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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Terrorism in Wyoming, April 15, 2006
This review is from: The Banditti of the Plains (Paperback)
The Banditti of the Plains, by A. S. Mercer The `Foreword' by William H, Kittrell gives a history of this censored book. Although Mercer escaped alive, the shop that printed it went out of business after its owner was jailed (p.xvi). Asa Mercer once sat on the lap of Congressman Abe Lincoln, graduated from Franklin University, and migrated to the Northwest Territory. He became the first president of the University of Washington. In 1864 he aided the migration of marriageable young women from Lowell Massachusetts (p.xxi). Mercer encouraged immigration to Washington Territory. Mercer later lived in Oregon and Texas, then moved to Wyoming in 1883. "Banditti" is a now obscure term for highwaymen who robbed travelers; the cattle barons of Wyoming and their imported Texas mercenaries would be better called terrorists today. The corporate owners and their hired killers sought to exterminate the homesteaders and small ranchers of Wyoming to steal their property. The cattle barons owned the governor and senators, who passed laws to give the cattlemen incredible power: they could seize and sell the cattle of anyone they called a "rustler". "Rustler" defines a person who is "energetic, smart, and successful"; a "go-getter". The cattle barons only wanted the lands that were next to their lands. The `Introductory' by Mercer explains how the pasturage of this area was discovered by accident (pp.5-6). Corporations were formed to raise cattle. The boom was followed by a bust after the long winter of 1886-1887. Pages 7 to 9 explain the economics behind this industry. Mismanagement caused declining dividends; they sought a scapegoat. Mercer wonders if the losses were caused by local management diverting stock and pocketing the money. Mercer points out there is less stealing and lawlessness in the West than back East base on the rate of the prison population (p.10). [Does this relate to the rate of owner_operators against wage-earners?] Mercer acknowledges that fencing the range adversely affected the free movement of cattle (p.13). [Should settlements of people be discouraged to benefit the cattle barons?] The first victims of the cattle barons were Jim Averill and Ella Watson in July 1889. Next came the killing of Waggoner in June 1891 (leaving a wife and two small children). An attack on Nate Champion failed in November 1891 (pp.22-23). Next they ambushed and killed Orley Jones and J. A. Tisdale (pp.24-25). The cattle barons then decided to send in a small army of hired gunmen and organized an invasion (Chapter III). A propaganda campaign published stories in Eastern newspapers. The laws of Wyoming made it illegal to hire a body of gunmen without legal authorization (p.42). The cattle barons planned to kill the Sheriff and deputies, some of the County Commissioners, then run amok to get rid of the homesteaders and small ranchers (pp.47-48). The invasion of Wyoming began in April 1892. They took a detour to attack the KC ranch and kill Ray and Nate Champion. They succeeded this time, but travelers now carried a warning to Buffalo. Sheriff Angus formed a posse of 200 armed citizens to come after the invaders (Chapter VI). The invaders then retreated to the TA ranch for their defense. Sheriff Angus discovered the murders of Champion and Ray. After two days of siege the cavalry from Fort McKinney showed up and captured the cattlemen's gang. Colonel Van Horn refused to surrender these criminals for trial! The Acting Governor prevented Sheriff Angus from arresting these killers (Chapter IX).Chapter X tells how two witnesses to the murder were taken out of state. Would the cattle barons kill one of their employees to advance their agenda (Chapter XI)? One Presidential lie is on pages 117-118. The cattle barons tried to muzzle the press (Chapter XII). When the trial began in Jan 1893, the judge ordered the charges dismissed (Chapter XIV)! The farce was over, but it created opposition to corporation rule in the future. Chapter XVI explains why no cattle were missing from the Western Union Beef Company -they had a surplus! Mercer ends by telling of the advantages of Wyoming: coal, iron, oil (Chapter XVII). [This can explain why corporations sought to prevent people from the "right to keep and bear arms". Today's Supreme Court could have taken away their lands by "eminent domain"!] James D. Horan's "Desperate Men" has a biased account of this event in Chapter 21. He doesn't explain why some volunteers quit after they learned the purpose of the attack on Johnson County. Some say the story "Shane" was the last Hollywood western to portray this corporate attack on the citizens of Johnson County.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Boys, I feel pretty lonesome just now.", October 21, 2009
This review is from: The Banditti of the Plains (Paperback)
There are books which can hover at the edge of your consciousness for many years until you finally get around to reading them. You know what I mean-- a book that you keep hearing about in one way or another from other people and it doesn't rise to the top of your to-buy list until there's a kind of critical mass and you just have to pick it up? Or am I the only person who has that happen?
