The Bellevue War - Frontier Justice Iowa Style

Remains of William Brown's Bellevue, Iowa hotel in 1903

Bellevue, Iowa, late 1830s: a mosquito-ridden outpost clinging to the muddy edge of the Mississippi River. A place for men on the run. The Burlington Hawkeye called it “a sinkhole drawing the very dregs of depravity into this country,” and they weren’t wrong. Every cutpurse, gambler, and counterfeit artist west of Chicago came drifting in like river fog.

At the center of it all was William Brown. He owned the hotel, which doubled as the gang’s clubhouse, courthouse, and probably its morgue. On the surface, he was pure Iowa hospitality—“a kindly address,” people said, “scrupulously honest in his everyday dealings.” Beneath that, he ran what passed for organized crime in a land still half swamp and half dream.

Brown had tried politics first. He ran for sheriff in ’38 and lost. Ran for the Territorial Legislature in ’40 and lost again—to Thomas Cox, a hard man with a mouth that never stopped talking. Cox called him a crook during the campaign, and Brown never forgot it.

They marched beneath a flag that promise one of
two things - victory or death

The gang was a traveling circus of thieves headquartered in Elk Heart, Michigan. They stole horses across Iowa and Illinois, sometimes slipping as far south as Kentucky or Missouri. They had spotters, informants, secret signs—primitive intelligence work. When they struck, the locals never knew who to blame. Bellevue was their halfway house, and Brown was the innkeeper of sin.

For a while it worked. The town got used to the smell of counterfeit ink and stolen saddle leather. But frontier patience is short. By March 1840 the citizens had enough. They met in secret, voices low, faces grim. Options were few: run them out—or hang them. “Let circumstances decide,” someone said, which is how all bad plans are born.

They got Judge Watkins to sign a warrant. Sheriff W. W. Warren and Thomas Cox raised a posse. Their primary targets were William Brown, William Fox, Aaron Long, and any other fool standing nearby.

On March 26, Warren read the warrant to Brown, who seemed almost relieved. He said he’d surrender quietly. His men, however, had other ideas. Warren  said they were “more like demons than human beings.” They’d been drinking for two days, and were snarling and armed to the teeth. When they found out a farmer named Anson Harrington had sworn the warrant, they bolted after him like a pack of wolves. Brown pulled Warren aside and whispered, “You’d better run. The boys have been drinking.”

Betsy Brown—his wife, his conscience—grabbed Warren by the arm, shoved him toward the back door. “Run for your life,” she said. “They’ll kill you.” The sheriff ran.

The hotel burned and with it went any illusion of peace

He came back with more men and set April 1 for the final act. April Fools’ Day on the frontier—God’s own sense of humor.

When the posse reached town, Brown’s men were parading in the street, waving guns. A red flag hung from the hotel porch: VICTORY OR DEATH. No one was betting on victory.

Warren tried one last show of law and order. He walked up alone, read the warrant again. Brown listened, said it might go easier if Warren fetched a few respected townsmen—Sublette, Magoon, Jonas, and Watkins—to guarantee there would be no bloodshed. Warren agreed.

When he came back, the scene inside had turned biblical. Bottles flying, pistols drawn, men swearing they’d die before they’d hang. Brown, still sober, pleaded for a delay. “Give me till morning,” he said. “When they’re sober, I can settle it.” Warren agreed.

Then fate kicked down the door. The rest of the posse appeared in the street—armed, nervous, too far gone to turn back. Warren sprinted out, yelling for them to stop. Brown stood on the porch, rifle in hand. For one heartbeat, everyone hesitated. Then Brown’s gun misfired, the shot grazing Thomas Cox’s coat. Cox’s men answered with a volley. Brown went down. A bullet from an upstairs window struck Henderson Palmer dead in the street.

After that, it was chaos. Smoke, gunfire, screaming. Men beating each other with the butts of rifles and farm tools. Warren ordered the hotel set on fire. Flames tore through the roof. Brown’s gang leaped from windows like panicked animals. Ten were captured, four were dead, and six gone into the hills. Four townsmen never made it home.

The hotel collapsed into ashes, and with it the illusion that Bellevue was a civilized place.

Then came the hang-or-whip debate. The town had no jail, and the district court wouldn’t meet for months. Rope was easy. Conscience wasn’t. D. G. Bates suggested a vote. Each man got two beans: white for hanging, black for whipping. When they counted them, black won by a hair.

Cox read the sentences—four to thirty lashes on the bare back. The air cracked with each blow. When it was done, the prisoners were marched to the river, given three days’ rations, and shoved downstream with a warning: “Come back, and you hang.”

William Fox later told the bounty hunter Edward Bonney, “They tied me to a tree and whipped me nearly to death—and then let me go.” The citizens went home silent. They’d seen enough blood to last them. Bellevue slept that night with smoke still hanging over the ruins, the red flag trampled in the mud.

If three beans had fallen the other way, they’d have had thirteen corpses instead of ten scars. That’s how close it came. That’s how justice worked on the Iowa frontier—by a show of hands, a handful of beans, and the faint hope that nobody would pull the trigger first.