Doc Holliday
Page 34
Things are in an anomalous condition in Cochise County. The Earps are hunting assassins and robbers, and the Sheriff, with a set of Cow-boys and cut-throats, are hunting the Earps [on the] suspicion that they had a hand in the killing of a stage robber in Tucson. Said stage robber was supposed to have assassinated Morgan Earp. But there is no proof that the Earps killed the robber. However, the friends of the robbers have made complaint against the Earps, and sent a warrant to our Sheriff. Our Sheriff is so anxious to avenge the death of the stage robber that he seems to have forgotten all other duties. The day after M.R. Peel, son of our esteemed townsman, Judge Peel, was assassinated, the Sheriff, with eighteen or twenty deputies, left in search of the Earps, leaving the warm and bloody corpse of poor young Peel at Tombstone, and from that day to this if he, or any of the Cowboy deputies, have ever done one thing towards detecting the murderers, no one in Cochise County has heard of it. Judge Peel declares that the Sheriff has never spoken to him, or noticed him, since the death of his son. All of the good people are shocked at such conduct. The Governor has equipped thirty men and put them under a United States Marshal. They and the people are doing all they can to detect the assassins. Since the Earps left the county there have been five or six cold-blooded murders and robberies, and if our Sheriff or his gang have ever noticed or made the least effort to arrest one of the fiends no one knows it.
It is now said that the Earps have left the country, and we expect to have a series of crimes soon, as the Earps were the only men here that these fellows were afraid of. The citizens are thinking of petitioning the Governor to recall the Earps and put thirty men under their control.43
Responding to further criticism of Doc and the Earps in the Las Vegas Optic, the same correspondent challenged the charges and added, “Another petition is being quietly circulated requesting the governor to recall the Earps, as the citizens claim they were the only ones who dared cope with the cattle thieves and stage robbers. I find the feeling is universal among the law and order party, that the Earp party are the only ones that can restore order and security of life and property.”44
As far as the Arizona press was concerned, only the Epitaph and the Tucson Citizen actively reminded readers of the history that had led to the vendetta, and that changed in April, after the Earps left Cochise County, when John P. Clum and Charles D. Reppy sold the Epitaph. The Epitaph had been the great defender of the Earps, and, more important—because the Epitaph had controlled the Associated Press wire service—it had been largely responsible for the positive view of the Earps nationally. The new editor, Sam Purdy, a friend and former partner of James A. Reilly, an old enemy of Wyatt Earp, came to Tombstone from Yuma, where he had published the Yuma Free Press.45
Purdy’s arrival on May 1 marked a dramatic shift in the Epitaph’s editorial position. Indeed, Purdy was the primary architect of the anti-Earp view of the Earps as stage robbers, thugs, and murderers who victimized the Cow-Boys, and he promoted the lie that there had been no Cow-Boy problem. Purdy was a newcomer to Tombstone; as such, his viewpoint had to come from Reilly and the other enemies of Wyatt Earp. Purdy now gave editorial sanction to the lies that Ike Clanton had first told on the witness stand at the Judge Wells Spicer hearing.
This left the Tucson Citizen as the single strong editorial voice in Arizona to remind other journals of the history of Cow-Boy depredations in their own back files, while Democratic papers used the Earps to attack the Republicans, suggesting that “[t]he rope that hangs the Earps will strangle the Republican party.” Even before Purdy arrived in Tombstone, the Democratic press intimated that the Republican Party supported the Earps. Lyttleton Price, the Republican district attorney in Tombstone, had been under fire from the Tombstone Nugget from the beginning of his tenure in 1880. As early as November 8, 1880, the Nugget complained in a criminal case that “[a]s is usual in Price’s prosecutions, the defendant was discharged.” During the Spicer hearing, Will McLaury expressed the view that Price’s prosecution of the Earps and Doc Holliday was less than enthusiastic. On April 1, 1882, in one of the last blows against local authorities before Richard Rule replaced Harry Woods as editor, the Nugget attacked Price directly for his handling of cases involving the Earp party, especially Milt Joyce’s case against Doc: “Probably the District Attorney of Cochise county will arise and explain to the people why so many ‘straw’ bonds have been accepted and the criminals allowed to escape. Maybe he will explain why an indictment against Doc Holliday has not been placed on the criminal calendar, and while on this subject, why did he not present it at the last term of court when requested to do so by a ledsing [leading] prosecuting witness?”46
Significantly, under the editorship of Richard Rule, the Nugget, though no friend of the Earps, became more moderate in its tone and steered clear of the political excesses of the Tucson Star and the propaganda of the Epitaph. The Tombstone Commercial Advertiser took a somewhat different and practical view of the Earps: “It seems that at this time the people and city have lost their old staunch champions, and perhaps it is just as well that it be so, and better, that both city and people look out for themselves and fight their own battles.”47 Some of the Earps’ old allies, at least, thought that good advice.
