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Gunfighter: An Autobiography

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I like elegant language, and I don't like violence. JWH's autobiography has none of the former and plenty of the latter, yet it is exactly right for what it is, the autobiography of a notorious gunfighter who thought the easiest way to solve any problem was to kill the problem. You only had to look cross-eyed at Hardin, and you were a dead man. Yet, as John Wesley tells his story, every one of his forty-odd killings was justified. The reader almost feels sympathetic...

Gunfighter is the autobiography of famed western gunfighter John Wesley Hardin. It was 1868 when John killed his first man at the age of fifteen and became a wanted outlaw. He took up a life of cattle drover, gambler, and killer whose bloody trespass through Southern states after the end of the Civil War brought him into contact with Wild Bill Hickok, the Texas Rangers, an emerging Ku Klux Klan, lynch mobs, bounty hunters, and assassins. His journal/autobiography ends abruptly in 1889 and was first published in 1896, a year after his assassination and remains the only extent and authentic autobiography of a western gunfighter. Out of print for the last four decades, this new edition of a western classic is enhanced with an informative introduction by Mark Manning and highly recommended reading for western buffs and students of American frontier history.

This is the book that John Wesley Hardin and his lover, the wild, drunken Beulah M'Rose, were laboring to write during Hardin's final weeks of life in El Paso, 1895. M'Rose was apparently an educated woman, and Hardin was no idiot- he was a kind of jack leg lawyer when he was killed- but neither of them are Tolstoy. The writing is labored, workmanlike. But it is still the story of John Wesley Hardin, told in his own words and it is fascinating and instructive. "As you bend a twig, it will grow," Hardin writes, "and so I grew up a rebel."
And what a rebel he was, at least for a few short years. Growing to manhood in central Texas in the years follwoing the Civil War, Hardin was among a group of people who were truly oppressed, even if, by some standards, they deserved to be. Federal law ruled, enforced by recently freed slaves given arms and authority, and encouraged to use both by federal officals who still burned for vengeance. Texas citizens had no representation, no hope of justice for any grievances. Self-defense meant battle.
And Hardin was very good at that.

There are stories told here that truly make you understand how a man like Hardin is made and forged. At age eight, Hardin witnesses his frst murder- a poor old man hounded by a younger wealthier man for a debt he could not pay, fights his way through a crowd, draws a Bowie, and slashes his tormentor's throat. Honor fulfilled. Debts paid in blood. At 13, Hardin repeatedly stabs Charles Sloter at school, after Sloter chalked some offensive graffiti on the wall and accused Hardin of the deed. Sloter almost dies, and the teachers agree that Hardin did the right thing. "I proved it up on him..." writes Hardin.

And on alot of others. In Hardin's words, it was all justifiable, if, at times, rendered a bit extreme, even for him, (as he confesses) by too much pride and way, way too much liquor.

The history is a wild one, truly. Most of it is here, in this short book. The killing of the ex-slave Mage, and the pursuit by the federals that left four of them dead. The spree of killing- wilder than any movie- on the cattledrive to Abilene, and the face off with Wild Bill Hickok, and the murder of Charlie Cougar, the bounty killings, the unfortunate circus strongman at the bonfire. The Sutton- Taylor Feud. Lynchings, shootings, weeks on the run in every weather, always ready, often drunk, exhausted, still ready.


As was the way of books of the time, it's both a celebration of violence and a cautionary morality tale- for his few years of fighting and killing and obstinacy, Hardin spends decades in prison, flogged for escape attempts, tortured by old wounds and illness. He lost his wife, his health, and all that remained of his youth.

The real miracle is that this book was ever written at all. And it helps, if the reader is imaginative, to understand how it was written, and under what type of duress. Hardin and M'Rose were holed up in hotel rooms in El Paso, drinking and fighting incessantly. Beulah was married to a local badman, who was, conveniently, found murdered over the bridge in Juarez. Beulah often wandered the streets drunk after nights in the saloons with Hardin, who had quit practicing law and was living on gambling, and bar tabs, and writing in the afternoons, drinking and causing trouble all night. Beulah, raving drunk one morning, was confronted by El Paso lawman, young John Selman, Jr, and disarmed, relieved of two Colt .41 revolvers, an action that led to a feud between Selman, Jr. and Hardin. And that, of course, was the reason that John Selman, Sr.- a hard as nails lawman in his fifties who had been both a raider, an outlaw, and a Texas Ranger in his day- tracked Hardin down at the Acme Saloon and shot him to death before he could make good on his threats to John, Jr.

Selman was in turn murdered by his fellow lawman George Scarborough, who was in turn murdered by Wild Bunch member Harvey Logan a few years later.

Want to understand a wild time, a wild man, and a wild place? Read this book. You'll come away with a wide range of new things to think about.


Hal Herring
author of Famous Firearms of the Old West: From Wild Bill Hickok's Colt Revolvers to Geronimo's Winchester, Twelve Guns That Shaped Our History

This book tells it like it is in his own words. Since the famous outlaw wrote it himself it's obviously covering up the truth for some parts, but how much closer can we really get to the truth, and it's a fascinating study from his side. Historians will talk about the details from others' point of view, but how often do we get to find out what he was doing when others were looking for him, and how he felt about each act, and what really made him who he was. You can almost detect his Texas accent as if he were speaking directly to you. Just don't try to read it while the TV's on. It's way too important, and you'll find yourself entirely wrapped in this book until finished. It doesn't take long to read, but it's action packed and the timeline and events mentioned are real.

I was very impressed with the quick service! The paperback book was in excellent condition. Would do business with this seller again! Gunfighter: An Autobiography

KAP

If you like a none stop , tell it in the first person account , then this is a good one to get. Mr Hardin just rights it down as he remembers it. You decide if he's telling the truth or not. The book jumps around alot, and some things are repeated from time to time, but not so it's confuseing. No chapters, just a man righting it down as he recalls it.
I liked it. Bountyhunter.

"Gunfighter, the Autobiography of John Wesley Hardin" purports to be a factual account of the life of the man known as the worst outlaw of them all. What it amounts to is a single, run-on "chapter" detailing murder after murder. There is zero information regarding any aspect of Hardin's life other than killing people and the events immediately before and after each episode. These are strung together with variations on the phrase "nothing of interest happened until..." Apparently nothing much interested Hardin's small mind except mayhem.

Hardin claims to have been hunted by increasingly large and diverse groups of men over impossible distances and yet, miraculously, information of his whereabouts always precedes him in such a way that various "posses" manage to fall upon his precise position in the middle of the enormous Texas backfield.
In event after event Hardin claims to be on the side of truth and justice as he guns down lawman after lawman. His logic process in justifying his frequent murders is so obtuse as to be laughable and reads like an older person's version of "the dog ate my homework."

Considering that he is generally the victim of surprise attacks it is a stretch to believe that he nearly always comes away without a scratch, even against impossible odds, while repeatedly managing to shoot at least one or two of his opponents directly in the center of the forehead. To believe Hardin, one would have to conclude that only the most inept persons were employed in law enforcement, that they were all horribly poor marksmen, and that Hardin was not only the victim of a completely improbable string of circumstances but also the only person in Texas who hit exactly what he aimed at, every time, even under the worst of shooting scenarios. To believe Hardin, one would have to be gullible in the exterme. To believe Hardin one would have to be an idiot.

Even a cursory reading will show the reader that Hardin was, above all, a braggart. His other talents included being a liar, a thief, a murderer and a pin head. It would appear that the only reason Hardin's story remains in print is that it is a rare example of an autobiography of a blue-collar murderer from this era.

Don't waste your money.