Vigilantes of 1857

 

A mob breaking prisoner out of jail to take justice in their own hands

When most people think about vigilantes, Iowa is the last state that comes to mind. Instead, they conjure up visions of California, Colorado, Texas, or any other state in the far west. But in 1857, Iowa stood at the forefront of a new vigilante movement.

 

Many historians think hard times brought on the vigilante craze. That may be true. The panic of 1857 changed everything. Wheat and corn prices hit an all-time low. Many Iowa farmers were hanging on by the seat of their pants. If someone stole a team of horses from their barn, it could mean financial ruin. Just like a car today, horses were a farmer’s second-biggest investment other than his house or property. A good team of horses could cost two to three hundred dollars, maybe more. That was an entire year’s pay for a farmhand. Add counterfeit money into the mix, and the average man didn’t stand a chance.

 

The wooded country along the rivers, where the first pioneers in Iowa settled, “was especially adapted to lawlessness and the settlers soon found their communities infested by bands of horse thieves and outlaws.” Between 1821 and 1834, there was no territorial government or law enforcement in Iowa. As a result, “The pioneers were practically forced to take matters into their own hands.”

 

The first two lynchings in Iowa occurred just after the Black Hawk Purchase in 1834. Patrick O’Connor was strung up for the murder of George O’Keefe in June 1834, and a man named Wheeler was whipped during the spring of that year. 

Patrick O’Connor was a special case. He migrated from Ireland to the United States in 1826 and went to work in the Galena lead mines in 1832. He lost his leg in a mining accident and became a charity case supported by the town. If things had stayed that way, everything would have worked out fine. Unfortunately, losing his leg turned O’Connor into a mean, grumpy old cuss. As he got meaner, people stopped supporting him. Then O’Connor cooked up an idea to burn his cabin down to win their favor back.

 

Things didn’t go well after that.

The hanging of Alexander Gifford

Jack Brophy, a Galena merchant, exposed him as a fraud, and O’Connor shot him. Not long after that, he shot George O’Keefe in Dubuque. A large mob of miners took him into custody and tried him. They sentenced O’Connor to hang on June 20. 

 

It was said his hanging “caused many outlaws to leave the vicinity of Dubuque lest they too might suffer at the hands of a lynch court.”

 

The next big wave of lynchings occurred in 1857.

Sixteen men from Jackson, Jones, Cedar, and Clinton counties met “Judge Lynch” between April and December.

 

It’s not that there weren’t lawmen and courts in Iowa. They just didn’t get the job done as quickly and efficiently as the people wanted. Too often, the legal system and the damn lawyers let the killers and horse thieves walk away. There were too many continuances, changes of venue, and friends who provided convenient alibis. The criminals were back on the street almost as soon as they were caught.

 

The vigilantes of 1857 did what they did for self-preservation. When the law failed to work, they took justice into their hands.

A group of vigilantes join in to pull the hangman's rope

The Davenport Gazette attempted to justify the mob violence that struck the area. “So far as criminal cases are concerned, the law appears to have become a mockery in this county [Jackson County]. Criminals have been arraigned for the highest offenses, murder, horse stealing, &c., and have secured changes of venue, and new trials, and, through the intricacies or actual lameness of the law, escaped punishment, till the citizens have begun to find there is no real safety, neither life or property. The law has become a bye-word and a mockery...”

 

“Judge Lynch” held trials, picked juries, and let prisoners speak on their behalf. After the trial, committee members debated whether the prisoner should be whipped or hanged. When the evidence was not so clear, the Regulators let their prisoners go with a warning or a strong suggestion to haul their asses out of the county as quickly as possible.

 

Much of what happened goes back to what Edward Bonney wrote about in the Banditti of the Prairie. A loosely organized band of criminals practiced murder, horse theft, robbery, and counterfeiting across Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. The Banditti laughed at the law because they knew they could outwit it. 

 

If one of the Banditti got arrested, the others testified he was a hundred miles away when the crime took place. They owned judges, lawyers, and lawmen. As a result, they had little to fear while the people had everything to fear.

 

What started it all was the lynching of Alexander Gifford on April 11, 1857.

 

John Ingle, a resident of Farmer’s Creek Township, disappeared on March 27. Some school children discovered his body near the Brandon Township line several days later. He had been shot in the head.