The Earp posse had already left Tombstone when William Tecumseh Sherman, the general of the U.S. Army, arrived on April 7, 1882. He stayed long enough to talk with some of the locals on both sides of the controversy (although that was not his mission), and he advised the U.S. attorney general that the “Civil Authorities have not sufficient force to make arrests to hold prisoners for trial or punish when convicted.” He supported the Gosper-Tritle plan, which called for federal funds to create “a suitable posse to aid the sheriff & marshal” or a revision of the Posse Comitatus Act to allow federal troops to be used.48
Sherman’s opinions contributed to President Chester A. Arthur’s decision to follow the advice of Governor Frederick A. Tritle and to issue his “Proclamation Respecting Disturbances in Arizona” on May 3, 1882, which authorized the use of troops to enforce the laws and ordered the “insurgents” to disperse. The proclamation declared that it had “become impracticable to enforce, by ordinary course of judicial proceeding, the laws of the United States.”49 The reaction to the proclamation was swift and strong.
Sam Purdy and the Epitaph set the tone by announcing that indignation meetings were planned to protest the proclamation and declaring, “Cochise County is as peaceful a state as any other section of the country. There is no outlawry, no outrages, no resistance offered to the exception of the law.”50 In reprinting the article, the San Diego Union interjected at this point, “Let us wait a minute and get our breath.”51 The Epitaph went on to declare that “Tombstone is as peaceful a city as there is in the Union, having a perfect police system and efficient officers. Public opinion is unanimous in calling the President’s action an outrage.” The Union proclaimed, “for absolute, steel-plated cheek, the foregoing dispatch has never been equalled,” adding, “It is, however, surpassed by the one that follows.”
The Union then published a long editorial from the Tucson Star that deplored the proclamation and blamed federal authorities for any difficulty there: “There has been no time when the law could not have been executed in Arizona with the assistance of Federal officials, and criminals at any time could have been brought to punishment with their help. There has been no terrorism, and no difficulty in the administration of justice, save that inaugurated by them.” The Star went on to assert, “The origin of this scandalous condition is simply this: A band of Deputy United States Marshals engaged in the most wanton and criminal practices under the color of their official authority. They murdered innocent people, and when the Sheriff of the county in which these crimes were committed sought to arrest them, they interposed their official position and resisted the execution of the law. These are the facts.”52
These editorials aroused other reactions to their bald-faced effrontery. “The cattle thieves and stage robbers of Arizona are in a state of vir
tuous indignation. The proclamation of the President has seriously wounded their feelings,” declared the Union in response. It then expressed this firm opinion:
Now it is perfectly useless to enter into any serious argument with people who gravely utter such expressions as we have quoted, in the face of the actual occurrences in southeastern Arizona in the last six months. The very fact that gamblers, murderers, stage robbers, and cattle thieves of that section are strong enough to be represented in the local administration of affairs, and to obtain the sustenance of a portion of the press, tells its own story, and needs no comment.53
The San Francisco Exchange dripped sarcasm in its review of Cow-Boy outrages: “It is pleasant to hear that these pastimes no longer exist in Cochise county, but we believe they do all the same.”54 The Tucson Citizen observed, “To read the Tombstone papers one would imag- ine that the great enemies of the prosperity of the country were not the robbers and murderers but those who punish and denounce the crimes.” In subsequent issues, the Citizen quoted at length from the back files of the Star and other papers to expose the hypocrisy of their stance. “Their news columns give the lie to such editorial utterances,” the Citizen declared. “It is a notorious fact that lawlessness prevails and it is equally well known that a reign of terror exists in the city of Tombstone that makes it next to impossible to correct the existing disorder of things by the ordinary means of civil justice.”55
