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About The Falls City tribune. (Falls City, Neb.) 1904-191? | View Entire Issue (March 19, 1909)
Reminiscences ol a Wayfarer ■^P^PfiwiiP^y^TOTriii ■ i—>—nrTr—HmnrrrT nffrr ttt i—aMPiifiwa ijw wwa Some of the Important Events of the Pioneer Days' of Richardson County and Southeast Nebraska as remembered by the writer, who has spent fifty one years here Jl’DOK LYNCH HOLDS ( <H IH The flood in lhc Nemaha was a revelation to the people. No one appeared to have any i»l• ■ ;i that the stream was subject to such freshets and the prestage of bottom land over those on the high ground.suffered materially. , There lias never been any con siderable farming done in the valley of the Nemaha east of Salem. A considerable part of j it is utilized for pasture and for grass land, but even that is of doubtful utility as floods are liable to come at any time and the grass harvests have been destroyed time out of mind by such freshets About the time this flood oc curred, some lawless persons, either the same night, or the night before, relieved several of onr people of some of their horses, and fled with flieni into Kansas. As soon .is the word got about and a party could be organized for pursuit, Wilson M. Maddox, young William (toolsby, son of William <1. (Joolsby on the Muddy, and some others constructed a raft of some kind, crossed over to the smith bank of the Nemaha, and pursued the thieves until they captured four persons they believed to have been engaged in the depreditions ami returned with them to Archer. No atten tionwas paid to territorial lines or to the law of congress regu-1 lating the extradition of fugi-j fives from justice escaping from one territory or state into an-, other, but regardless of all these the pursuing party I mentioned! captured their men and brought them into Nebraska for punish inent. To tluit end word was passed through the neighbor j hood, and nearly all, if not all, I the leading citizens in the vicin ity assembled at Archer to con 1 sider what should be done in the] way of ascertaining the guilt of the persons accused and also to | take order in the matter of their] punishment. inert* was nocrmunai tout* m the territory at tlu* time, and in another part of this paper I will relate how that unheard of cir cumstance came about. Two of those parties hearing ! that there was a lawyer at Falls City sent word to me to come over to Archer. I did so, and listened to their story and 1 be came convinced that at least two of the parties were not ! guilty and so informed Mr. Mad dox, and those he hail called to his assistance in the neighbor } hood. It is a fact everywhere! true in the west at that time, | that the people held in greater! detestation the offense of horse! stealing than they did any other' ni the whole calendar of crime. This I think, is a fact well at tested by the experience of all men who have passed any con siderable time on the frontier. I shall give the name of but one of the parties accused, as it is possible the others may have some friends in the country and I have no disposition to wound their feelings by what 1 here re late of a disagreeable incident, in which they were in no way involved, and which may have been a mistake from the begin ning. The man whom I thought to be guilty without any doubt, was named Sam Thomas. He was a young man of bad repute and had been in the Kansas troubles from their inception, and it seems, had graduated in the art of horse stealing. He was certainly an adept. There was no uarticular organization of a court such as is known to be presided over by his honor Lynch, or resort to a ^Committee of inquiry or farcical trial by jury, but the people consulted and talked among; themselves and with me very freely, very candidly, and they I finally becoming satisfied I was right as to two of file party, let them off, Imt the other two, one ( besides Sam Thomas, were con detuned to he whipped fil'tv lashes for Thomas and twenty five for the other one. This was my first appearance in any court in Nebraska, and it was about as revolting an experience as anybody would care to undergo, I had heard and read of Judge Lynch's court, but had never seen it in operation. I had also heard and read much of mobs, disorderly and unlawful assem blages, the ostensible objects of ! which were to administer sum j mary punishment for infrac j lions of the law without wait mg for the regularly constituted ; authorities to take action in the premises, but this was the first of the kind that ever came under my observation, and in fact, it ' was the last of the kind. There was nothing violent in : the conduct of the men assem bled on tlii- occasion, and those ; nt the men present whom I re-i member, I knew to be then, and I for the rest of their lives after i wards, as good citizens and as I orderly members of the com-! munity as could be found any where. They talked the matter over very’seriously and in the i light of the circumstances sur rounding them and their pro perty. At that time there wa im law or code, nor other public protection for life or property in the commonwealth of file ter j ritory. and they were left with j out any protection from depre dubious of the kind they were I that day considering-, other than Some dI llie accounts f had read of man’s inhumanity t<> man in the darker ages of the world, came vividly before my imagination. The instruments of torture that man's cruelty to his fellows have invented the thumb screw, tin* boot, t he breaking on the wheel, suggest ed themselves to me while this terrible ordeal was in progress of enactment before my eyes. Among the