Genevieve Yost
Kansas Historical
Quarterly
May, 1933 (Vol. 2, No. 2), pages 182 to 219
Transcribed by lhn; HTML editing by Name withheld upon request
digitized with permission of the Kansas State Historical Society.
ON April 18,
1932, Kansas was shocked by the lynching of Robert Read, in
Rawlins county. Not since April 19, 1920, twelve years
before, when Albert Evans was hanged at Mulberry, Crawford
county, had there been a lynching in Kansas. The
newspapers, in reporting the story, desired a list of
previous lynchings in the state, and a record of about fifty
was very hurriedly compiled in the library of the Kansas
State Historical Society. This list, when published, aroused
the interest of papers and individuals and brought in
additional items. The Russell Record headed a front-page
story in the following issue of its paper with the line,
"Hey! Russell had a lynching, too."1 Interest
grew until it was decided to prepare a list of lynchings in
Kansas which should be as complete as possible. Such a list
is valuable, not merely for its numbers and dates, but, as
this paper shows, because it reflects certain phases of the
economic, social, and industrial development and growth of
the state. This
list has been compiled through histories, newspapers,
recollections of early settlers, and associations interested
in the subject, including the Federal Council of Churches of
Christ in America, the National Association of Advancement
for Colored People, the Tuskegee Institute, and the Southern
Commission on the Study of Lynching. While these
institutions are interested mainly from the standpoint of
race prejudice, they have contributed valuable assistance.
All accounts, whenever possible, have been checked by
contemporary newspapers as a final authority. While
this list is presented as being complete as possible, there
probably occurred some not mentioned. Rumors and vague ac
counts of about two dozen not listed were found, but the
information of time or place was indefinite. There is no
reason to doubt that most of them did take place, but not
enough data is available at present to warrant their
inclusion in this list. The
lynch law, popularly spoken of as Judge Lynch, is the name
for irregular punishment, especially capital, inflicted by
private individuals independently of legal authorities. The
working definition which compilers of lynching records have
generally used is
1.
Russell Record, April 21, 1932.
YOST:
LYNCHINGS IN KANSAS 183 that
"lynching has to do with individuals supplanting the law and
acting in defiance of the law."2 On this basis
the general practice of compilers of lynching records has
been not to include in such records persons put to death in
what are commonly designated as riots. In a riot there
occurs promiscuous killing of individuals, and in a lynching
particular individuals are seized and put to death for
alleged specified offenses. By the laws of some states a
minimum of three persons may constitute a mob; by others,
five. The
Kansas statutes have several definitions of a mob. Three
persons may constitute an unlawful assembly. "If three or
more persons shall assemble together with intent to do any
unlawful act with force and violence against the person or
property of another. . ."3 It
requires five persons to constitute a mob for whose actions
a city may be held legally responsible. Since 1868 cities
have been liable for damages in consequence of the action of
mobs within their corporate limits. In 1923 the legislature
added a clause defining this mob: "Provided, however, that
the number of persons that shall constitute a mob under this
act shall be five or more." 4 In
the section which defines lynchings the number is not
stated. "That any collection of individuals assembled for an
unlawful purpose, intending to injure any person by
violence, and without authority of law, shall for the
purpose of this act be regarded as a
mob."5 The
origin of the use of the word lynching to denote summary
justice at the hands of a mob or an improvised tribunal is
obscure. By some it is said to be from James Lynch
Fitz-Stephen, warden of Galway, Ireland, who, about 1526,
sentenced his son to death for murder, and to prevent a
rescue by a mob executed him with his own hands without due
process of law. By others the term is said to have had its
origin in Virginia, where a farmer named Charles Lynch took
his own way of obtaining redress for a theft by catching the
culprit, tying him to a tree and flogging him. The popular
conception of lynching and the method most often chosen is
hanging, called in the vernacular a "necktie party," but it
is not so limited. Offenders have been shot, beaten to death
and burned at the stake with the same intention and the same
result.
2.
F.C.C.C.A., Law and the Mob (1925), p.
6. 3.
General Statutes, Kansas, 1868, ch. 31, sec.
268. 4.
Laws, Kansas, 1923, ch. 79, sec.
1. 5.
Laws, Kansas,1923, ch.221, sec.1.
184 THE
KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY The
history of lynchings in the early days of Kansas must
necessarily remain incomplete. We may suppose that it was as
common, if not more so, in the first periods of the
territory and state as later, and unfortunately complete
records of these times are lacking. We look to the
newspapers for such things, and while we find early papers
in the eastern section of Kansas, they did not follow the
people quite so rapidly to the western part of the state.
Even the papers which existed could not collect news from so
large an area as we of to-day expect. Communication was slow
and uncertain, and many lynchings were not heard of three or
four counties away. Sometimes rumors drifted over and we
find a statement like this: "A gentleman from Franklin
county said eleven horses were stolen, six men arrested, two
shot, two hung and two dismissed."6 One might be
reasonably certain that a lynching of some sort had
occurred. Many an article in a good county history and many
a reminiscence by a pioneer starts thus: "Back in the '70's
. . ." This
vagueness is due partly to inability to get the facts, and
is partly because a lynching did not cause so much
consternation then as it does now. Lynchings were more
common, the people accepted them as necessary punishments,
and they were not impressed so forcibly on the mind and
conscience as to-day. It is quite probable that many a
person forfeited his life to a self-detailed jury, if not to
a frenzied mob, whose death was never in any way
recorded. In
some instances the criminal himself preferred that he go
unnamed. One thief, when shot and dying, refused to give any
information about himself, saying he came from a good family
and preferred not to have the name degraded.7 In
Johnson county "one unlucky thief lies two feet below the
surface on Tommyhawk creek, whose name, place of residence
and all else concerning him are unknown unless he gave such
particulars to his executioners and, if so, they never told.
As nothing concerning him was divulged for several years,
the poor rascal's friends, if he had any, must have wondered
not a little as to what had become of him. Another unlucky
soul disappeared in the same vicinity in similar style, but
his executioners were so reticent that no particulars could
ever be obtained."8 Concerning the first man
mentioned, the Olathe Mirror says: "It is rumored in town
last Saturday that a horse thief had been caught and hung
out on Tommyhawk creek. We can gather
6.
Lawrence Tribune, June 18, 1864. 7.
Horse thief shot in Wabaunsee county, Dec. 15,
1862.-Kansas State Journal, Lawrence,
December 25, 3862. 8.
Heisler & Smith, Johnson County Atlas
(1874), p. 34.
YOST:
LYNCHINGS IN KANSAS 185 nothing
definite about the matter."9 It was not always
possible for the newspapers to give full information
concerning a lynching, even though they desired to do
so. It
is sometimes difficult to tell when a lynching is a
lynching. Often a "neck-tie party" was accompanied by an
impromptu court which considered itself, and was considered
by the community, legal. In Coffey county "a mob held trial
and asked those in favor of death to pass to the right of
the building and those against to the left. Nine-tenths went
to the right."10 In Atchison in April, 1863, a
mob took possession of the jail and courthouse for a week;
they held court and tried each prisoner, with four or five
lynchings as the result.11 The people banded
themselves into vigilance committees for the protection of
themselves and their property, and death punishment by these
committees was seldom considered illegal. In those days the
squatters' courts were as much respected and as effective as
the government courts. In
the days of the 1860's the slavery agitation made the
difference between a lynching and a legal hanging quite
often a matter of personal opinion and party affiliation.