The evidence pointed to Alexander Gifford. He had left E. Wilson’s shop with Ingle that morning. Ingle carried his ax; Gifford a rifle. An hour later, Gifford returned to the shop alone. When Ingles’ body was discovered, his ax lay nearby.

 

Gifford was arrested and taken to jail in Andrew. Shortly after 2 p.m. on April 11, a crowd of men marched into Andrew and demanded the keys to Gifford’s cell. When the sheriff refused, they bashed the lock with a sledge and hauled Gifford away.

The mob, led by Jacob Landis, took Gifford to an old oak tree on the north end of town, placed a rope around his neck, and demanded that he confess. Gifford obliged. He said, “He approached his victim from behind, to within fifteen feet, and shot him in the head, the ball passing through and lodging against the skull over the left eye. The skull in front was fractured.”

 

Henry Jarrett and David McDonald paid him $150 to put Ingle “out of the way.” Apparently, the men had been feuding for some time. Ingle had threatened to burn down Jarrett’s house. In the end, Gifford didn’t mind dying for what he’d done. He just thought, “His uncle [Jarrett] ought to suffer, too.”

 

Five hundred men watched as they strung him up. They tied a handkerchief around his eyes, and then twenty-four executioners grabbed hold of the rope. When the signal was given, they yanked on the rope as a group, lifting Gifford six feet into the air. He hung there for an hour. Then they buried him in a “rude box” at Dr. Cowden’s place.

 

A month later, the Vigilance Committee justified its actions in a statement published in the Jackson Sentinel. The resolution was submitted by Jacob Landis, the postmaster at Iron Hill in Jackson County. He assured readers that the committee was 300 to 400 members strong and “determined that crime shall be punished at all hazards.

 

“Resolved, that we, the Jackson County Vigilance Committee, are determined that the criminal law of this state shall be enforced in this county to the very letter.”

 

After that, the committee warned the county’s elected officials it was time to move on. If not, they needed to prepare themselves to face the consequences. In the future, the vigilance committee would carefully monitor all criminal cases in the county. 

As for David McDonald, the murderer of John Ingle, they expected to see a reward posted for his capture. “If not, we will look after him ourselves.”

 

Finally, they did some personal housekeeping. They demanded that officials not take any action against any members of the Vigilance Committee involved in the hanging of Alex Gifford, for “we believe he should have hanged long before he did.”

 

And if anyone should be foolish enough to infiltrate the Committee to spy on them, they would be punished with death. The proclamation put criminals and county officials on notice, there was a new sheriff in town, and he had little tolerance for criminals.

The long march to Bennett Warren's farm in Liberty Township

Bennett Warren had a small farm in Liberty Township in Scott County, Iowa. Not much farming got done there. His house served as a meeting place for the more unsavory element—horse thieves, counterfeiters, an occasional burglar, and other frontier badasses.

 

Warren never stole horses or counterfeited money, but he helped the banditti by letting them keep the stolen horses on his property. In return, he took and passed counterfeit currency. Each time the authorities arrested Warren, no one would testify against him, so he got off with little more than a slap on the wrist.

On June 24, 1857, two hundred vigilantes crossed over into Clinton County from their rendezvous spot at Big Rock. They marched to Warren’s house and took him to a nearby grove. 

 

A jury of twelve men was selected, then witnesses were sworn in. They determined, “Bennet was guilty of harboring horse thieves, knowing them to be such; of keeping and secreting stolen horses, knowing them to be such; and of habitually passing counterfeit money, knowing it to be such.”

Jury of vigilantes deciding whether Bennett Warren should be whipped or hanged

Unlike a real court, they didn’t pass sentence. Instead, they asked if he should be punished. When the assembly answered yes, they asked if he should be whipped or hanged.

 

After much debate, the consensus was to make an example of Warren and hang him. The old man was sweating up a storm now. A real court could never convict him, but here there were no rules, no friends to save him. Nothing stood between him and the rope but the men he had cheated and stolen from, and they had little sympathy for an old horse thief.

 

Before Warren died, they gave him a chance to speak, but the only words he could choke out were, “I am an old man, and you can’t cheat me out of many years.” After he had his say, they tied the noose around his neck and sent him on his way to eternity.