live who adminis tered punishment to Thomas, one of them, whose name 1 will not mention, touched the poor, writhing, quivering', tortured body so lightly that a fly would not have been destroyed by any of his strokes. This man was not loud in his profession of religion, if indeed in* made any profession of the kind at all, nor was he demonstrative in any way touching the comfort and wellheingofthose about him, but the whole nature of the man was laid bare tome in the mode in which he pretended to whip that outcast. The criminal was a lawless man and all that, but at the same time he was a hu man being with the image of his great creator stamped upon him, and it was consideration for the being who bore that im age, and not the horse thief, that controlled the strokes of the whip in the hands of tlu* man I refer to. The next man to the fore and the last of the detail, was a cer tain Mr. Wright, whom 1 had seen about Kails City during my brief residence there, and whom I had frequently observed at public religious services, where lie was prominent in all that went forward, and withal rather loud in his devotions, so loud indeed, that 1 had become pos sessed of some doubt -is to th< sincerity of his professions, but as 1 had no disposition to sit in judgment on a matter that war to be settled between him and a higher authority, 1 am not sen sible that I thought much about j And from that hour forward, and during the whole of his life i afterwards, I honored the man for his humanity, fn the hush th.it fell upon that infuriated company, concerned for the safety of their property rights, and for flit' good order and well being'of the community at large, at this sudden assertion of that | feeling of mercy that distin guishes the civilized from the savage, that one “touch of na ! lire that makes the win tie world j kin," there was produced among ; them a strange commotion, con | fused and indefinable, but as ! potent as though each had heard j the voice that once declared, | and is always declaring) "Mess ed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. ' The feel lug produced in me has never passed away. The balance of that gruesome | function was performed in a kind of perfunctory way, and all departed feeling, I little doubt, as 1 felt, that the less of such .exhibitions among the people, the better it would be for the general public morality. From that day to this, mob law has but once since been resorted to in this county. (>ne man had been hung a few days before at St. Stephen for the same offense, but it was the last. Some years later three or four road agents of the kind I have described, were hanged by a mob at Table I lock in Pawnee County. Some stir was made about it, and .Judge Dundy di rected the (iranil Jury to hue ligate the transaction, but noth ing' came of it, and mob violence ceased in that county. At the time of which L write, and for a year and a half before, Nebraska was without a (.'rim- j inal Code. The territorial legis lature at a previous session iv pealed the Code adopted at tin first session in 1*55. The reason for that repeal as given in the last published his tory of Nebraska, is only parti The Flood the force they were able to bring I to bear in their assembled char actor, 1'p to that time there I had never been but one courtj held in the county, and there was not another one till in March, Is.V.i. It looked like a cruel piece of business, and it was, disassociated from the idea ol punishment for lawlessness. The victims were bared from the waist up, their feet tied to gether and their hands securelv tied to the wheel of a wagon, ■ with their bodies slightly bent1 over while receiving punish I mont. In the case of Thomas, it was arranged for live men to. give him ten lashes apiece and in tlu' administration of the pun ishment I had an excellent op portunity to judge of the nature <* the men who inflicted the punishment. The instrument of torture used was a green hickory withe probably four feet in length and half an inch in dia meter at its thickest part. This terrible weapon, in the hands of a strong man, applied with his full force to the naked back of a human body was a sight 1 hope never to see again while 1 re main in the world. 1 refrain from givinga particular descrip tion of the strokes as they were applied to those unfortunate men. The remembrance is too terrible to put on paper. - it. He was one of a specific kingdom come class that are to. be found wherever men a r e found on earth, who arrogate to themselves the whole job of re forming the world, without tak ing into account the probably unimportant fact that they need about as much reformation a» anybody else; but as we are all a little disposed to excuse in ourselves what we condemn in others, we may conclude they are not entirely singular in that behalf, and the charitable view perhaps, is, that in the economy of the inscrutable they perform some purpose not clear to the finite ken, and like all .other things in nature, have their ex istence from inexorable and ah solute necessity. At the call of the master of ceremonies, he stepped forward, took' the instrument of torture, and with his whole force laid it across the back of the already' bleeding and maimed victim, each stroke being harder, if possible, than the one preceding till 1 ncle William Goolsby, his eyes Hashing with uncontrolable anger and indignation, caught the hand of the murderous mon ster and wrenched the whip from his grasp, saying “Stop, you brute, there is enough of this,’' and throwing it on the ground ordered the man untied., ally true In that work it is re- j cited that the repeal was brougt about at