Lincoln County War

Lincoln County War
Date February 18 to July 19, 1878 Location Lincoln County, New Mexico, United States Result Indecisive
Belligerents
General Store Monopoly	Ranchers/Regulators
Commanders and leaders
Lawrence Murphy James Dolan John Kinney	Richard "Dick" Brewer  † Doc Scurlock
Strength
More than the Regulators	46 (usually less)
Casualties and losses
14 killed, 2 wounded	8 killed, 7 wounded

The Lincoln County War was a 19th century range war between two factions in America's western frontier. The "war" was notable for the large number of semi-mythical figures from 19th century America, including Billy the Kid (aka William Henry McCarty), Sheriffs Brady and Garrett, cattle rancher John Chisum, lawyer and businessman Alexander McSween, and general store owner/monopolist Lawrence Murphy.

The conflict pitted two factions against each other, over the control of dry goods trade in the county. The older, established faction was led by Murphy and his business partner James Dolan who had a dry goods monopoly run through Murphy's general store. Young newcomers to the county, English-born John Tunstall and his business partner Alexander McSween, with backing from established cattleman John Chisum, opened a competing store in 1876. The two sides gathered lawmen, businessmen, and criminal gangs to their sides. The Murphy-Dolan faction were allied with Lincoln County Sheriff Brady, and supported by the Jesse Evans Gang. The Tunstall-McSween faction organized their own posse of armed men, known as the Regulators, to defend their position, and had their own lawman, town constable Richard "Dick" Brewer.

The "war" was marked by back-and-forth revenge killings, starting with the murder of Tunstall by members of the Evans Gang. In revenge for this and other killings, Sheriff Brady was killed by the Regulators. Further killings continued unabated for several months, climaxing in the Battle of Lincoln, a four day gunfight and siege which resulted in the death of McSween and the scattering of the Regulators. It would finally be brought to an end when Pat Garrett was named County Sheriff in 1880. Garrett would hunt down the remaining Regulators, including Billy the Kid (aka William Henry McCarty), whom historians agree was killed by Garrett in July 1881.

The Lincoln County War begins

The Torreon where Murphy's sharpshooters were stationed

George W. Coe, survivor of Blazer's Mill fight, in 1934

In November 1876, a wealthy Englishman named John Tunstall arrived in Lincoln County, New Mexico hoping to set up a profitable cattle ranch, store, and bank in partnership with young attorney Alexander McSween and cattleman John Chisum. They discovered that Lincoln County was controlled both economically and politically by Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan, the proprietors of LG Murphy and Co., the only store in the county. LG Murphy and Co. was loaning thousands of dollars to the Territorial Governor, and the Territorial Attorney General would eventually hold the mortgage on the firm. Tunstall would learn that Murphy and Dolan, who bought much of their cattle from rustlers, also had beef contracts from the United States government.

These government contracts and contacts, along with their monopoly on merchandise and financing for farms and ranches, allowed Murphy, Dolan and their partner Riley to run Lincoln County as their own personal fiefdom. Murphy and Dolan refused to give up their monopoly. In February 1878, in a sham court case that was eventually dismissed, they obtained a court order to seize all of McSween's assets, but mistakenly included all of Tunstall's assests with those of McSween. Sheriff Brady formed a posse to attach Tunstall's remaining assets at his ranch some 70 miles from Lincoln. Few local citizens would join Brady's posse, which enlisted a gang of outlaws known as the Jesse Evans Gang. Murphy and Dolan also enlisted the John Kinney Gang.

On February 18, 1878, members of the Sheriff's posse caught up to Tunstall, who was herding his last 9 horses back to Lincoln. It was later determined by Frank Warner Angel, a special investigator for the Secretary of the Interior, that Tunstall was shot in "cold blood" by Jesse Evans, William Morton, and Tom Hill. Tunstall's murder was witnessed from a distance by several of his men, including Richard Brewer and William Henry McCarty (Billy the Kid). Tunstall's murder is considered the event that officially marked the beginning of the Lincoln County War.

Tunstall's cowhands and other local citizens formed a group known as the Regulators to avenge his murder since the entire criminal justice system in the Territory was controlled by allies of Murphy, Dolan & Co. While the Regulators at various times consisted of dozens of American and Mexican cowboys, the main dozen or so members were known as the "iron clad", including McCarty, Richard "Dick" Brewer, Frank McNab, Doc Scurlock, Jim French, John Middleton, George Coe, Frank Coe, Jose Chavez y Chavez, Charlie Bowdre, Tom O'Folliard, Fred Waite, and Henry Newton Brown.