Anyhow, the first time that I heard about the Mercer book was probably in graduate school when I was studying Shane. At that time I didn't read it, and mostly forgot about it. Some years later, I read Nature's Metropolis and I think that it came up again in the bibliography. I made a note of it, added it to one of my voluminous and frankly-impossible-to-read-them-all-before-I-die wish lists. And then I forgot about it again. Finally and most recently, the War on Powder River was discussed in an article that I happened to be reading and again The Banditti of the Plains came up in the text. Somehow that struck me in just the right way, so I finally went ahead and bought the book.
First off, let me say that the history of this book may be more interesting than the book itself. The University of Oklahoma Press edition begins with a letter written to the Princeton University Library in 1923, warning that the book should be safeguarded as it was prone to being stolen and mutilated. It goes on to say that the book was supressed in 1894 by a court in Wyoming, and all copies were supposed to have been burned. One wagon full of books made it across the state line into Colorado at night, and were accordingly saved.
The foreword by William Kittrell then goes on to tell the reader that the publication of this book resulted in Mercer's career effectively being ruined, businesses being closed, printers going to jail.
So what's in the book? Well, in pretty much every review or description of The Banditti of the Plains someone is sooner or later going to use a sentence that reads something like: "this is not an objective description of the history of the Johnson County War". Mercer was a very angry man, who made a lot of very angry accusations against men and families with a whole lot of power. He wrote the book at age 55 as a then well-known publisher.
The background of the book is the tension between large wealthy cattle ranchers and the smaller settlers who lived in their shadow. In 1892, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association (WSGA) hired a small army of hired killers to wipe out many of these small farms in response to what the WSGA saw as a pervasive problem of cattle rustling. The Banditti of the Plains is a first-hand account of what happened next.
Particularly if you're interested in the subject, it is a very interesting book. The accounts of the killings of Ella Watson and Nate Champion were powerful reading. I wouldn't necessarily read the book straight through, but would use the foreword and/or a website about the Johnson County War to help fill in the names, characters, and and background.
It is at least worth reading in support of censored books. And I kind of have to say that the lesson is worth bearing in mind when considering the way that modern large companies try to preemptively prevent loss of income by attacking people whose way of life they say as conducive to modern day rustling. The basic story is not really as far in the past as we might think.
Recommended.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Johnson County War, August 31, 2006
This review is from: The Banditti of the Plains (Paperback)
This book, a first-hand account of the Johnson County War in Wyoming that pitted big-ranch cattlemen against settlers and homesteaders, has a storied history. A. S. Mercer does not assume the role of an objective historian here, but rather is bitterly opposed to the cattlemen and their tactics used against inflooding settlers; he lays his cards on the table when he writes, "The invasion of the state of Wyoming by a band of cut-throats and hired assassins in April 1892 was the crowning infamy of the ages. Nothing so cold-blooded, so brutal, so bold and yet so cowardly was ever before recorded in the annals of the world's history." Because of this impassioned attack and his willingness to name names (some in very high places), the book was attacked upon publication, banned, burned, declared to be obscene, and stolen off the shelves of libraries (even the Library of Congress "lost" its copyright copies). Fortunately some copies escaped destruction.
Simply put, the problems in eastern Wyoming involved the large cattle interests - cattlemen who had used for decades the vast expanses of wide-open lands to free-range their cattle - and "invading" homesteaders who were settling along the best of these lands (usually river bottoms), fencing in their claims, and frequently rustling the cattle they found wandering the countryside (Mercer downplays this cattle stealing, which was the major concern of the cattlemen). Feeling ignored by the legal system, the cattlemen took matters into their own hands, hired a number of "hitmen" in Texas, and plotted the murder of settlers who they felt represented the biggest threat to their interests. A few ranches were attacked, Nate Champion and Nick Ray of the KC Ranch south of Buffalo were murdered, but then the tide turned and the citizens of Johnson County rose up against the vigilantes. Ironically, the US Army was called in to protect these "invaders," and by escorting them out of the county allowed most of them the opportunity to escape prosecution. The "war" and its aftermath created much controversy, legally and financially, perhaps the most interesting being the "disappearance" before trial was to take place of the chief witness to the murder of Champion and Ray.
An important feature of this edition is the 40-page Forward by William H. Kittrell that tempers some of Mercer's emotionally charged claims and helps to set the record more on an even keel. Although often written about, the Johnson County War was more a tempest in a teapot than a defining historical event, mainly because little changed as the result of it; Mercer's declaration of the event as "the crowning infamy of the ages" is a gross exaggeration. His exaggeration, however, is not in the depictions he describes, but in his interpretations. The book is a classic in literature about the West, and Mercer is as feisty and opinionated as any westerner ever was.
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