The Civil War in Kansas was characterized by guerrilla and
bushwhacker warfare, and a hanging considered legal by one
side was lynching by the other; accounts of this time depend
upon which record or newspaper one reads. According to the
accepted definition many of the massacres and murders
perpetrated on the border of the state might be called
lynchings. When a group of proslavery men massacred a
free-state man they acted in accord with the sentiment of at
least part of the town, who might call it supplanting the
law, while the free-state men considered it acting in
defiance of the law. John Brown's massacre of the Doyle
family on June 24, 1856, fulfills the technical requirements
of a lynching; it consisted of more than five people, and he
considered it punishment for the sacking of Lawrence on May
21 by the proslavery element. But it would be difficult for
any nonpartisan person now to consider any act of John
Brown's a lynching. The Marais des Cygnes massacre on May
19, 1858, when five men near Trading Post, Linn county, were
taken to a ravine and murdered is in the same class of
border warfare. Neither side could be said to represent the
sentiment of the community as
9.
Olathe Mirror, May 31, 1866. 10.
Burlington Republican, December 14,
1908. 11.
Kansas City Journal, March, 1902 ; "Atchison
County Clippings" (compiled by Kansas State
Historical Society), v. 4, p. 50.
186 THE
KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY a whole, and
both sides were inflamed by the hatred of the Border
war. An
incident which illustrates the difficulty of distinguishing
between lynchings and murder was the hanging on November 12,
1860, of Russell Hinds, a farmer living near Pleasanton,
Linn county, who returned a runaway slave to his master in
Missouri. Dr. C. R. Jennison, heading a party of free-state
men, arrested him, quickly convened a court, sentenced and
hanged him for this offense. It would be difficult to
convince any southerner that this was a lynching and not a
murder.12 On
July 10, 1860, L. D. Moore was one of a party who lynched
Hugh Carlin, a horse thief. On November 16, 1860, Jennison,
with twenty-five men entered Moore's house and shot him in
retaliation.13 This incident satisfies the
definition of lynching, but it probably savors more of
guerrilla warfare. A
recent account of an event of the war would call the
following a lynching: "Col. C. R. Jennison, later in command
of the fifteenth Kansas, captured Samuel Scott, one of the
most notorious proslavery ruffians. Scott was hanged without
ceremony, and his fate met with the approval of free-state
leaders."14 While the freestate leaders
considered it a lynching, very probably the proslavery
faction called it murder or, at least, border
warfare. This
doubtful status of lynchings during the Civil War period is
shown very plainly by the contrasting opinions in a letter
written at the time of a hanging and those in later accounts
of the same event. On February 5, 1860, John R. Guthrie was
hanged at Mapleton, Bourbon county. In the manuscript
collection of the Kansas State Historical Society is a
letter written by Alpheus H. Tanner which gives an
interesting account of the affair.15 "Mapleton,
K. T., Feb. 12, 1860. "MY DEAR PARENTS: . . . Last Sunday
night about 1 o'clock a man named John R. Guthrie was hanged
about a mile and a half from here on the top. of what is
known as Tigret Mound. He was left suspended until Monday
eve. His corpse was in plain sight from here as he hung. The
proslavery's hung him for an alleged crime of horse
stealing. They arrested him without authority or shadow of
law and never gave him even a mock trial, as has
12.
Tabor, "This Day in Kansas History" (volume bound
by Kansas State Historical Society), p, 132 ;
Leavenworth Times, February 12 1928 in
"Crimes and Criminals" Clippings (Kansas State
Historical Society), v, 2, pp. 295, 296. 13.
Andreas, History of Kansas (1883), p.
1070. 14.
Tabor, "This Day in Kansas History," p.
132. 15.
Alpheus Hiram Tanner was born in Ruggles, Ohio,
July 28, 1836. He came to Kansas in 1857, living
first in Pleasanton. In 1918 he lived on a farm in
Bourbon county on the Osage river, near
Mapleton.
YOST:
LYNCHINGS IN KANSAS 187 generally
been the case. The country is again in commotion. I know not
what will be the result, the probability is that unless
Montgomery takes the field again it will soon blow over and
give them a chance to hang the next ones that gets in their
way. . . -A. H. T." An
account of this same event, as written in 1932 by C. E. Cory
to the Historical Society, describes him as a horse
thief "I
know a story I think worth preserving of a Bourbon county
execution without benefit of clergy, but it was not a
lynching. I have had the story from a lot of people,
including two eyewitnesses-not participants, of course. (?)
Away back in the later territorial days, when Bourbon county
was in the `region beyant the law,' a young man named
Guthrie was caught up near Mapleton riding somebody else's
horse. Everybody knows that at that time in those parts,
horse stealing and nigger chasing and homicide were offenses
in a class by themselves. The hardheaded and hard-fisted
farmers thereabouts gathered in a hurry. But there were no
courts that they respected or had reason to respect. What to
do? "Just
across the river south of Mapleton in the Little Osage
bottom is a little round hill about three hundred feet high
shaped almost exactly like an overturned soup bowl. They
adjourned to the top of that hill. There they elected a
judge and a sheriff and a prosecuting attorney. They
selected a jury and tried their man, who admitted his guilt.
After the verdict and the proper sentence, the sheriff had
no place to keep the man, so he executed the sentence at
once by hanging him to the limb of a jack oak tree nearby.
His body was buried where it was cut dawn. It is there
yet. "From
what I have been told I am quite satisfied that that trial
was quite as regular and formal as many cases in the regular
courts of that day, though not sanctioned by the
law. "By
the way, that hill is the same `pretty little hill' where
Lieut. Zebulon M. Pike ate the fried venison steak that
September morning in 1806, as he notes in his journal. It is
still called Guthrie mountain, and is one of the real beauty
spots of old Bourbon:"16 With
such conflicting accounts, who, seventy-two years after the
event, shall dare to say whether this lynching was the
justifiable punishment of a horse thief or the fate of a
victim of border warfare? While
it is difficult to decide whether some of the events are
lynchings or murders, there are a few which may be classed
as lynchings and charged to border warfare. In Lawrence on
August 22, 1863, the day after the Quantrill raid, Thomas
Corlew was tried by a lynch court on the charge of having
been a spy and hanged in a
16.
Letter from C. E. Cory, June 31, 1932. Extract from
Expeditions of Zebulon M. Pike (1895), v. 2,
p. 396: "In about five miles we struck a beautiful
hill, which bears south on the prairie; its
elevation I suppose to be 100 feet. From its summit
the mew is sublime to the east and southeast. We
waited on this hill to breakfast and had to send
two miles for water. Killed a deer on the rise,
which was soon roasting before the fire . . " A
footnote to this edition says. "Camp is in Bourbon
county, somewhere in the vicinity of Xenia, Zenia,
or Hay, a small place near a branch of the Little
Osage."
188 THE
KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY barn near the
City Hotel at the north end of Massachusetts street. Mr.