 

His wife took it like a trooper. One of her previous husbands had been strung up for murdering a peddler at Buffalo. Maybe the next time would be different. Perhaps it wouldn’t.

 

In early July, “the committee arrested two men and, placing a rope in the wagon started for the timber. This so frightened the prisoners that they made a full confession to save their own lives.” 

 

They named names and explained the inner workings of their gang. With that information, the committee proceeded to the house of a man named Page in the backwoods of Clinton County. As they approached the barn, Page opened fire on them. They fired back. Page took a fatal wound in the bowels.

 

The horse thief they were after got away. 

 

A few days later, the committee attempted to arrest an old horse thief named Benjamin Warner, who lived in the Warren Settlement in Cedar County. They had suspected him for some time, but “he had been sharp enough to cover up his thefts as they were committed.” This time he couldn’t escape punishment. They had him dead to rights. 

The trial of Benjamin Warner in a grove in Cedar County

Forty men rushed the house and dragged him into the woods, where a crowd had gathered to hear his case. A jury was empaneled, and witnesses were called. As was expected, Warner was found guilty. The only question left was whether he should be hanged or whipped. 

 

The jury voted to string him up. 

 

Warner accepted what was about to happen. “He placed his hands behind him to be tied, rose to his feet, and was ready, apparently as unmoved as though he were but a spectator. A rope was fixed across a tall limb and fastened around his neck. The first jerk swung six feet from the ground. He was raised ten feet higher and hung a corpse.”

 

That’s how Benjamin Warner met his end.

 

The committee put three other members of that gang on notice. Leave that part of the country within ninety days or be prepared to meet your maker.

 

A group known as the Iron Hill Vigilance Committee hung William Barger in June 1854. Barger had killed his wife in 1854 at Bellevue in Jackson County, Iowa. He had accused her of infidelity. She sued for a divorce. At the time of her murder, Mrs. Barger lived with relatives in Bellevue. Barger bored a hole in the fence near the house, then lay in wait for her to open the door. When she did, he shot her dead.

 

He pleaded insanity and was tried for murder twice. The first jury was hung. The second found him guilty. After that, Barger’s lawyer didn’t think his client could get a fair trial in Bellevue, so he got a change of venue to De Witt in Clinton County for his third trial.

Benjamin Warner was calm before his death

The Tipton Advertiser justified the hanging, saying, “That the law was sluggish is evidenced in the time Barger has been suffered to lay in the jail at the expense of the county, even when it was judged and positively known that he was guilty.” In effect, they said, if the law doesn’t do it, the people will.

 

“At about noon, the Iron Hill Vigilance Committee rode into town heavily armed and unmasked, and in open daylight, made an attack upon the jail.” Sheriff Buchanan put up a good fight, but he couldn’t hold out against the vigilantes.

 

Once the sheriff was overpowered, the men used sledges to break the locks off Barger’s cell door. They loaded him in a wagon and drove him to Andrew, the county seat of Jackson County. Barger was hanged on a tree known as “hangman’s tree.”

 

Apparently, hanging wasn’t good enough for an angry old cuss like Barger. They let him hang for three hours before they cut him down. Then they nailed him into an old pine box and buried him in a hole in a vacant lot. Several mob members dug him up the following day, “placed [him] upright in a buggy, with clothes and hat on,” and drove him to Cobb’s Hotel. They placed a note in his hand asking for “dinner and horse feed.”

 

In early July 1857, the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Casteel were discovered hidden under a pile of corn shocks near Montezuma, Iowa. The badly decomposed bodies showed evidence they had been brutally murdered—shot, then stabbed.

 

Suspicion soon fell on William Thomas. He was described as a drunkard and a loner, who often disappeared for weeks at a time. The rumor going around said he was a professional gambler.

 

Authorities thought Thomas had followed the couple for some time. When he found the perfect, out-of-the-way spot, he killed them and stole all their possessions.

 

The victim’s brother told a reporter, “The chain of circumstantial evidence against Thomas is so strong as to leave no room to doubt his guilt. One of the horses of the murdered man is now in this city [Davenport], having been sold here, with the other property stolen by Thomas.”

 

After his arrest, Thomas was locked up in the Davenport, Iowa jail. He was transported back to Montezuma in Poweshiek County to stand trial for the murders. When Judge Stone granted Thomas a change of venue, the mob went into a frenzy. 