The Regulators immediately set out to apprehend the Sheriff's posse members who had murdered Tunstall. However after the "Regulators" were deputized and along with Constable Martinez attempted to serve the legally issued warrant on Tunstall's murderers, Martinez and his deputies were illegally arrested, disarmed, and jailed by Sheriff Brady. After being finally released from jail the Regulators then went looking for Tunstall's murderers. They found Buck Morton, Dick Lloyd, and Frank Baker near the Rio Peñasco. Morton surrendered after a five mile (8 km) running gunfight on the condition that Morton and his fellow deputy sheriff, Frank Baker (who, though he had no part in the Tunstall slaying, had been captured with Morton) would be returned alive to Lincoln. Although Regulator captain Dick Brewer admitted he would have preferred to kill the men, he gave the two his assurance they would be safely transported to Lincoln. However, other members of the Regulators insisted on doing away with their prisoners. Their efforts were resisted, however, by one of their own, William McCloskey, who was a friend of Morton.

On March 9, 1878, the third day of the journey back to Lincoln, in the Capitan foothills along the Blackwater Creek, McCloskey, Morton, and Baker were all killed. The Regulators claimed that Morton had murdered McCloskey, then tried to escape with Baker, forcing them to kill their two prisoners. Few believed the story, finding the idea that Morton would have killed his only friend in the group implausible. The fact that the bodies of Morton and Baker each bore eleven bullet holes, one for each Regulator, reaffirmed suspicions that they had been deliberately murdered by their captors, and that McCloskey had lost his life for opposing it. However, other evidence seems to directly contradict Utley's assertion and says that there were ten bullets in Morton and five in Baker. Coincidentally, on that same day Tunstall's other two killers, Tom Hill and Jesse Evans, were also brought to justice while trying to rob a sheep drover near Tularosa, New Mexico. In the gun battle that ensued when they were discovered, Hill was killed and Evans severely wounded. While Evans was in Fort Stanton for medical treatment, he was arrested on an old federal warrant for stealing stock from an Indian reservation.

Killing of Sheriff Brady, Gunfight of Blazer's Mill

Sheriff Brady requested assistance from the Territorial Attorney General, Thomas Benton Catron, to put down this "anarchy". Catron in turn passed the buck to Territorial Governor Samuel B. Axtell, who issued a decree of flimsy legality. He decreed that Justice of the Peace John Wilson had been illegally appointed by the Lincoln County Commissioners. Wilson was also the legal authority who had deputized the Regulators and issued the warrants for Tunstall's murderers. Axtell's decree caused all of the Regulators prior legal actions to now be illegal.

On April 1, 1878, Regulators Jim French, Frank McNab, John Middleton, Fred Waite, Henry Brown and Billy the Kid (McCarty) ambushed Sheriff William J. Brady and his deputies on the main street of Lincoln. Brady died of at least a dozen gunshot wounds, and Deputy George W. Hindman was also fatally wounded. Once the shooting ended, McCarty and French broke cover and dashed to Sheriff Brady's body, possibly to get his arrest warrant for Alexander McSween or to recover McCarty's rifle which Brady had kept from a prior arrest. A surviving deputy, Billy Matthews, wounded both men with a rifle bullet that passed through each of them. French's wound was so severe that he could not ride and had to be temporarily harbored by Sam Corbet in a crawlspace in Corbet's house. Just three days after the murders of Brady and Hindman, the Regulators headed southwest from the immediate area around Lincoln, ending up at Blazer's Mills, a sawmill and trading post that supplied beef to the Mescalero Indians. Here, they blundered into rancher Buckshot Roberts, whose name was on their arrest warrant as one of Tunstall's murderers. In the ensuing gunfight, known as the Gunfight of Blazer's Mills, Roberts was mortally wounded, but not before killing Brewer and wounding John Middleton, Doc Scurlock, and George Coe, along with shooting Charlie Bowdre in the gunbelt, and grazing McCarty, the bullet not even breaking the skin.

Killing of Frank McNab

After Brewer's death, Frank McNab was elected captain of the Regulators. On April 29, 1878, a posse including the Jesse Evans Gang and the Seven Rivers Warriors, under the direction of Sheriff Peppin, engaged Regulators McNab, Ab Saunders, and Frank Coe in a shootout at the Fritz Ranch. McNab was killed in a hail of gunfire, with Saunders being badly wounded, and Frank Coe captured. On April 30, 1878, Seven Rivers members Tom Green, Charles Marshall, Jim Patterson and John Galvin were killed in Lincoln, and although the Regulators were blamed, this was never proven. Frank Coe escaped custody some time after his capture, allegedly with the assistance of Deputy Sheriff Wallace Olinger, who gave Coe a pistol.

