Gilded Age America was a violent society, especially in the South and the Southwest. The Northeast and Middle West had their spectacular murders, like that in 1872 of Jim Fisk, the Wall Street speculator, or the ax murder of the parents of Lizzie Borden in Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1892. But in these regions ordinary citizens generally did not use weapons to settle disputes nor resort to mob violence. The most conspicuous example of mass lawlessness in the northeastern quadrant of the nation was in Pittsburgh during the Great Strike oe 1877.
In contrast, the South retained its antebellum reputation as the most violent section of the country. Duels were no longer fashionable, but males carried arms and were quick to use them. Fatal quarrels arose over such petty issues as opening a door. The spectacular West Virginia feud between the Hatfields and McCoys began over an allegedly stolen pig. In 1890, Massachusetts, with immigrants and large cities, reported only 16 homicides, while many less populated southern states reported more: Virginia, 65; North Carolina, 69; Kentucky, 88; Georgia, 92; and Tennessee, 115. Neither Aerican Americans nor poor whites were disproportionately responsible for these killings. Murders were committed by planters, lawyers, doctors, bankers, and even preachers. Although race was involved in some homicides, in most instances whites killed whites.
The milieu of violence among white southerners, perhaps stemming from their Celtic cultural background, existed prior to the Civil War and Reconstruction and was easily transformed into the race violence of the Gilded Age. Lynchings of blacks and murderous riots to achieve white supremacy at points from Hamburg, South Carolina, in 1876 to Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898, were deeds in keeping with a homicidal society. Violence in defense of one’s honor or the community’s prejudices was socially acceptable.
Racially inspired lynchings were also common in California, which took generations to outgrow the lawlessness of a mining frontier. Out of 352 victims of mob killing from 1850 to 1935, 132 were Hispanics, more than a third; 41 were Native Americans; 29 were Chinese; and eight were African Americans, all of whom were disproportionately represented.
The Civil War and Reconstruction spawned both violence in Missouri and an outlaw folk hero in Jesse James.
After marauding with lawless pro-Confederate guerrillas in Missouri, James and his brother Frank began robbing banks in 1866 and three years later were identified as suspects in a bank robbery in Gallatin, Missouri. Shrewdly recognizing the power of public opinion, James commenced creating his legend with a public letter proclaiming his innocence and accusing Radical Republicans of persecuting him for his Confederate service. Over the next 10 years James and his brother Frank, joined by Cole Younger and his brothers (who were also guerrilla veterans), robbed banks and railroads, cultivating in the press and among Democratic politicians a Robin Hood image. With banks and railroads unpopular in the depression year of 1875, the image was so persuasive that Democratic legislators almost passed an amnesty resolution for James and his gang. A botched bank robbery in Northfield, Minnesota, severely strained the Robin Hood myth and kept the resolution from passing the next year. Not only were a bank cashier and three robbers killed, but three of the Younger brothers were wounded and captured. Two robbers, presumed to be Jesse and Frank James, escaped. Without the Youngers, James recruited less able criminals, and his robberies became more violent. With a price on his head James was assassinated in 1882 by members of
Jesse James, 1864 (Library of Congress)
His own gang, but the Robin Hood myth did not die with him. For many, James, a habitual criminal, has come to represent a justice higher than law.
Like Jesse James, Billy the Kid has become a legend, with movies and even a ballet about him. In 1877, when he was 17, he killed a bully who had tormented him and became an outlaw. The next year he participated in New Mexico’s Lincoln County War. To break the monopoly a company had on Lincoln County’s business by its lucrative federal contracts to supply Fort Stanton and the Mes-calero Apache Reservation, a competing firm hired Billy the Kid and other gunmen as paramilitary “Regulators.” They fought battles with the entrenched company, with the Kid participating in the ambush murder of Sheriff William Brady and the killing of Buckshot Roberts in a shootout. The war ended when a sheriff’s posse surrounded the Regulators in their employer’s house, burned them out, and killed four of them, while the Kid and three others escaped. His negotiations with New Mexico’s governor, Lew Wallace, to earn amnesty by turning states evidence fell through, because he was rustling cattle in Texas. In 1880 he was captured by Sheriff Pat Garrett’s posse, convicted of murder, and sentenced to be hanged. He escaped the next year by killing two guards and was hidden by His-panics (especially sheepmen), among whom he was popular because he spoke Spanish, treated them as equals, and stole from Texas cattlemen, who threatened their landholdings. Three months later Garrett caught up with the Kid, fired first, and killed him. In folklore two Billy the Kids live on. The first was the merciless gunman, who killed 21 men (grossly exaggerated to arrive at one for each year of his life), and the second, like Jesse James, was the young Robin Hood who fought for the poor. “For millions,” Robert M. Utley observes, “Billy still rides as the ultimate symbol of the violence of the Old West.”
Ironically, genuine Robin Hoods did exist in the New Mexico Territory. Texas cattlemen in the 1870s and 1880s began moving into the eastern grasslands of New Mexico and displacing Hispanic sheepmen. Range wars, characterized by extreme racial violence, broke out. There was a rise in the number of Hispanic bandits, but most were not defenders of the Mexican community. Las Gorras Blancas (the White Caps), however, were closer to Robin Hood than were either Jesse James or Billy the Kid. A secret Hispanic organization, its greatest strength in members was in northeastern New Mexico. The White Caps arose in the 1880s and 1890s to protect land owned by Mexicans from the encroachment of Anglos, especially those from Texas. The White Caps harassed white intruders by cutting their barbed wire and burning their buildings. The White Caps’ defense of Hispanics won them widespread support in New Mexico and a place in local folklore, but not the renown of Jesse James or Billy the Kid.
World History