James C. Horton17 wrote concerning the
event: "I
was there during the whole proceeding and went to one or two
parties whom I thought might stop it, but to no avail. My
recollection is that the jury did not find any evidence
against him and so reported. His hanging was perhaps a
natural outcome of the excited state of public feeling at
that time, as Corlew was a Missourian and was said to have
been acting with the proslavery men in 1856, but I think
that many people in Lawrence regretted the occurrence and in
ordinary, quiet times no such termination of a trial, even
by a lynch court, would have been
permitted."18 Since
it is difficult to classify the massacres and murders of
this period in a nonpartisan manner, most of them have been
omitted from this list. The few which are given here as
accepted lynchings are recorded as being caused by border
warfare. The
guerrilla style of warfare of some of the authorized
regiments on the border gave rise to groups of robbers and
bushwhackers who carried on private enterprise under the
anonymity employed by armies of both sides. The "Red Legs,"
organized by a group of men who did not wish to submit to
the routine of the regular army, were employed in scouting,
dispatch carrying and guiding and wore, as a distinguishing
mark, leggings of red morocco. The desperadoes of the
country soon learned to wear red leggings so that the blame
for their depredations might be avoided. Owing to repeated
complaints of this nature the organization was soon
dissolved. Whenever possible distinction has been made
between the legitimate forces of warfare and the thieves and
bushwhackers operating under their name. Killing of
disguised desperadoes has been considered
lynching. While
extrajudicial punishment has been common in all countries
and states, it has features which are sectional. This border
warfare constituted a feature peculiar to Kansas and a few
other states, since not every state was divided into
factions with such intensive fighting within its borders.
Because our states did not pass through the stages of their
development at the same time, it is impossible to compare
them by years., When Judge Lynch held court in California,
in the stirring days of 1849, the eastern section of the
country had passed through its formative period and was well
organized. But
lynching was practically unheard of in New England at
any
17.
James Clark Horton was born at Ballston Spa, New
York, May 15, 1837; came to Kansas and settled at
Lawrence in March, 1857. He served in the house of
representatives in 1874 and in the senate in 1875
and 1870. In 1878 he moved to Kansas City, where he
died May 14, 1907. 18.
James C. Horton Kansas City, , to Hon. George w.
Martin, Kansas State Historical Society, May 22,
1905. Letter, in MSS. of Kansas State Historical
Society.
YOST:
LYNCHINGS IN KANSAS 189 time in its
history, so far as its records show. The Chicago Tribune of
April 6, 1931, makes this assertion: "States which have
never clad a recorded lynching include Connecticut,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont." The
Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America limits it
further: "There are only four-Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
Rhode Island and Vermont where such an atrocity has not been
recorded for any community in the commonwealth. In four
others-Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey and Utah-there has
been no recorded lynching since 1889."19 Walter
White, secretary of the National Association for Advancement
of Colored People, also says: "Only four states of the Union
have never been stained by a lynching-Massachusetts, Rhode
Island, New Hampshire and Vermont."20 Thus the
escutcheon of two-thirds of New England, and New England
only, is entirely clear. The Lawrence Western Home Journal
of 1882 reprints a comment of the Chicago Inter-Ocean on an
article on mob law written by Professor David Swing: "The
slightest regard of crime throughout this country is
alarming, and the professor's conclusion that in a few more
years lynching will probably be the fashion in all the
states west of New England rings like a
prophecy."21 Evidently, even in 1882, New England
was considered immune from the epidemic. Such
a record must have a reason, and we find possible causes in
several conditions. New England had few reasons for
lynchings. Of the three main causes- murder, rape and
robbery-two scarcely existed in New England as known in
other sections. Rape by the negroes of the South and horse
stealing in the West were two problems that New England did
not have to deal with, so there remains only murder. The
lives of the people in New England were plain and simple and
ordered by rule and regulation. The settlements were close
together, agriculture demanded only small farms and the
people, recently come from a thickly-settled old country,
desired contact with neighbors both for company and for
protection. Many of the early settlements were made by
well-organized companies under leaders and officers who, in
many cases, supervised personal conduct to a minute detail.
Few criminals escaped legal punishment. Justice was more
surely pronounced and administered, and the people looked to
the officials for punishment, having faith that
19.
Mob Murder in America (1923), pamphlet, p.
5. 20.
White, Rope and Faggot (1919), p.
230. 21.
Lawrence Western Home Journal, May 25,
1882.
|
190 THE KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY it would be forthcoming. Religion played its part, for the church was a strong influence in civil government, in making laws and in meting out punishment. A large percentage of the New England settlers had come from England where lynchings occurred very seldom. At the time of a lynching in Leavenworth in 1902, this comparison was part of an editorial in the Review of Reviews: "But if the Leavenworth lynching had occurred in England, the ringleaders would certainly have been hanged and probably a hundred others put in prison for life, while the authorities who failed to take due precautions to guard their prisoner would not have escaped lightly."22 The attitude of England toward lynchings is again expressed by a letter signed "R. H.," written from England and published in the Junction City Union in 1867: "In the most recent of the papers you have sent me, I have seen with pain the account of the application of lynch law to colored persons who were in prison. The only pleasant part of the matter is the shame and indignation that you and others in your state have for the violation of law. In our country, I am sorry to say, that any accounts of this kind from America are hailed with delight by a section of our people, as if they indicated essential feebleness and failure of republican institutions."23 In the apprehension, prosecution, and punishment of criminals these early New Englanders found their chief source of diversion and amusement. They did not believe in lonely captivity but in public obloquy for criminals. The most exciting and stirring emotions in their lives came through these public exhibitions.24 Sentences of whipping were usually to be carried out "on the next lecture day" when the crowd gathered. Such an attitude produced the stocks, pillories, whipping posts and ducking stools. The quick, effective lynching provided none of the exhibition of punishment as this section of the country wanted it. The Southern states, of course, bear the unenviable record for lynchings, in the past and present alike, due to racial conflict. After the abolition of slavery it became an unwritten law in the South to punish by mob rule negroes charged with rape or assault or with the murder of a white person, and the custom is hard to forget. The study of lynchings in the United States to-day is chiefly concerned with the Southern states.
|
YOST:
LYNCHINGS IN KANSAS 191 Aside
from the South, it was in the West that lynchings
flourished, and Kansas was of the early West. This West had
a reputation for lawlessness that was, at least in part,
deserved. This was partly because of the social conditions
which prevailed during the period of development, and partly
because many of the laws were not made for the existing
geographical conditions and were unsuitable for
them. The
nature of the country made settlements few and far between.
In the early period the restraint of law could not make
itself felt in the rarefied population. Territory extended
faster than did effective government organization for the
punishment of offenders, and men learned to mete it out
themselves. Each man had to make his own law because there
was no other to make it. It was but a step to individual
enforcement of laws and punishment of offenders. The
population had a high percentage of criminals who had fled
from justice in other sections. Two lynched in Kansas for
horse stealing were identified as sons of an ex-governor of
Illinois, according to a Kansas City newspaper of
1910.25 Perhaps
the fact that human life was not considered very valuable
made it hard to convict a man for murder, while at the same
time it made the taking of life in punishment more casual.