One paper said Thomas “was a hardened wretch, unfit to go at large.” They were confident he would have been convicted when he was tried. Because of that, the lynching was “inexcusable.”

A vigilante mob dragging William Thomas out of jail for a meeting with Judge Lynch

A large crowd seized Thomas at the jail and hauled him off to a tree outside town. Before they hanged him, the mob demanded a confession. When he said he was innocent, the mob “threw the rope over a limb, and Thomas was suspended in the air.” Moments later, they let him down and asked again. When he repeated he was innocent, they yanked him in the air again. This time, they started a fire under his feet, and “the infernal mob, more pitiless than vindictive-savages, were shouting around their victim and gloating over his dying agonies.”

 

After suffering several minutes in that hell, they lowered him one more time. Still, he proclaimed he was innocent. This time they let him die.

 

The New York Daily Tribune seemed to agree with the mob’s verdict. “The most prominent feature was the absence of all noise and excitement. None had been drinking. There was no intemperance but a cool, calm, well-formed determination. I make no comments, but all here are of one opinion, and all are satisfied.

 

In July of that same year, two more men were arrested for stealing horses. This time they were taken by Sheriff John Birely of Tipton, Iowa. He locked Alonzo Gleason and Edward Soper in the Tipton jail and assigned twenty men to guard them.

 

The Tipton Advertiser reported great excitement in the county over the taking of Alonzo Gleason, Edward Soper, and Van Auselin. “When the posse entered town, they were led by a martial band of music and was composed of about two hundred men, all armed to the teeth.”

The mob raising and lowering William Thomas over a blazing fire to draw a confession

Later that day, a second posse brought in Walter Cassady.

 

The tension kept building as the day wore on. “The town is full of men, and still more are coming from the country, men of all ages and classes. It is believed that more than one thousand men will be here by morning and will hang all three of the prisoners now in custody.”

 

About two hundred men rushed the jail at 1 a.m. and hauled Gleason and Soper off to a grove on Yankee Run.

 

“A jury of twelve good and true men were selected, and the trial was commenced.” The men could challenge any jury member and reject anyone they thought might be prejudiced against them. Seeing they were caught, the outlaws confessed to stealing a horse near Solon and Mr. Pennygrot’s horse near Lowden.

 

Like Warren, they were found guilty. “Ropes were procured and adjusted to the necks of the condemned men. A wagon was drawn up under a projecting limb of a white oak tree under which they had been tried, and the men were made to get up on it. The loose end of the rope was thrown over the limb and securely fastened.”

 

When they placed the rope around Gleason’s neck, he looked his executioners in the eye and told them, “Boys, I hope I’ll meet you all in hell!” Then, before he jumped, he looked over at his cowardly friend and told him to die like a man, not “to be strangled to death like a dog.”

 

After the lynching of Gleason and Soper, The Tipton Advertiser had second thoughts about the whole vigilante movement. They said it was time for the committee to put up their guns. “They have ‘put out of the way’ all whom they could prove guilty of horse stealing, so that their right of being secure in their property might be maintained. They have become a terror to all evildoers and have now effectually rid our county of the whole gang of horse thieves and counterfeiters. They have now restored peace and confidence to the community, and now it is time they should return to their peaceful occupations.”

 

It was a good thought, but the time wasn’t right. The Protection Association had a few more scores to settle.

 

Hiram Roberts, a horse thief and counterfeiter operating in Cedar, Scott, and Clinton counties, was the last lynch victim of 1857. For some strange reason, he got it in his head to taunt the vigilantes and told them to come and get him if they dared. They picked him up at James Hamlin’s place near Tipton and took him “across the county line to Jones County, to the barn of George Saum, and there tried and hanged” him.

 

Before he died, Roberts confessed to “having passed over three-hundred-thousand-dollars of counterfeit money and having had at onetime seventy-thousand-dollars of bogus money in his possession.” He was worth over one-hundred thousand dollars when they strung him up.

 

There were more hangings along the way, but over time the criminal element got the message. If the law didn’t get them, the vigilance committees would. It was just a matter of time.

 

Before you go ...

Stuff like this is what I always end up chasing—the little lines in old newspapers and magazines, the parts most books skip over.

I pulled a bunch of those stories together into Iowa Crime Time if you want more of it.

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