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         Alonzo Gleason and Edward Soper were the next victims of a long suffering and wonderfully outraged people. Soper lived three miles southeast of Tipton, on the Muscatine road. Gleason stayed wherever it suited his convenience.

         One night in the early Spring of 1857, Edward Soper, Alonzo Gleason and three other equally bad characters, invaded the premises of Charles Pennygrot, a German, who lived two and a half miles southeast of Louden, on a horse-stealing mission. Pennygrot was the owner of only two horses of serviceable age, one of which a superb animal, and which the thieves had previously “spotted” as “suited to their fancy.” The five unrighteous wretches had gone out in the neighborhood in a two-horse wagon, and, as night came on, they drove out in the rear of Pennygrot’s fields to await a suitable hour to perfect their plans. Sometime about midnight, three of them went to the stable and house to complete the programme. The old man had been sleeping in the barn, but the night being cold, he was forced to go to the house to warm. While he was in the house, one of the thieves approached and stood by the door with a club in his hand to knock the old man down in case he came out before the work was . . .

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. . . completed. Pennygrot also owned a fierce and almost unmanageable dog, and to secure themselves against his alarm and attack, the thieves resorted to an expedient that showed conclusively their cunning and aptitude in artifice. Somewhere on the route they found and secured a slut in estuation and carried her with them to the near vicinity of the barn. This artifice had the effect to divert the watch dog’s attention from them and prevent his alarming his owner, thus enabling them to finish their work without molestation from that quarter.

         After the coveted horse was secured, a signal was given to the sentinel at the door, and the trio started to join their companions in crime at the wagon. Previous to starting out on this mission, these night raiders had stolen a horse from a Bohemian, living near Solon, Johnson County, but had managed to keep themselves so concealed as to escape detection.

         In their hurry to get away from Pennygrot’s barn, the thieves forgot to fasten in the stable the old horse, mate of the stolen one, and he followed after them. As soon as they arrived at the wagon, they started toward the Mississippi River. When day began to light the eastern horizon, they sought shelter and concealment in the timber along the Wapsipinicon River. Just as they entered the timber, they discovered the old horse in the rear, and to prevent him from following them any farther, one of the malignant fiends went to the affectionate brute and severed his ham strings, thus rendering him completely helpless. During the day, the mutilated beast commenced to neigh as if in hunger and distress, and fearing that the calling after his mate would attract the attention of some one passing along the road, Gleason, demon and devil that he was, left his hiding place long enough to go out where the helpless old horse was lying and cut his throat, thus ending his agony and their apprehensions together. While the act may have been a humane one in one sense of the word, the motives that prompted it were as far removed from pity as the sun is from the earth.

         When darkness came on, the villains again took up their journey, and by night stages and unfrequented by-roads, reached and crossed the Mississippi into Illinois, and finally sold the stolen animals somewhere on the Illinois river, in the vicinity of Peru or Peoria, where they were subsequently found, identified and recovered by their respective owners.

         After they had disposed of their stolen horses, the thieves returned to Cedar County, and, emboldened by their late success, attempted to carry on their nefarious business on an enlarged scale; but success seems to have deserted them. They made several attempts to steal valuable animals belonging to Henry Fulwider, James Gay and others, but were always defeated.

         At last their maneuvers became so bold as to attract attention and suspicion, and the people—the vigilantes—on the 2d day of July, 1857, aided the authorities in placing them under arrest. Ed. Soper was arrested at a house on the farm now owned by Martin Busier, and Gleason was found concealed in a hazel copse bordering on a slough a short distance from the house. After their arrest, Sheriff John Birely, placed them in the court room—occupying the entire ground floor of the old frame court house—under a guard of about twenty men. About midnight, the vigilantes, to the number of about forty men, overpowered (!) the guards—a large number of whom, as was more than suspected, needed very little compulsion—seized the prisoners and carried them to a grove on the farm of Martin Henry, about one and a half miles south of Louden, and prepared to try them according to the rules and regulations of the Protective Association. The crowd continued to augment in numbers, until fully two hundred men were present. (Boys were carefully and rigidly excluded and guarded away from the ground.)