Men went armed and moved over vast areas with other armed
men, and. among them the six-shooter was the final decision
in an argument. While the tales of "shootin' Dodge" and the
rip-roaring cowboys who fired on any provocation doubtless
exaggerate the number of men who lie on various Boot Hills,
there can be no question that the continuous dangerous
existence developed callousness to the taking of life. Under
such conditions homicide did not entail the stigma that more
thickly settled regions associated with it. Men were equal
and each was his own defender. His survival imposed upon him
certain obligations which, if he were a man, he would
accept. Murder was too harsh a word for the final settling
of an argument by gun play, but lynching was not too severe
for offenders against the code of laws the men of the West
respected. Added
to the lawlessness of the criminal code which grew out of
the social conditions in the early days was a general
disregard for civil laws which were wholly inapplicable and
unsuited to the West. Congress passed laws which the
settlers could not enforce in the prairie country, such as
the water law, prohibiting all diversion of
25.
Clipping, marked only "Kansas City, Oct. 1910 " in
"Summer County Clippings" (compiled by Kansas State
Historical Society), v. 1, p. 287.
192 THE
KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY water from a
stream, making irrigation impossible; and the timber act,
granting land free on condition that the grantee grow
forests on it. When men could not abide by a civil law they
came to lose respect for it, and this disrespect influenced
their attitude toward other restraining factors, such as
criminal and social laws. The
West was turbulent in the early days because there was no
law. It was lawless in the later period because the suited
to the needs and conditions of the
country.26 The
following study of the records of lynchings in Kansas from
1856 to 1932 reveals some interesting facts concerning
prevalence and causes. These figures as here tabulated show
the greatest number in 1860-1870, the period of the opening
and early development of the state. In the decade of 1850
much of Kansas was still unsettled country, and in the
fringe of settlements on the eastern border was a pioneer
life of which we have now only a few contemporary records.
In proportion to the population there was probably as much
summary punishment of criminals as in later periods. The
decade of 1860 saw the beginning of statehood with its civil
laws and increased population. Emigrants from the north and
south brought the Civil War, which produced the border
warfare responsible for much of the lawlessness. More
newspapers were printed and saved to give us a record of the
time. From 1870 there was a steady decline in the number of
lynchings for each ten-year period until 1900, when it
remains at one for each decade after that, if we may suppose
that the allotted lynching for 1930-1940 has already been
produced in 1932. The number was still large in 1870, and
would probably be larger if all of the records had been
preserved, for that was the period of the cattleman in
Kansas, and horses and cattle were favorite plunder for
thieves and desperadoes. This was also the period in which
men were banged, but not always lynched, by the vigilantes,
as will be discussed later. The gradual decline was due to a
change in social conditions and the incoming
civilization. Decade
starting: 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 Total Horse
stealing 13 54 26 93 Cattle
stealing 1 1 2 Murder 2 23 13 21 14 3 1 Rape 7 3 2 1 1 1 15 Robbery 2 7 4 13 Border
warfare 2 2 Misc.
& unknown 1 2 1 4 Total 19 96 39 29 16 3 1 1 1 206
26.
Webb, Great Plains (1931), pp,
498-500.
77
YOST:
LYNCHINGS IN KANSAS 193 As
we see, the crime in the West and in Kansas which most often
brought lynching as a swift retribution was horse stealing.
What the negro problem was to the South as a cause for
lynching, horse stealing was to the West. One almost
receives the impression that it was the principal industry
of some communities. Probably it was a southern sympathizer
who said that if the pedigrees of the horses on the .eastern
line could be given, most of them would say "out of Missouri
by Jennison." Concerning Johnson county it was written: "In
the line of farmers bordering on Indian creek it was
estimated that no less than sixty horses, besides many head
of cattle, were stolen one summer, and the proportion was
nearly the same throughout the county."27 An
account of the breaking up of horse thieves in eastern
Kansas says: "The line of operations extended from Kansas
City to Omaha and perhaps beyond, with the stations in
between for concealing horses."28 Organizations
were formed for protection, such as the Wild Cat Horse
Guards, organized April 21, 1877, in Nemaha county. The
members were owners of horses and mules, who had their
animals appraised and enrolled, and if stolen received
two-thirds of the appraised value from the
company. The
National Anti-Horse-Thief Association, organized in Missouri
in 1854, had more need of activity in Kansas than any other
state. In 1911 over half of its 40,000 membership was in
Kansas, the other half being divided among seven other
states. At least three Kansans have been national
presidents, and the News, a paper authorized by the Kansas
division in 1901 and published at St. Paul, by W. W. Graves,
was made the organ of the national society in
1902. The
situation occupied even the attention of the executive
office, and in 1863 this message was issued by Gov. Thomas
Carney: "State
of Kansas, Exec. Dept., "Topeka, July 29, 1863. "The
condition of Kansas, in one respect, is to be deplored. I
mean the prevalence of robberies, and the too great
disregard of law. This condition results, as I believe, not
from any want of power to enforce the civil law, but from a
want of what I may term central sources of information and
[from] disconcerted action. ".
. . The stealing of horses and other stock, though not so
universally prevalent as formerly, is, I regret to say,
still common in nearly all parts of
27.
Heisler & Smith, Johnson County Atlas
(1874), p. 20. 28.
Junction City Union, August 15,
1868.
194 THE
KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY the state;
and what is more unfortunate, the difficulty of detecting
the robberies and arresting or subjecting the thieves to
punishment is equally common. "This
may be accounted for, in part, by the fact that, in sparsely
settled communities, horse thieves may perpetrate what would
seem the most daring acts and enjoy comparative immunity
from punishment, because they have concert among themselves,
while the losers and local authorities have no such concert
.... "Every
county has its sheriff. Suppose it were made the duty of
such sheriff to furnish detailed information of the robbery
so made (that is, of horses, their size, color, etc., and so
of cattle and other property) to the sheriffs and local
authorities of the central points, by the most speedy means
of conveyance, mail or otherwise .... A concert of action
like this on the part of the sheriffs of the different
counties, aided by those who suffer, would go far, in my
judgment, towards correcting the evil under which Kansas now
suffers .... "Were
the legislature in session I should most earnestly recommend
to that body the passage of a law making it the duty of the
sheriffs of the different counties to furnish such
information, with a suitable reward for such service. The
effect of this would be to secure what we now so much
need-concert of action against thieves and robbers. As it
is, I would earnestly urge the sheriffs and the people of
the several counties to adopt and enforce this policy as
alike essential to private interests and the public
good. That
there was an effort made to punish theft of live stock by
legal proceedings is shown in the first territorial statutes
of 1855: "Persons convicted of grand larceny shall be
punished in the following cases, as follows: First, for
stealing a horse, mare, gelding, colt, filly, mule or ass,
by confinement and hard labor, not exceeding seven
years."30 This was enacted again as a part of the
criminal code by the session of 1859.31 In 1870
this law was rewritten to include "neat cattle," an
indication of the growth of the cattle industry on the
plains.32 An amendment in 1920 shoved horses to
second place and introduced a new clause in first place
providing for "the stealing of any automobile, not less than
five years and not more than fifteen years,"33
indicating that the horse was no longer supreme. While
some horse thieves were brought to justice, many were not
treated so kindly. For a horse thief there were seldom any
extenuating circumstances and little time for explanation or
prayer. Perhaps there were more attempts to steal a man's
horse than there
29.
Kansas State Journal, Lawrence, July 30,
1863. 30.
General Statutes, Kansas, 1855, ch. 49, sec.
81. 31.
Laws, Kansas, 1859, ch. 28, sec.
73. 32.
Laws, Kansas, 1870, ch. 62, sec.
1. 33.