What little is known about the morning following McNab's death is that the Regulator known as "iron clad" took up defensive positions in the town of Lincoln, trading shots with Dolan men as well as U.S. cavalrymen. The only casualty was "Dutch Charley" Kruling, a Dolan man wounded by a rifle slug fired by George Coe at a distance of 440 yards (400 m). By shooting at government troops, the Regulators gained their animosity and a whole new set of enemies. On May 15, the Regulators tracked down and captured Seven Rivers gang member Manuel Segovia, who is believed to have shot McNab. Segovia was shot while allegedly trying to escape.Around the time of Segovia's death, the Regulator "iron clad" gained a new member, a young Texas cowpoke named Tom O'Folliard.

The Battle of Lincoln

Main article: Battle of Lincoln, New Mexico

Into the summer, the large confrontation between the two forces materialized on the afternoon of July 15, 1878, when the Regulators were surrounded in Lincoln in two different positions; the McSween house and the Ellis store. Facing them were the Dolan/Murphy/Seven Rivers cowboys. In the Ellis store were Scurlock, Bowdre, Middleton, Frank Coe, and several others. About twenty Mexican Regulators, led by Josefita Chavez, were also positioned around town. In the McSween house were Alex McSween and his wife Susan, Billy the Kid (McCarty), Henry Brown, Jim French, Tom O'Folliard, Jose Chavez y Chavez, George Coe, and a dozen Mexican vaqueros (cowboys).

Over the next three days, shots and shouts were exchanged but nothing approached an all-out fight. One fatality was one of the McSween defenders, Tom Cullens, killed by a stray bullet. Another was Dolan cowboy Charlie Crawford, shot at a distance of 500 yards (460 m) by Doc Scurlock's father-in-law, Fernando Herrera. Around this time, Henry Brown, George Coe, and Joe Smith slipped out of the McSween house to the Tunstall store, where they chased two Dolan men into an outhouse with rifle fire and forced them to dive into the bottom to escape. The impasse remained until the arrival of U.S. troops under the command of Colonel Nathan Dudley. When these troops pointed cannons at the Ellis store and other positions, Doc Scurlock and his men broke from their positions, as did Josefita Chavez's cowboys, leaving those left in the McSween house to their fate.

On the afternoon of July 19, the house was set afire. As the flames spread and night fell, Susan McSween and the other woman and five children were granted safe passage out of the house while the men inside continued to fight the fire. By 9 p.m., those left inside got set to break out the back door of the burning house. Jim French went out first, followed by McCarty (Billy the Kid), O'Folliard, and Jose Chavez y Chavez. The Dolan men saw the running men and opened fire, killing Harvey Morris, McSween's law partner. Some troopers moved into the back yard to take those left into custody when a close-order gunfight erupted. Alexander McSween was killed, as was Seven Rivers cowboy Bob Beckwith. Francisco Zamora and Vicente Romero were killed as well, and Yginio Salazar was shot in the back, while three other Mexican Regulators got away in the confusion, to rendezvous with the iron clad members yards away.

Aftermath

Ultimately, the Lincoln County War accomplished little other than to foster distrust and animosity in the area and to make fugitives out of the surviving Regulators, most notably Billy the Kid. Gradually, his fellow gunmen scattered to their various fates, and he was left with Bowdre, O'Folliard, Dave Rudabaugh, and a few other friends with whom he rustled cattle and committed other crimes. Eventually Pat Garrett and his posse tracked down and killed O'Folliard, Bowdre, and, in July 1881, McCarty. The three men were buried at Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

See also

• Young Guns, a 1988 film portraying the life of Billy the Kid.
• Chisum, a 1970 western starring John Wayne loosely based on these events.
• Bob Dylan's song, "Señor", from the album Street-Legal, which includes the line: "Señor, Señor, can you tell me where we're headin'/Lincoln County road or Armageddon?" ("Señor" refers to "The Lord" in Spanish.)

Sources

• Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life, by Robert M. Utley, University of Nebraska Press, 1989. ISBN 0803295588
• High Noon in Lincoln: Violence on the Western Frontier,by Robery M. Utley, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1987 ISBN 0-8263-1201-2
• Nolan, Frederick (1998). "The West of Billy the Kid". Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0806130822
• Wallis, Michael (2007). Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride. New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 0393060683

External links

• Seven Rivers Riders
• Battle of Lincoln
• Old West Gunfighters
• Legends of the West, Lincoln County War
• Lincoln County War, Competition Wasn't Welcome