JUDGE SLOAN - threatened by mob

SLOAN

Posted By: Ken Wright (email)
Date: 3/29/2008 at 09:41:32

Democratic Banner, Davenport, Iowa, January 16, 1852.

Mob Threatens Judge Sloan

Judge Sloan of the Pottawattamie Judicial District, has addressed a letter to the Governor of the State giving a relation of the difficulties that prevented him from holding court in Mills county on the first Monday of December. He says that the citizens of Coonville, the county seat, refused the Sheriff the use of any house in the town, to be used as a Court House; that a mob of near forty persons, styling themselves ‘Gentiles,’ on horseback, and armed with rifles, pistols and knives, entered the town, and by threats and intimidation, attempted to obtain from him a written promise to discharge the Grand Jury, go home and never attempt to hold Court again-stating that they would have ‘Gentile’ Judges and other officers, and that Judge Sloan might go and judge the Mormons.
The Judge refused to sign the paper, and finding the mob increasing and becoming entirely ungovernable, he got the Clerk and Sheriff together at his boarding house, where he adjourned the Court until the second Monday of May next, and left the town in a hurry.