Laws, Kansas, 1920, ch. 38, sec.
2.
THOMAS CARNEY.29
YOST:
LYNCHINGS IN KANSAS 195 were to steal
his property or his life, for the cowboy and the pioneer
valued their horses as they did their lives. Often, indeed,
a man's horse meant his life. To the settler the horse was
communication, transportation, and escape from danger, as
well as his means of livelihood. When the horse and man
first became associated together in Europe years ago there
arose two traditions of horsemanship or horse culture-the
one, that of a settled people with whom horses were but one
of the incidents of life; and the other, the tradition of
the nomadic people to whom horses were vital. Both
traditions found their way to America and each its
appropriate environment. The "civilized" culture came
through Europe to England and found lodgment in the English
colonies of the Atlantic coast; the nomadic horse culture
came from the Asiatic steppes to Arabia, across northern
Africa to Spain, and with the Spaniards to the pampas of
South America and up to the plains of the United
States.34 Kansas,
though settled in great part by people from New England, was
so influenced by her location in the great plains that her
use of the horse was of the second class. In the pioneer
days settlements were few and distances between them were
great. The telephone was not invented until 1876, wireless
telegraphy and the radio were undreamed of; the horse was
the primary means of communication and as such was glorified
in the dashing Pony Express. Transportation was by horseback
or by open or covered wagons drawn by horses. While
automobiles have now replaced the horse to a great extent in
all phases of work and pleasure and even pushed it from
first place in the laws, no thief yet is recorded as being
lynched for stealing the family Ford, or even the Rolls
Royce, although in 1915 the Anti-Horse-Thief Association
extended its protection to owners of automobiles as well as
of horses. On
April 28, 1860, the first railroad touched Kansas
soil35 at Elwood, but not for many years could it
take the place of the horse in transportation over the whole
state. For both short and long distances, work and pleasure,
the horse was supreme. In addition to being communication
and transportation the horse also meant protection. The
plains Indians were mounted, and to combat them the pioneer
must be as well mounted. It is interesting that these were
the only mounted Indians in the whole history of the moving
American frontier, whether English or Spanish. The records
of the woodland region do not reveal that the Indians who
fired the cabins and
34.
Webb, Great American Plains (1931), p.
66. 35.
Elwood and Marysville railroad.
196 THE
KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY scalped the
settlers were horse Indians. In the forest region the Indian
went on foot, protected by the forests and the thick
underbrush. In the West the open country and the horse gave
the Indian the ability to strike suddenly and get away
quickly, and either to follow and fight, or to flee, the
settler must needs be mounted also. Thus was brought into
being a new method of warfare known as "Indian
fighting."36 The
horse was more important as a means of livelihood in Kansas
than it was in the East. The great extent of level surface,
the treeless land, and the subhumid climate changed the
agriculture of small farms of the East to large
stock-grazing and extensive wheat ranches of the West, and
for these industries the horse was indispensable. Wheat was
cultivated by horses, not by tractor. Cattle drives,
round-ups, and herding-all parts of the cattle business to
which horses were as essential as cattle-are well-known and
popular subjects of fact and fiction to-day. A cowboy's
pride, and often his wealth, was centered in his horse, and
the attachment between the two was great. Considering the
value of the horse to the early settler it is not surprising
that men flared to anger quicker and dealt punishment more
unhesitatingly and harshly to a thief of horses than to a
thief of life or property. Horses
and cattle were the property of which the westerner could
most easily be robbed. It is rather curious that the number
of lynchings for cattle stealing is so small, for we know
that cattle rustlers were a menace in the West. Only four
lynchings for such robbery are recorded in this list, and
two of those were men hanged in 1866 for cattle stealing and
murder combined.37 In April, 1863, thirty- four
cattle were stolen in Butler county and driven 150 miles to
Lawrence. Even the Indians hired to track them lost the
trail at various places. When caught, the thief was put in
jail.38 Yet a man might be lynched for stealing
only one horse. A cow thief was not nearly so bad in public
estimation, for where a horse was life itself to the
plainsman, a cow was merely property. And in cattle
ownership the code of the West made a strange distinction
between a cow and a maverick which the East could never
understand. A branded cow was the private property of the
man whose brand it bore; a maverick was public property and
belonged to the man who could brand it first. The fact
that
38.
Webb, Great American Plains (1931), p.
68. 37.
Joe and Sam Tippe, cattle robbery of Ralph Warner
and murder of John L. Shannon, on April 29,
1888. 38.
Kansas State Journal, Lawrence, April 23,
1883.
YOST:
LYNCHINGS IN KANSAS 197 the maverick
was the calf of the branded cow did not affect the situation
very much, especially in the early days. There were few
cattlemen who did not brand mavericks, but no cattleman
considered himself a thief for having done so. Perhaps the
distinction also made it hard to determine and prove a man a
cattle thief.39 Nevertheless,
many organized bands of cattle thieves were punished, and
many were instances in which the hanging was not considered
a lynching. When rustling of both cattle and horses began
seriously to threaten the profits of the cattle business,
and when men discovered that the law was unable to cope with
the situation, the vigilantes of the range appeared. These
were bands of citizens organized to prevent the commission
of crime, or to deal summary punishment in instances where
the civil and lawfully constituted authorities seemed
powerless to enforce the law. These alert, swift-riding
posses gave a first offender a sharp warning to quit the
country; on the second offense they hanged him to the
nearest tree or shot him down if he pulled his
gun. These
vigilance committees were bold with their punishment, and
even issued warnings of their intentions in the newspapers:
"Hunters may fire the grass on the Cherokee Strip, on the
Kansas line, if they choose, but the cattlemen intend to
hang all who do so."40 During the Butler county
war, which was a specific drive against horse thieves in
Butler county, in 1870, the writer of a Butler county
history recollects that an article appeared in the Walnut
Valley Times, El Dorado, stating that: ". . . the
horse thieves then infesting that country, and their
friends, must go. That they had killed four on November 4th,
and four on December 4th, and that they proposed to kill
four on the 4th of every month thereafter until all were
gone, and that any attempt to prosecute them therefor, meant
death."41 This was signed, "798
Vigilantes." These
protective associations of cattlemen and of other groups
were not authorized by the statute books, but so dependent
were the citizens upon them that many death punishments they
inflicted were hardly considered lynchings and so often
escaped the records as such. The
vigilantes of 1860 have their present-day parallel in the
county vigilance committees maintained primarily for bank
robbery. They spring from the same causes as those of
old-the inadequacy of the protective law and officers. The
sheriff's authority is limited
39.
Webb, Great American Plains (1931), p.
498. 40.
Breeder's Gazette, Chicago, December 22,
1881, p. 82. 41.
V. P. Mooney, History of Butler County
(1918), p. 258.
198 THE
KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY to his own
county; his facilities of men, money and time are often
inadequate, and he has had to call upon private citizens to
aid him in detection, pursuit and capture of criminals. Out
of this situation has grown the vigilance committees of the
present, which were planned at a meeting of fourteen state
bank associations of the central states, including Kansas.
They are organized and managed locally according to varied
local conditions, but sponsored by the protective department
of the Kansas State Bankers Association according to one
central plan. In Kansas the number has grown from one in
1925 to ninety-five in 1932. They existed at one time in 103
of the 105 counties, with a total state membership of 3,900.
