Customer Reviews

Such Men as Billy the Kid: The Lincoln County War Reconsidered

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I can smell revisionist history and political correctness a mile away, but I must say, I didn't find any in this book. I'm a bit surprised that another reviewer felt that way. The probability that a shifty, shadowy 21 year old "kid" was not the mover and shaker in this sordid little war should surprise no one. I don't know Mr. Jacobsen's political leanings, but his writing is crisp, clear and a pleasure to read. This in spite of the fact that the Lincoln County War's causes were the rather mundane ones of protection of business and political interests that escalated out of control. Jacobsen has his opinions no question, but he still makes a good case and he is a very lucid writer. He doesn't preach an agenda. I found the book interesting and informative.

The most revealing, entertaining and well-written factual account of the Lincoln County (NM) wars since Utley's last book. No less a newspaper than The Washington Post calls this a "lively, lucid, compelling account of complex and confusing events about which scholars are still puzzling." The Post is correct (Kirkus is wrong). If you're a Billy the Kid junkie, first read Utley's "Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life." THEN, read this book by Jacobsen. From Utley, you'll get to know Billy. From Jacobsen, you'll discover that Bill Bonney was mostly a hanger-on who became an overnight celebrity and was killed shortly thereafter. The REAL players in this story are Tunstall and Murphy and Dolan and McSween and Catron and Brady -- so much so, that not until the final third of the book does the Kid REALLY come into play. If you like your history unvarnished, the sources impeccably reproduced, the background thorough -- this is the book for you. Whoever wrote the Kirkus review is wrong. This is not only entertaining, it is fascinating in its human portrayals of people out to make a buck and control county politics in the new territory of New Mexico. Trust the Chicago Tribune, which describes Jacobsen's book as "...a tonic to the hysterical and sensational accounts of the past."

Jacobsen's account of the Lincoln County War amounts to a long overdue exposé of the political corruption of New Mexico's territorial Republican establishment, and that establishment's willingness to kill all manner of innocent persons to maintain the capital stakes of its respective players. I write this statement as a modern Republican activist. The viewpoint is necessary, however, to understand modern New Mexico politics, right down to the Anglo-Hispanic division that all too often still exists in that state.

From the murder of English entrepreneur John Henry Tunstall by a "posse" of outlaws sent with the blessing of Lincoln County Sheriff John Brady, one of the primary villains in the affair, to the cold-blooded murder of Tunstall's lawyer and surviving partner, Alexander McSween, with the help of another "posse" led by famed murderer and rapist John Kinney and his own army of bandits, the reader is shocked to see the misapplication of law to protect the guilty.

In this entire affair, William Henry Bonney, later known as "Billy the Kid", was simply a Tunstall hand and loyalist, and one of many Tunstall and McSween partisans to carry the fight to the perpetrators when the corrupt Sheriff Brady refused to have the murderers rounded up and tried. The Tunstall and McSween partisans, commissioned by the local justice of the peace to bring in the killers Brady would not, formed themselves into a semi-formalized group calling themselves "the Regulators". Here, Billy Bonney was one of the Regulators' crack shots, but the leaders were Dick Brewer and Frank McNab, both killed in the course of the war.

Against the regulators, the corrupt establishment brought to bear the weight of the established military outpost at Ft. Stanton, west of Lincoln. The commander, Col. Dudley, actively breached the posse comitatus act of 1878 to side with the forces of J.J. Dolan, Murphy, US attorneys Rynerson and Catron, and Governor Axtell. Thus, Dudley committed his men to the final siege of the regulators in Lincoln, which culminated in the shocking murder of Alexander McSween and two partisans as they attempted to surrender to Deputy Beckwith.

The story vindicates Billy Bonney to some extent. While the murders of Tunstall and McSween were never punished (the establishment never attempted to punish them), Bonney was the only one singled out for execution. The appearance, in fact, is that the territorial government of Lew Wallace chose him as the scapegoat for the general breakdown in public order.

Indeed, the author successfully demonstrates that the "Lincoln County War" resulted from the partisanship of successive territorial governors, and the federal officers in Santa Fe, in a matter having to do with two competing enterprises in Lincoln. In this sense, the Lincoln County War was a case of Republican monopolists bringing in armed paramilitary forces to get rid of their upstart English competitor, who was thriving on the patronage of the ancestral Hispanic community. The "Ludlow Massacre", which took place just across the New Mexico line in Colorado sometime later, represents a similar case, where the state powers intervened on behalf of established economic interests (there, the mining firms) against disgruntled miners and their families. In both instances, the "good guys" lost.

Jacobsen brings to his work a successful prosecuting attorney's clear eye for evidence and testimony, and a singular degree of industry in working through the vast amount of material available to him. He relies notably on the heretofore largely ignored investigative records of the US justice department's special agent Angel, sent to investigate the misdoings of US Attorney Catron (the boss of the Santa Fe Ring) and Gov. Axtell. He does not set out to vindicate Billy Bonney, but his narrative leads in that direction. Along the way, he writes real history, where what we have gotten up until now has basically been establishment history.

My own take from the books is that Billy Bonney was one of the good guys, an Anglo cowhand and crack shot who threw in his hand with the Englishman John Tunstall, and who remained loyal to his mentor after Tunstall's murder. An interesting note is that Bonney was a ladies' man, and that he had wide popular support, especially in Lincoln proper, and among the Hispanic cowhands of the region, who rode with him. He was fluent in Spanish (uncommon among Anglos at the time) and his last words were spoken in that tongue.

Several striking facts highlight the miscarriage of justice in Bonney's case: the subsequent success of the villains, including Catron, appointed as the first US Senator to the new state of New Mexico, the acquittal of Col. Dudley on his own testimony in the face of the sworn testimony of 21 witnesses so that he could retire with pay of a full general, the escape of the murderer Jesse Evans (one of Tunstall's shooters), and the failure of Gov. Lew Wallace (author of the novel Ben Hur) to grant Bonney a promised full pardon in return for Bonney's testimony against the killers of Sue McSween's lawyer, Chapman.

Too often, the forces of law in the western territories were forces of corruption and crime. Wyatt Earp and his brothers faced a similar situation in Tombstone, Arizona, where Sheriff Johnny Behan held power, but Earp was able to command better and more effective guns than "the Regulators". As a result, he was able to hunt down and kill those who had shot his two brothers, Virgil and Morgan. Consequently, the Earps, along with their partisan Doc Holladay, avoided Billy Bonney's fate and went down in history as upholders of law and order, and not as outlaws.

Jacobsen's book is so factually based and at the same time so well-narrated that it makes for a gripping read. I chopped through it in three days of sporadic concentration. The only other account of the Old West that can compare is the late Paul Wellman's A Dynasty of Western Outlaws, which details the rise and fall of the James-Younger Gang and its successors.

I must state that the author of the book seems to want to make a point that Billy the Kid wasn't much of a well-known outlaw. Maybe in the Lincoln County War, but what about after? The author really glosses over the events following the War and tries to "revise" Billy out of history. Just another revisionist taking the stance that nothing important or interesting happened in the Old West. Unfortuante. Further, the review by Canfield is clearly a shill's piece. No one who had read the Utley book on Billy the Kid would then classify the Kid as a "hanger-on who became famous overnight and was killed shortly thereafter." Canfield, like Jacobsen, appears to be jealous of Billy the Kid. Keep in mind that Jacobsen, as a government official, would have good cause to try to downplay the life of the Kid. Canfield is either a partner in crime, or another guy who hates Billy the Kid 'cause his girlfriend saw Young Guns and thought Emilio Extevez was cute. The book may be worth reading, but don't fall for the revisionist scam!