The Citizen went on to point out Sam Purdy’s reaction in the Yuma Free Press about Tritle’s visit to Tombstone and his proposals: “He has come to the conclusion that law and order must prevail at any cost, and is taking sensible and energetic steps in the direction of such a consumation.” There, Purdy had deplored “THE EXISTING LAWLESSNESS IN COCHISE COUNTY.” The president’s proclamation was not “an infringement upon the rights of individuals and local governments,” the Citizen proclaimed. Rather, “we are inclined to the opinion that the quiet which these papers now declare to exist is due to the establishing of some authority which will not be deterred from enforcing the law either through fear or favor.”56
On the evening of May 10, the promised indignation meeting was held at Tombstone with Marcus Aurelius Smith, a Republican from Tombstone, and Judge Robinson, a Democrat from Tucson, as the primary speakers, prompting the San Diego Union to ask, “Are murder, robbery, and gambling so firmly intrenched in the Tombstone section that their endorsement is non-partisan?” Actually, the meeting was disappointing to its sponsors, so much so that the Tombstone Nugget could not resist belittling it for “falling flat as a cold potato,” and the Phoenix Arizona Gazette called it a “complete farce.” And when Charleston announced an indignation meeting, the Citizen had its say:
If any place in the Territory is entitled to indignate, Charlestown [sic] is that place. It is there that the Cowboys have broken whiskey glasses just as they were raised to the lips of terror-stricken citizens, broken the tops of beer bottles and snuffed out candles with their revolvers. It is in Charleston that clergymen have been compelled to dance and sing in the midst of religious services to gratify the humor of Curley Bill et al. It is here that merchants have been compelled to open their safes and turn over their ready cash to the festive Cowboys. It is here that the Clantons and McLowreys [sic] tied up and disarmed a peace officer for attempting to arrest one of them for disturbing the peace. It is here that M. B. Peel and a half dozen others have been murdered in cold blood within the past five months. We would suggest that they embrace these facts in the preamble to the resolutions they will be called upon to pass. It will establish their knowledge of the characteristics of the festive cowboy and strengthen their statement that no lawlessness exists.57
One of those who directly challenged Sam Purdy’s portrayal of peace in Cochise County was Deputy U.S. Marshal John H. Jackson, just back from twenty days and four hundred miles through the countryside with his rangers. He pointed out that two years earlier there were ranches, livestock, and development. Then he wrote, “Yes, Mr. Epitaph, there is peace; and the reason is evident—there is nothing more to steal. The rancheros were literally broken up by the thieves, and had to abandon their homes and corrals and move into town to save their own lives, because their lives were threatened if they reported on the thieves. Is it to secure the favor of the vandals who committed these outrages that the Epitaph is advertising to the world that we have so much peace and quiet in Cochise county?”58
The Nugget endorsed Jackson’s letter by saying that it was “written by a gentleman of integrity and unquestioned veracity, a resident of over three years’ duration, and who knows whereof he writes.” Purdy retaliated by blaming the deserted ranches on federal Indian policy, not on the depredations of Cow-Boys, and belittling Jackson for spending twenty days in the field and finding “nothing but grass and timber—not even a cowboy or an Earp.” He accused Jackson of being politically motivated and set off another controversy in Cochise County. That was another story, however.59
Not all those who criticized the proclamation followed the Star-Epitaph line. Some simply thought it was the wrong solution. Judge Bryant L. Peel of Tombstone, a staunch Democrat who was still bitter over the murder of his son, addressed the issue directly:
I have read these editorials until I am disgusted. I know the object of such articles. It is to cover the deficiencies of a set of county officials in Cochise County. The most outrageous crimes had been committed by the wholesale and not an arrest made nor an attempt made to arrest. Farmers at their homes, engineers in their offices, teamsters on the road and miners in their camp, had been murdered in cold blood, and our county officials took no pains to ferret out the perpetrators of these crimes. These things caused the best citizens of Tombstone to appeal to the Governor for relief. I was one of that number. The Governor had two classes of advisers when he came here. One advised him to call out 100 militia and head them and take this class of outlaws, as a class, and shoot them wherever found, which I think is the only way to deal with fiends. A more conservative class advised him to call on the general Government for aid. He took the advice of the latter and asked the president for $150,000 and permission to remove inefficient officers. The President asked Congress for permission to use the military to aid the civil authorities—a thing that nobody asked for, nor no one wanted. But that was not the fault of Governor Tritle, nor shall he be blamed for it. All that Governor Tritle said is true, and we stand ready to prove it to the world.60
Criticism from the Virginia City (Nevada) Enterprise prompted Tritle to write to the editor there, pointing out that he had requested help because the territory could not provide needed funds and that all the criticism was from the Democratic press. “The Republican press has no indignation meetings,” he wrote. “Those were held only where cowboys abound.” Like Peel, the Enterprise thought the president’s use of martial law was unnecessary (calling it “ridiculous”), but it added, “Those acquainted with the character of the depredations committed by the cowboys understood very well that all that was required to bring the desperadoes under subjection was the exhibition by a few determined officers of a bold front toward them. The Earp brothers nearly succeeded in bringing them to terms, and had they been backed by the sentiment of the community in which they operated, their success would have been complete.”61
In the mind of moderate editors, including the newly balanced Tombstone Nugget (which never played down the levels of violence that prompted the proclamation) or the Republican press, Tritle was not to blame for the president’s overreaction. By May 16, Tritle was claiming that the proclamation was serving its purpose. Even the threat of a federal military presence had had a salutary effect. The press was still debating whether the cause was the governor’s action or the fact that the Earps were gone, but there were at least fewer claims that southeastern Arizona had been peaceful before the vendetta ride. Now, the questions were overtly political, which meant, simply, determining who had been to blame. What happened was giving way to what best served the par
ties. That political controversy would be around for a while.
The one thing missing from most of this public debate was the Earp posse. Nothing was clear about its movements during late April and early May. The same Epitaph article that reported the “row” in the Earp camp also reported Dan Tipton killed en route to Colorado with Holliday. He was allegedly thrown from a train. Texas Jack was also reported killed riding on a train near Las Vegas. According to this account, Jack defended the Earps as “brave, honest men and true patriots, in fact that they were anything that was not bad.” He also attacked the Cow-Boys as “a pack of murdering thieves, villains and stage robbers.” When someone expressed a contrary view, the story alleged that Jack left the car, and a few minutes later the conductor returned to say that he had jumped from the train traveling sixty miles an hour. Both of these tales apparently derived from the Las Vegas Optic report that “an unknown man was murdered on a freight train between this place and Otero and the remains [were] thrown off the cars.”62
To cap off all of this, another source reported that Sherman McMaster had been killed and Wyatt Earp seriously, if not fatally, wounded. When it finally got around to describing the Earp stay in Albuquerque, the Review reported:
Notwithstanding the fact that the newspapers did not speak of their arrival here, it became known in Arizona, and Tombstone supplied a party of man-hunters, who, it appears from Arizona papers received this morning at last found their prey. The Epitaph gives an account of the killing of Wyatt Earp near Hooker’s, Arizona, last Monday, by a party which ambushed and attacked him while the Citizen indorses the news, adding the statement that Tipton was killed last week while with Doc Holliday. No particulars are published of the killings as both papers received their information through private sources. Wyatt met his death while returning from a visit to his wounded brother, at Colton, California, who had but the week before assured a citizen of Tombstone that all of them would, as soon as he was well, return to Arizona and stand trial on the charges preferred against them.63