Each consists of from fifteen to one hundred men, with an
average of thirty in a county and are selected by the
sheriff and bank officials and appointed by the sheriff for
his term of office. The expenses, arms, ammunition, training
and operation are financed by the banks; the men receive no
salary. They are issued commissions as special deputy
sheriffs. While the law recognizes only one kind of deputy
sheriff and these are given the regular commission, they
have an oral agreement that they are to act only in case of
a major crime and are considered "special" deputies. They
have the full authority of any deputy under the law. In
pursuing a criminal the sheriff shoots only as a last resort
and then at his own discretion and on his own
responsibility. These special deputies have the same
responsibility in bringing in a prisoner. They are bonded to
the extent of $7,500 against damages ordered by a court
incurred in pursuit of their duty. Any
killing of a criminal by these committees could not be
considered lynching. They differ from their earlier
counterpart in two ways: they are entirely legal and
nonsecretive. Although they are committees of citizens
banded together for protection, as were the others, their
legal authority and sanction come in the clause which
permits a sheriff to commission deputies to aid him. While
the status of the old vigilantes might vary, some being more
legally organized than others, the status of these is the
same over the state, since they are under one central plan.
The former were often secret organizations; the latter are
not, desiring all the publicity possible. They hold annual
shoots in September at Fort Riley when they meet for
practice and discussion. They are the old vigilantes with
the veneer of legality necessitated by the advance of
civilization.42
42.
Information supplied by W. W. Bowman, president,
Kansas State Bankers Association, and Neill Rahn,
formerly chief of the protective division and head
of the state vigilance organization.
YOST:
LYNCHINGS IN KANSAS 199 When
conditions of the country eliminated horse stealing, as it
did very definitely about 1877, murder was left as the main
cause for lynching, and it holds first place continuously
thereafter. Throughout the time from 1877 on, murder has
produced over twice as many lynchings as other causes
combined. Several cases which have been listed here under
murder also include other crimes. Many cases have been
accompanied by robbery, rape or torture, and the combination
particularly incensed the people. They have been classed
here with murder, as being the most hideous of the
crimes. Rape,
which holds third place in Kansas as a cause for lynching,
brings in the race problem, as here the ratio of negroes to
whites is four to one. Again we find the number highest in
the period of 1860, with only one less in the 1870's. In
1860-1870 five negroes and one white man were lynched for
rape; in 1870-1880 one negro and five whites, the latter
committing robbery and attempting murder. The seven men from
1880-1930 lynched for rape have been negroes, but in 1932
the victim again was a white man. Of
the entire number of lynchings only thirty-eight have been
of negroes, with the ratio increasing in the later years. In
the early days, when horse stealing caused most of the
punishment, the negro population was not very great, and
those who were here owned or could own very little property.
The negro exodus from the South into Kansas from 1878 to
1882 increased the percentage in population, and their
recognition as citizens established also their right to
break the criminal and civil laws. In 1899 a negro mob
lynched one of their own race for murder, when Charles
Williams, a negro, was lynched by his people in Galena,
April 27, 1899. The records also include a Mexican and an
Indian. But the negroes form such a small percentage of the
total lynched, a ratio of one negro to four and one-half
whites, that the race problem cannot be considered an
especially important factor in the state. The
statistics for the United States show that women have been
lynched, but none has been found for Kansas. The White Pine
Cone of Colorado, for January 25, 1884, contained this item:
"Not many years ago a man and woman were arrested for murder
in Lawrence and hanged from the Kansas river bridge. The
woman showed more courage and shoved the man off and then
jumped herself." No more information about this was found,
and "not many years ago" was considered too indefinite for
inclusion here, so Kansas as yet has no recorded lynching of
women to her discredit. Robbery
holds fourth place, and there are comparatively
few
200 THE
KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY cases where a
man was lynched for robbery alone. Many of the :cases have
been accompanied by attempted murder, attempted rape, or
torture, or were the culmination of a series of crimes which
incited the wrath of the community. The most recent lynching
for robbery occurred in 1884, when four men were killed
following a bank robbery in Medicine Lodge. In addition to
this crime these men had the reputations and records of
desperadoes, although one-Henry Brown-after a career with
Billy the Kid, was marshal at Caldwell, and another-Ben
Wheeler-was his assistant. One
of the most prevalent crimes of to-day has as yet caused no
lynchings. It is due more to our changing ideas of
punishment and advance in civilization that we have not
lynched bank robbers than it is to any scarcity of them. In
numbers they seem to have taken the place of the horse
thieves of the 1860's; and as has been stated, these are the
two major crimes which have necessitated vigilance
committees. The vigilantes disbanded after the cattle days
were over and were remembered only in legend and fiction
until called into being recently for this other crime which
promises to become as serious as horse stealing was. While
bank robbery is so extensive, we have not yet dealt with the
bandits by lynching, so as a source of crime it does not
appear in this list. These
four are practically the only causes which have evoked
lynchings in Kansas. Two deaths during the Civil War times
have been recorded here as lynchings and attributed to
border warfare. Three have had to be listed with reason
unknown. The only available account of the lynchings of two
negroes in Wyandotte in 1866 gave no reason but simply
stated that they were taken "from the calaboose and
shot."43 Doubtlessly,
men were sometimes hanged when their guilt was not clearly
established-one of the greatest dangers of, and arguments
against, lynching. Mob action is usually inspired by
emotional frenzy rather than calm reason and does not stop
to weigh the evidence. A negro shot a Mr. Cox in Atchison in
1870, and a mob headed by Mike Clare hanged him. "Cox
recovered and some believe the shooting was accidental.
Clare left town and never came
back."44 There
are also cases in which foul play has been disguised by the
appearance of a lynching. Thomas Reynolds was found hanged
in Geary county in August, 1868, with this note pinned to
his cloth
43.
Andreas, History of Kansas (1883), p.
1232. 44.
Atchison Daily Globe, July 11,
1929.
YOST:
LYNCHINGS IN KANSAS 201 ing, "Beware,
horse thieves, we know you now." He was not considered a
suspicious character by his community and at the time of his
death was known to have had money with him, so it was
thought possible that he was robbed and
murdered.45 In December, 1885, in Caldwell,
Sumner county, Frank Noyes, white, was found hanged, with a
note in his pocket which accused him of house burning. It
was known that he had several hundred dollars and public
opinion was that he had been robbed and hanged as a blind.
The jury gave a verdict of "hanged by unknown
parties."46 But
in most instances there was no doubt that the right person
was hanged, and in two cases the lynched man's victim even
came to life to accuse him. Teahan shot Conklin while both
were riding from Wyandotte to Kansas City, Mo. "Conklin put
spurs to his horse and reached Kansas City without further
harm and was cared for at the Gilliss Hotel." He returned to
accuse Teahan, who was hanged.47 In Leavenworth,
in 1857, "Baize and Squarles slugged him (Stephens), robbed
him and then threw him into the river for dead, but he came
to, swam ashore, reported the incident to the police and had
the men arrested, so there was no doubt as to their
guilt."48 The narrator of this lynching
continues: "A funny little incident happened in connection
with this affair. An Irishman was put in jail for getting
drunk, and when the mob gathered and broke into the jail the
Irishman became frightened and began to cry out, `Faith,
men! I am not the mon!' and kept on repeating it. Judge
Samuel D. Lecompte made a speech trying to disperse the mob,
but to no avail."49 There
have been a few instances where a criminal was strung up to
be hanged and then released, though usually a determined and
infuriated mob brooked no interference. In Lyon county a
crowd met the sheriff at Rock Creek and took from him his
German prisoner charged with murder of an Irishman. They
were hanging him when the limb of the tree broke, letting
him fall to the ground. The sheriff plead his case so well
that the mob released the prisoner and the sheriff continued
with him on his way to jail.50 What
did the people of the state as a whole think of the practice
of lynching? If we may believe the newspapers as reflecting
the at-
45.
