Why were towns in the west often violent and lawless places?
There are several reasons why the west was very violent and lawless. There are the geographical, political, social, economic factors and values and attitudes. The west was a very large vast area and therefore transport was very slow, this made it hard to enforce law and order. When towns grew so quickly there was a shortage of well-trained and reliable officers. The politicians thought it was a waste of money to train more and better law enforcement officers, it was not important enough to them and thought it was more important to build more saloons, casinos and hotels.
There were many conflicts between different ethnic groups suck as the Chinese, Blacks, Indians, Europeans, Mexicans and Americans. This was caused by the demobilization in the Civil war. Many people were unwilling to forget what had happened and there were lots of racial attacks. One well known racial attack happened in 1885 in Rock springs, Wyoming, where 51 Chinese people were killed.
In the west there was a primitive code of honor. It was your responsibility to solve your problems on your own. When you shoot someone in your defense and the man you are shooting at is armed you are just protecting yourself and will not have broken the law. Most of the people in the west had a gun with them all the time, basically to feel safe but when you are just in a argument with someone and it gets a bit out of hand it could very easily end in a shooting and result in injury or death.
There were also many conflicts between different economic groups. Between cowboys and townspeople, homesteaders and ranchers, miners and hunters, sheepherders and ranchers, and cattle barons and small ranchers. The herds of cattle, which roamed freely on the range, were an easy target for rustlers. They changed the brands of the cattle and there was no one who could recognize them, the young cattle was also sometimes stolen before the brand was even put on, which made it even easier. In this way cowboys could start as small ranchers. But this was one of the factors leading to the Johnson County war.
Because of these factors there were a lot of crimes committed, like Bank robbery, Cattle rustling, Claim jumping, Fence cutting, Horse stealing, Racial attacks, Stagecoach robberies, Shootings and Train robberies. Bank robberies were caused by poor law enforcement; therefore the robbers could easily get away with the crime. One of the most famous bank robbers were the James-Younger band. They robbed banks from 1866-1882, but in 1876 a robbery in a bank in Northfield, Minnesota went wrong. The townspeople fought back and killed two of the gang members, the rest were wounded. This is an example of someone taking law into their own hands with a negative result.
Claim jumping was mainly a problem in gold or silver mines. People would claim the land, which had already been claimed by someone else. There was nothing to do about this because the law enforcement was so far away. Another crime was fence cutting; Cattle barons put up fences to enclose vast areas but did not know they were cutting off homesteaders and small ranchers from their food and water sources. The homesteaders and small ranchers would cut the fences because they did not want to be cut off from their water and food sources. This caused frustration and escaladed into violence.
Stagecoach robbery was a common crime in the open spaces of the west. The stagecoaches would be stopped away from any town or law enforcement and would them be robbed. Black Bart was a well known stagecoach robber and had robbed 27 stagecoaches in his “career”.
There are many people like Billy the Kid, John Wesley Hardin and Wild Bill Hidcok, who are well known for their shooting skills and fast drawing and became famous from this. There is an estimate of 20,000 dead men from lead poisoning, from 1866-1900 as a result of bullet wounds from such shootings.
In 1866 the first train robbery took place outside Seymour, Indiana. And by 1890’s it was a common crime on all the major railroads. The main problems that caused this crime was that the doors were too weak and could be broken into easily. The security was too weak and not armed, so it was an easy for people like Butch Cassidy and the Reno brothers to rob these trains.
All of the above examples of crimes were a result of freedom and lack of law enforcement due to the rapid growth in towns and communities, and huge distances involved.
Analyse the part played by vigilantes
Vigilantes were groups of people, who took law in their own hands because they thought there was not enough law enforcement. In 1851 there were over 200 vigilante groups recorded west of the Mississippi. But the actions they took were not always appropriate. There was one incident where Mexican women killed a drunken miner, the vigilantes murdered her. A lot of newspapers said it was because she was Mexican that they killed her. The vigilantes were considered racist. They were very violent when trying to get the guilty and usually just killed them. People became scared of vigilantes.
Vigilantes are not always bad, there are good examples also. Those who wanted to help their county and help the law enforcement officers, because there were not enough of them, like in Bannack where they cleared mining areas of individuals and gangs who terrorized innocent citizens.
If there were no vigilantes there would not be enough officers and the crime rate would go up even more. Even though there are some bad vigilantes who take law in their own hands where they are not supposed to, the good vigilantes will relieve the law enforcement officers and give them an easier job.
After the Johnson County war there were two views of the ranchers. One view was that they were heroes who took law into their owns hands. While the other was that the ranchers were hard handed villains who wanted to monopolize the public land.
To most people vigilantes did more harm than good, they held trials but were hasty and lacked any real justice. The decision was usually lynching. It was very easy to execute someone who had gotten on the wrong side of an influential citizen.
Analyse the part played by women dealing with problems of living in newly set up towns
Women wanted to join their husbands, special quarters were set up to accommodate these women until they could join their husbands. Some women brought their children. They found work quite easily running boarding houses, some became seamstresses, or housekeepers in established homes, or nurses. The young unmarried women were certain to find a rich husband very soon, but most of them drifted into the entertainment world as fancy girls at dance halls, saloons or gambling halls.
Most of the miners were not interested in women or wives; they were just interested in digging up heaps of gold. Some women put their cooking skills to good use. The miners would come back from work and would be exhausted, the women would them get them to taste and the miners would be convinced. If he would come home he would be welcomed by the smell of a good meal. Some women would be such successful cooks that they would set up their own restaurants. Women would also wash men’s shirts for one dollar apiece and sometimes made more than her husband with what he came home with from his diggings.
When children arrived, more schools were developed. This meant teachers had to be hired which meant more jobs for the women. Churches were developed to get rid of lawless Sundays. Then there were even temperance league’s were added to saloons, so men would not get so drunk and out of hand.
All these factors helped the towns by giving them more education, health, etc. The women dealt with the problems well and found solutions to most of them. These factors also helped controlling lawlessness in the west.
Mitchell Routledge
March 2007
History
Law And Order In The American West
Mitchell Routledge
British School of Houston
Mr. Craggs