the instance and large ly by reason of the preponderat ing influence of a lawyer at Ne braska City: and while the ac count mentions a terrible mur der that had occurred in Otoe county in which one Hargus had slain a man of the name of Lacy, in a cowardly, brutal, and cruel manner, the inference is sought to be given that the repeal of the criminal code was not so much to assist this murderer'to escape punishment for his crime, as it was to assist some smart financial operators at Nebraska City and elsewhere in the terri tory, to escape punishment in connection with the wildcat banks that had been chartered by the legislature at a time pre vious. The lawyer's name given in that history is A. A. Brad ford, then a citizen of Nebraska City. The murder of Lacy and tlie prosecution of Hargus L mentioned in connection with the bank frauds so called in that history, but the inference .sug gested by the writer is not jus tified as will presently appear. Now I happen to know that at that time, it was not even sus pected,that any f ran d u 1 e n t b an k ing had been done in the terri tory: but it might have been known that they were illegal in stitutions, and were in violation of an act of congress, but wheth er that fact was known or not, there is little doubt of their be ing smart schemes for making money out'of a thoughtless pub lic, but if they violated any law. it was the act of congress pass-1 ed many years before, in which | it was provided: “That no act of the Territor ial Legislature of any of the territories of the United States incorporating any bank or any institution with banking powers or privileges, hereafter* to be j passed, shall have any force oiy effect whatever until approved j and confirmed by congress.’’ This act was passed in con nec.tion with the abrogation by congress of similar laws in the territory of Florida. If those Nebraska chartered banking in- , stitutions were in violation of any law, it was this, and as none of the laws of the territory, authorizing them were ever ap proved by congress, but were j put in operation in defiance of, it, they were illegal institutions, and every man connected with them was liable to indictment and prosecution in the United States courts, and the repeal of the Nebraska criminal code, could afford them no immunity. If any frauds were committed by their means the criminal laws of the general government were ample for the punishment of the offenders, and if justice mi sear-1 ried by reason of unfaithful ol'fi cers neglecting their duty in that behalf, the fault can not be, atoned for at this late date, by I laying the blame on a dead man who wits not one of those de faulting' officers. It was certainly competent for tiie legislature to pas> banking laws, but it was not competent for those laws to be put into ef lective operation until they were approved by the congress of the United States. Certainly, be fore they could be so approved they had to be passed by the local legislature, and in the do ing of that, there was obvion>! v no fraud. If any were commit ted afterwards by putting the banks in operation before the legislation of the territory was approved by cortgress, it is no where shown that Judge Brad ford was connected with them. It seems to me a very great in justice lias been done to the memory of Judge Bradford, whether intentionally or not is not for me to say. I only know the interference suggested i s not justified. Perhaps that his tory would not have been writ ten in its present shape if the author had known that such legislation required the approval of the American congress before it even had the semblance of law about it. I had the pleasure of a per sonal acquaintance with Judge Bradford from the spring of till I saw him last in life at the city of Washington in 1HOU. He left Nebraska some time in the decade of 1 ->«•(> and was shortly afterwards appointed one of the United States judges for the ter ritory ofColoradoand when 1 saw him in 1869, he was represent ing that territory in congress as its accredited delegate. He was a citizen of high character in ev ery community where he resid ed at any time during his whole life, and never until J saw it in the history of Nebraska have I heard or read anything deroga tory of his character as a citi zen or public servant. I honor ed the man in his life and I honor his memory in his death and it is in vindication of that memory and of the truth of history, that the foregoing is written. 1 he repeal of the criminal code saved the neck of the man Hargus, but it furnished no im munity from prosecution to per sons engaged in illegal or fraudu lent banking. Offenders in that particular, if such there really were, could not have been pun ished, under the circumstances in any but federal jurisdiction. 1 do not excuse Judge Brad ford tor his share in the repeal of the criminal code. It was 1 great social and legal wrong hut like many other crimina lawyers might do, under like circumstances. |r* justified th act as a means of saving' tin life of his client, it was one o* doubtful professional moralit to say the least of it. GEHLING THEATRE"* ONE NIGHT Friday, March 19th ■ _ ALL THE WORLD LOVES A GOOD PLAY. Americas Greatest Emotional Actress Hortense Nielsen C A QUINTARD, Msrr. In Ibsen s great play of the sea | first time in America) “The Lady From the Sea” Magnificent Scenic Production All Star Cast Arranged and Staged by Hortense Nielson Prices, 35c, 50c, 75c, $1 Orders for seats Will Be received by phone or telegraph. Wallpaper Bargains Our new line for Spring is now in and ready for you to make your selection. 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