Junction City Union, August 29,
1863. 46.
Freeman, Incidental History of Southern Kansas
and the Indian Territory (1892), p.
384. 47.
Wyandotte Gazette, December 23,
1865. 48.
Frank M. Gable, Leavenworth Times, February
9, 1919. 49.
Ibid. 50.
Kansas State Journal, Lawrence, May 15,
1862.
202 THE
KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY titude of the
people we receive the impression that, while they deplored
lynching as an evil, they considered it a necessary evil.
One of the earliest contemporary accounts is the article
concerning Squarles and Baize in which the Elwood Advertiser
says: "Though summary justice was meted out to the wretches,
yet public opinion sanctions it as a necessity, and will
effectually strike terror into the hearts of the many
similar gangs who infest that city."51 In 1865
the Wyandotte Gazette parries the responsibility: "It is
only when the laws of the land utterly fail to protect life
and property that the people can be justified in taking the
punishment of criminals into their own hands. Whether that
time has arrived in Wyandotte is a question the people must
decide for themselves."52 "We
have no censure to make in this particular case, but trust
nothing of the like will become
common."53 "We
deplore mob law under all circumstances, but if there ever
was a case that was justifiable this is one of
them."54 "While
the mob spirit, therefore, is to be condemned in unstinted
terms, the lesson which its prevalence prevails is that the
laws on our statute books must be more rigorously, more
certainly, more severely executed."55 We
find such statements in the early years. They condemn the
method, but hope for some good as a result. How
different is the comment of the Olathe Mirror in 1916.
"Johnson county and Olathe feels its shame. It will take
decades and decades-maybe never-to erase the blot put upon
us by the exhibition of mob violence . . . Johnson county
sorrows to-day and will for years to come over the shadow
cast on her fair name."56 In
1920 the Mulberry News is not quite so penitent. "The
majority of the people of Mulberry do not approve of what
happened here Monday . . . . Yes, it is regrettable. . . . .
but surely it was justifiable."57 In
1932 we have this attitude: "While the offense committed was
a most dastardly crime, mob lynching cannot be countenanced,
and every effort will be made to discover and prosecute the
members of the mob. For a mob to take the punishment out of
the hands
51.
Elwood Advertiser, August 5,
1857. 52.
Wyandotte Gazette, December 23,
1865. 53.
Seneca Mirror, April 8, 1877. 54.
Lawrence Western Hone Journal, June 15,
1882. 55.
Wellington, Wellingtonian, September 18,
1884. 56.
Olathe Mirror, September 28,
1910. 57.
Mulberry News, April 23, 1920.
YOST:
LYNCHINGS IN KANSAS 203 of the
constituted authorities results in a breakdown of
government, and it cannot and will not be permitted to go
unpunished in Kansas."58 In
these statements is shown the changing attitude of the
people. The social conditions which produced lynchings
produced also a tolerance for them, and both vanished
together. The extension of civil authority into the
territory provided punishment of criminals, and its
enforcement gave the people confidence to rely upon it. We
like to think, also, that an advancing civilization yielded
some influence against the practice. To a state which does
not sanction capital punishment., death penalty by an
extrajudicial method should be especially abhorrent. That
which should not be done by legal action of a jury is worse
when due to the frenzy of a mob. Often
there was at least a coroner's verdict, if not a jury's
verdict, though some, we may believe, had not the formality
of either. Usually the coroner reported that the victim
"came to his death at the hands of unknown parties." One
even went so far as to say, with what could hardly have been
unconscious humor, "came to his death by strangulation,
through his own exertions and assistance of parties
unknown."59 The coroner gave a verdict of suicide
for the death of Newton Walters, in Columbus, in 1895, but
he was thought to have been lynched for murder.60
In 1866, in Nemaha county, one horse thief was shot while
attempting to escape, and another was caught and hanged. The
newspapers reported "both lost their lives by
accident."61 Quite often there was no action
against the crowd. The community, if not actually approving
of individuals who took retribution into their own hands, at
least declined to interfere. When
there was disapproval against the action, punishment of the
mob usually went no farther than the verdict of the coroner
or the jury. Rarely was there conviction or punishment of
persons who participated in lynchings, owing largely to the
sympathy of the jurors for their action. The vigilance
committees, who concealed neither their actions nor their
membership, acted with the backing of public opinion if not
legal sanction. The members of a mob were seldom known or
admitted, and no one wanted to know. Quite often the
majority of the people of a community
participated.
53.
Atwood Citizen-Patriot, April 29,
1932. 59.
Ellsworth Reporter, January 5,
1882. 60.
Topeka Capital, April 4, 1895. 61.
Atchison Free Press, March 24,
1866.
204 THE
KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY In
the lynching of Bob Scrugg for murder, at Oak Mills in 1877,
the "justice of the peace was one of the
posse."62 At the lynching of a gang of five who
attempted robbery, murder and rape in Ladore, 1870, it was
said that. "three hundred of the best citizens
participated."63 It
is not surprising that citizens seemed to find immediate
lynching more effective than court trial. Of four of the
Netawaka gang of horse thieves operating in Nemaha county in
1877, the Seneca Courier says: "Manley was hung; Rourke
plead guilty; Brown ran away, and Harl stood trial and is
cleared."64 Harl was tried in Atchison and
acquitted. "The verdict seemed to give universal
satisfaction and it is the general opinion that certainly
the citizens of Nemaha county can have no reasons to find
any fault with the verdict of the jury or the decision of
the court."65 But the citizens of Nemaha county
did seem to find fault with the verdict. On March 29, the
same paper remarked: "Since Harl was cleared we are ready to
believe anything in the O'Brien horse-stealing
case."66 And on May 17: . . . . The
horse-stealing Case went wrong-end
to."67 "Within
the last eight years there have been something like twenty
murders committed in this county, and in no case has the
guilty party been punished by due process of
law."68 This editorial concerning Wyandotte
county in 1866 does not indicate confidence in punishment by
court procedure. Lack
of respect for the courts and the juries is not even thinly
disguised by the Junction City Union in 1868, in reporting
the investigation of the lynching of Thomas Reynolds, which
was reported at first in only a six-inch space. There was
some indication of foul play in his lynching, and the
coroner's jury dragged through several months. "One
man arrested for lynching Reynolds dismissed without
provocation."69 "Coroner's jury met last Monday
to inquire into the death of Reynolds who, it appears, died
some time in the history of Davis county. We understand it
adjourned to meet again. We would suggest to the
commissioners that they employ this outfit by the
year."70 "The inquisition met last
Thursday.
62.
Atchison Daily Globe, August 21,
1917. 63.
Andreas, History of Kansas (1883), p,
828. 64.
