impromptu group of men captured, tried, and hanged one notorious killer, George Ives. Thereafter, with public approval, the Vigilantes continued to ride across the land, bringing swift retribution to all wrongdoers. Lew L. Callaway, who grew up knowing Captain Williams as a friend to his father, herein recounts the stories of such famous episodes as the trial of Ives and the controversial capture and hanging of Joseph A. Slade, who was carrying the severed ears of one of his victims in his pocket on the day he was hanged. More than a history of the bloody era that spawned the Vigilantes, this is the story of life in Montana Territory, of gold fever, Indian warfare, and the cattle empire that ended, along with Captain Williams’s life, in the disastrous winter of 1887.

Hanging the Sheriff

Hanging the Sheriff PDF Author: Ruth E. Mather
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description


History of Montana. 1739-1885

History of Montana. 1739-1885 PDF Author: Michael A. Leeson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Montana
Languages : en
Pages : 1394

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Book Description


God's Thunderbolt

God's Thunderbolt PDF Author: Carol Buchanan
Publisher: Wheeler Publishing, Incorporated
ISBN: 9781410465924
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Winner of the 2009 Spur Award for Best First Novel by the Western Writers of America, as a "work whose inspirations, image and literary excellence best represent the reality and spirit of the American West." December 1863. Daniel Stark, New York lawyer and radical abolitionist, has come to the gold fields of Alder Gulch, in what will become Montana, to get enough gold to make restitution to the clients whose assets his father gambled away before killing himself. But where ruffians rule and murder is tolerated, Dan realizes that he will likely not survive to take his gold home unless he joins with others, Union and Confederate sympathizers alike, who form a Vigilante group to establish law and order. With Dan as Vigilante prosecutor, they hunt down suspected members of a criminal conspiracy operating in the area. As the Vigilantes identify and try the conspirators in secret tribunals, Dan faces the horrible prospect of hanging both a friend and the husband of the woman he loves.