Vigilance Committees

PAGE, CORRY, MCCULLOUGH

Posted By: Anne Hermann (email)
Date: 3/3/2008 at 20:44:30

Iowa Through the Years,
Cyrenus Cole, 1940

SOME CRIMES COMMITTED BY WHITE MEN

It was estimated that at one time there were seven hundred men in such vigilance committees in the counties of Jackson, Jones, Clinton, Scott, Cedar, and Johnson. In the Jackson Sentinel they published due notice to all concerned that, wherever “legal officers neglect their duty” they would take the enforcement of the laws into their own hands. They warned residents not to interfere with them, for “the unjust death of any member of the Committee” would be promptly avenged. The Regulators (as they were called) held their courts in the woods at night, by moonlight or torchlight, to try their victims. Few of the accused, or those suspected only, escaped the verdict of guilty. Hanging was the usual penalty inflicted for murder and horse stealing. During the fourteen years from 1846 to 1860 “at least forty-five lynchings occurred”. At times the lynchings were made daylight spectacles, witnessed by men, women, and children.

Such boldness produced the inevitable reaction. Soon some of the regulators themselves fell under suspicion. They were accused of using their omnipotent organization to punish their personal enemies and to serve their own ends. This reaction reached a decisive stage when one Alonza Page of Cedar County was lynched at the instigation of a Regulator named William Corry. One of Page’s neighbors, Canada McCullough, said that he was an innocent man and had been unjustly punished. He was told to keep still or suffer the same penalty.

McCullough was a courageous man and refused to keep still. He kept on talking until the Regulators decided to stop him with a rope around his neck. When he saw them approaching, he loaded all his guns and warned them that the first man to raise his gun would be shot on the spot. They hesitated to advance, for they knew that McCullough was a straight shooter. After he had cowed them he denounced them collectively as a bunch of cowards and murderers. Not knowing what to do about it, the mob began to disperse. This was the beginning of the end of the Regulators. Soon the whole movement collapsed and the courts resumed their proper functions.

More bloodless crimes were in those days, or soon thereafter, committed by men who knew the laws and took advantage of them. There were at that time many unorganized counties in northern Iowa. Coteries of men went to such counties and proceeded to set up governments for them. They elected themselves supervisors and officers of such counties. They then issued bonds to build courthouses, jails, bridges, and even drainage ditches and sold the bonds to innocent purchasers “back East” or elsewhere. The proceeds of the sales of the bonds were not spent for the alleged purposes for which they were issued: they went into the pockets of the conspirators. Later the charred remnant of a shack was cited as evidence that once upon a time a courthouse had stood there and had been destroyed in some prairie fire. The men who perpetrated these frauds followed all the legal processes in such matters and later taxpayers paid many of these bills.

A Webster City newspaper publisher who manufactured blank books for counties later told the story of one transaction of this kind. A printer who had made a set of books for one of the dishonest county governments set out to collect his bill. Far out on the prairies he stopped at a cabin to inquire his way to the county seat. “Wall, stranger”, said the man who opened the door, “I reckon you’re about thar”. When the bill for the books was presented to him, the man said nonchalantly, “Stranger, let’s have a meeting of the board.” Having assembled himself as a board of supervisors, the man authorized the payment of the bill, and then, having constituted himself as the proper officer, he issued a warrant for the amount of the bill, and then, acting as treasurer, he paid the warrant.

The bonds of such graft-ridden counties afterwards figured in many court trials. Many of the legal processes of the swindlers had been so regular that those who came to set up honest governments of such counties were often hard pressed to disprove the bogus bonds. Whether the “innocent purchasers” lost the money or the counties had to pay it, the swindlers got it and some of them had so much of it that they did not feel called upon to hang their heads among honest men.