Seneca Courier, May 17, 1878. 65.
Atchison Patriot, quoted in Seneca
Courier, March 16, 1878. 68.
Seneca Courier, March 29, 1878. 67.
Ibid., May 17, 1878. 68.
Wyandotte Commercial Gazette, April 21,
1888. 69.
Junction City Union, September 19,
1868. 70.
Ibid., October 3, 1888.
YOST:
LYNCHINGS IN KANSAS 205 We
could not find out what they done (sic] but learn they
made no verdict. We would suggest that these owls (we allude
to their wisdom) be employed to find out what became of our
Democrat party . . ."71 "The long agony is over.
The mountain labored and brought forth a small sized rat. We
publish below the verdict of the coroner's jury in case of
Thomas Reynolds, deceased. The coroner's bill of costs came
before the county commissioners on Thursday. It charges for
seventeen days of actual service. A stupendous bundle of
manuscript accompanied the verdict. This was the testimony
and as it was taken in secret a great curiosity was evinced
to see it. Portions of it are rich and entirely street
gossip in its character. The question which bothered the
commissioners was whether the bills should be paid, or how
much of them. The final decision of the jury was that he was
found suspended to the limb of a tree by part of his bridle
rein, by some person or persons unknown to the
jury."72 One
would not believe that the Junction City Union had much
respect for the coroner's jury. Growing
public sentiment against lynching was evidenced by acts of
the legislature of 1903. Before this time there had been no
legislation concerning lynching. Prompted, perhaps, by the
lynching in Leavenworth in 1901 and by one in Pittsburg in
1902, the legislature of 1903 passed the following laws, as
measures to prevent further occurrences: "MOB
AND LYNCHING DEFINED: AIDING OR ABETTING LYNCHING. That any
collection of individuals assembled for an unlawful purpose,
intending to injure any person by violence, and without
authority of law, shall for the purpose of this act be
regarded as a mob, and any act of violence exercised by such
mob upon the body of any person shall constitute the crime
of lynching, when such act or acts of violence result in
death; and any person who participates in or aids or abets
such lynching, upon conviction thereof shall be imprisoned
in the state prison for not more than five years or during
life, in the discretion of the jury. "ACCESSORIES
AFTER THE FACT IN LYNCHING. Every person who shall, after
the commission of the crime of lynching, harbor, conceal or
assist any member of such mob who participates in or who
aids or abets such crime, with the intent that he shall
escape detention, arrest, capture, or punishment, shall be
deemed to be and shall be an accessory after the fact, and
may be charged, tried and convicted and punished though such
member be neither charged, tried nor convicted, and upon
conviction thereof shall be imprisoned in the state prison
not more than twenty- one years nor less than two
years. "PROSECUTION
OF LYNCHING OFFENDERS. Any person accused of the crime of
lynching or as an accessory after the fact may be prosecuted
in the courts of this state by information filed and signed
by the prosecuting attorney or attorney-general, based upon
the affidavit of some competent and reputable
person.
71.
Ibid., November 7, 1888. 72.
Ibid., January 9, 1889.
206 THE
KANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY "JURISDICTION
OF COURTS IN LYNCHING CASES. In case any persons shall come
together in any county in this state for the purpose of
proceeding to another county of the state with the view of
lynching any person, or in any case any person or persons
shall purchase or procure any rope, weapon, or other
instrument in one county for the purpose of being used in
lynching any person in another county, such crime of
lynching, if committed, shall be and constitute a continuous
offense from the time of its original inception as
aforesaid; and the courts of any county in which such overt
act has been committed shall have jurisdiction over the
person of any member of the mob committing such overt act,
and such person may be prosecuted in such county and
punished for murder the same as if the lynching had occurred
therein. "LIABILITY
OF SHERIFF WHEN PRISONER TAKEN AND LYNCHED. If any person
shall be taken from the hands of a sheriff or his deputy
having such person in custody and shall be lynched, it shall
be evidence of failure on the part of such sheriff to do his
duty, and his office shall thereby and thereat immediately
be vacated, and the coroner shall immediately succeed to and
perform the duties of sheriff until the successor of such
sheriff shall have been duly appointed, pursuant to existing
law providing for the filling of vacancies in such office,
and such sheriff shall not thereafter be eligible to either
election or reappointment to the office of sheriff:
Provided, however, That such former sheriff may, within ten
days after such lynching occurs, file with the governor his
petition for reinstatement to the office of sheriff, and
shall give ten days' notice of the filing of such petition
to the prosecuting attorney of the county in which such
lynching occurred and also to the attorney-general. If the
governor, upon hearing the evidence and argument, if any,
presented, shall find that such sheriff used reasonable
effort to protect the life of such prisoner and performed
the duties required of him by existing laws respecting the
protection of prisoners, then such governor shall reinstate
such sheriff in his office and shall issue to him a
certificate of reinstatement, the same to be effective on
the day of such order of reinstatement, and the decision of
such governor shall be final."73 Other
sections of this article provide for assistance of the
sheriff by bystanders; the removal of the prisoner to state
prison or reformatory; and the aid of the
militia. Since
the legislature seemed to realize that the sheriff and his
deputies usually were powerless before a mob, it made the
second clause of section 1007 a loophole providing for his
reinstatement by the governor, if justified after an
examination, and in the lynchings which have occurred since
then the sheriff has been returned to office immediately. In
a case in 1916 "friends got busy in his behalf and after
four days had elapsed he was reinstated."74 In
1932 he "filed his petition and after a secret court behind
closed doors the governor reinstated
him."75 Several
states have enacted laws designed to suppress
lynchings.
73.
Revised Statutes, Kansas, 1923, ch. 21, art.
10, sees. 1003-1007. 74.
Olathe Mirror, September 28,
1910. 75.
Atwood Citizen-Patriot, April 21,
1932.
YOST:
LYNCHINGS IN KANSAS 207 In
Kentucky "the penalty for lynching shall be confinement or
life imprisonment. The penalty for attempted lynching shall
be confinement in the penitentiary for not less than two
years nor more than twenty-one years." It also provides for
the removal of a culpable officer, as do Indiana and
Florida. North Carolina permits the judge of the court
issuing the indictment to transfer trial of the case to
another court without preliminary appearance of the
defendant before him, which allows the accused to be taken
into another court for safe-keeping and to be tried there
without danger of being mobbed. Minnesota and Ohio have
drastic penalties for lynchers and to prevent lynchings.
West Virginia and South Carolina give representatives of the
person put to death the right to sue in the courts for
damages against the county in which the lynching took place,
the maximum amount in West Virginia being $5,000. As
administration of the criminal law is in the hands of the
several states the federal government cannot deal with the
participators of a lynching unless it occurs on government
reservations. Efforts to secure enactment of federal
legislation upon the subject resulted in the passage by the
house of representatives on January 26, 1922, by a vote of
230 to 119, a bill that was known as the Dyer antilynching
bill, introduced by the republican representative, Leonidas
Carstarphen Dyer, from, Missouri. This provided that
culpable state officers and members of lynching mobs should
be tried in federal courts upon the failure of state courts
to act, with sentences of fines or imprisonment; it forbade
and penalized any interference with an officer protecting a
prisoner from lynching; it penalized an official who failed
to do his duty in preventing a lynching; and it penalized a
county or counties which failed to use all reasonabl