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         After all necessary preliminary arrangements were made, a jury of twelve good and true men were selected, and the trial was commenced. The prisoners were told they were allowed to challenge any one on the jury, and to reject any one of them they might believe to be unduly prejudiced against them. They were given every reasonable latitude, and allowed every privilege that would have been accorded them in an organized court of law. The people, to the number of two hundred or more, in the midst of whom the trembling wretches stood in awed subjection, were cool, calm and deliberate, yet resolute and determined. The captives saw and appreciated the situation and the consequences, and made full confession of all their crimes, giving full particulars of the stealing of the Bohemian’s horse, near Solon, the stealing of Pennygrot’s horse, the artifice they used to quiet his dog, how William Denny, Jr., had stood at his door, club in hand, ready to kill the “old Dutchman” if he came out of the house before they got away with his mare, the killing of the old horse, where the stolen mares were sold, and where they could be found, together with many other things not necessary to mention in these pages.

         After the “evidence was all in,” the jury was asked for their verdict.

          “GUILTY!” was the response.

         A motion was then made and submitted to the assembled two hundred that the trembling wretches—self-confessed horse thieves—should be hanged to death at once. Only four of that number voted against the motion. 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 condemned, and the men were made to get up on it. The loose end of the rope was thrown over the limb and securely fastened, the wagon was pulled out from under them, and about 3 o’clock on the afternoon of July 3, A.D. 1857, the bodies of Edward Soper and Alonzo Gleason were hung between the heavens and the earth upon their own confession.

         When life was extinct their bodies were cut down, and a rude grave dug beneath their gallows, and unwashed and uncoffined, their remains were rolled into the hole and covered with mother earth.

         When the rope was placed around their necks, Gleason said to his executioners: “Boys, I hope I’ll meet you all in hell!” and making a leap, jumped from the wagon and landed in eternity. It is said by some that Gleason told Soper to stand up and die like a man—“to jump off the wagon, and not allow himself to be strangled to death like a dog.”

         In a day or two after the tragical affair, the friends of Soper exhumed his remains and prepared to give them a decent, if not a truly Christian, burial. The following Sunday, his corpse was brought to the Court House yard in Tipton. The coffin was opened and his face exposed to view. It was a sickening and repulsive sight—all blackened with the advanced stages of decomposition and putrefaction. After the coffin was closed, a few friends formed in procession and followed all that remained of Edward Soper to the old grave yard at Tipton, where he was re-buried.

         It would be strange, indeed, if there were not some people who censured and condemned the manner of his sudden and disgraceful taking off, or a sympathy awakened for him and his relatives and friends, even if the punishment of death was justly merited. Such a sympathy was awakened and found expression in more voices than one. The action of the vigilantes was seriously and earnestly condemned, and at one time it was feared that the sympathy and condemnation would overleap the bounds of reason and prudence, and take the form of retribution action not altogether creditable to law-abiding people. But happily and . . .

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. . . fortunately for the peace, welfare and good name of the community, the ruffled element of public sentiment settled down into a peaceful calm, and other than an attempt to get the matter before the grand jury, no action has ever been taken. At the first session of the Court after the hanging, Judge Tuthill, presiding, said in his charge to the grand jury, that “where a number of persons are assembled together to do an unlawful act, all who are present when the offense is committed are, in presumption of law, participants; for it is a well known principle of criminal jurisprudence that all who openly aid and abet the commission of a felony participate in the crime, and in riotous and tumultuous assemblies all who are present and do not endeavor in some manner to prevent, restrain or discountenance the breach of the peace are prima facie participants therein.” While the grand jury was in session, a large number of those who were engaged in the Soper-Gleason tragedy were in town, and when witnesses were seen approaching the grand jury room, the vigilantes or their friends used means to either persuade or frighten them away, so that no indictments were ever lodged against them. Witnesses who had been summoned, subsequently reported that when they were nearing Tipton to go before the grand jury to testify, they were met by men whom they did not know, and told to go back home and attend to their own business; that if they went before the grand jury, they were only inviting their own deaths. Whether this is true or not, only those who were interested have the means of knowing.

          A large majority of those interested in the Soper-Gleason affair still remain in the county. Many of them are among the wealthiest, and consequently most influential, citizens of the community, highly respected and generally useful, reliable and strictly law-abiding.