The Great Cowboy Strike, page 27
One: Mysteries of the Heartland: The Emergence of Postwar Western Radicalism
1 “That particular provision didn’t last long.” Nelson A. Dunning was less forthcoming later about the “Grand Smokeys,” writing that their identity remained “secret from all save the president. Their peculiar function has been forgotten.” Dunning, The Farmers’ Alliance History and Agricultural Digest (Washington, DC: The Alliance Publishing Company, 1891), 17–18.
2 Stephen L. Hanson, The Making of the Third Party System: Voters and Parties in Illinois, 1850–1876 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1980), 185–7, 189–90, 192.
3 Charles M. Gardner, The Grange—Friend of the Farmer (Washington, DC: The National Grange, 1949), 276; Solon Buck, The Granger Movement: A Study of Agricultural Organization and Its Political, Economic, and Social Manifestations, 1870–1880 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1913), 78, 58ff; D. Sven Nordin, Rich Harvest: A History of the Grange, 1867–1900 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1974), 29, 146, who also noted that the loss of $20,000 through speculation by the state treasurer forced serious cutbacks in the cooperative plans for the year (p. 144).
4 On race, see Buck, The Granger Movement, 74 n1. In parts of Mississippi, the Ku Klux Klan reportedly used the Grange as a cover, but Nordin reports that some of the Louisiana lodges became integrated: Nordin, Rich Harvest, 32–3. On class, see Parrish, A History of Missouri: Vol. III, 218–19, 222–4.
5 North, The History of Jasper County, 369–70, 291, 249; Joel T. Livingston, A History of Jasper County, Missouri and Its People (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1912), 1: 352; Malcolm G. McGregor, The Biographical Record of Jasper County, Missouri (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1901), 443; Lucius F. Hubbard, “Narrative of the Fifth Regiment” in Minnesota in the Civil and Indian Wars, 1861–1865 (St. Paul: Pioneer Press Co., 1891), 243–8.
6 North, The History of Jasper County, 205, 239, 259, 291, 323, 369–70.
7 “The Industrial Brotherhood” [from St. Louis Democrat] and “Sovereigns of Industry and Industrial Brotherhood” [from Fort Scott Pioneer], People’s Press, Feb. 26, 1874, pp. 1, 2. From this last source, see “Origin, Objects and Plan of the Industrial Brotherhood,” July 16, 1874. Mrs. L.C. Smith quoted in “Industrial Brotherhood,” April 30, 1874, p. 2; “Origin, Objects and Plan of the Industrial Brotherhood.” Buck, The Granger Movement:, 63–5, 78; Gardner, The Grange—Friend of the Farmer, 46–51; Appleton’s Cyclopedia for 1874 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1874), 799–80.
8 “Indorsements of the Industrial Brotherhood,” People’s Press, March 19, 1874, p. 3; “Indorsement of the I.B.,” People’s Press, March 26, 1874, p. 2, which also quotes Lemen and Oldham.
9 The United States Biographical Dictionary, Kansas Volume (Chicago and Kansas City: S. Lewis & Co., 1879), 526–7. “Sovereigns of Industry and Industrial Brotherhood” [from Fort Scott Pioneer], “The Industrial Brotherhood” [from St. Louis Democrat], and “The Industrial Brotherhood,” People’s Press, Feb. 26, 1874, pp. 1, 2, 3. For the claim of February 22 origins, see “Origin, Objects and Plan of the Industrial Brotherhood.”
10 On Longley, see Robert S. Fogarty, Dictionary of American Communal and Utopian History (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980), 203; H. Roger Grant, “Missouri’s Utopian Communities,” Missouri Historical Review, LXVI (Oct. 1971), 39–40; Longley’s letters to The Socialist are in the February 8 and 22, 1879, issues. A branch of Robert Ingersoll’s Liberal League formed at Carthage according to the directory in The Truth Seeker for 1879–80. See also Edward K. Spann, Brotherly Tomorrows: Movements for a Cooperative Society in America, 1820–1920 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 122–3, 229; Robert S. Fogarty, All Things New: American Communes and Utopian Movements, 1860–1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 104–8; and Carl Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative: Fourierism in Nineteenth-Century America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 77, 195, 327–8, 389. For Romain, see his letters in The Socialist, June 7 and 21, 1879, and his listings as the secretary and resident agitator of the Urbana SLP. For LaFetra, see his letters in the issues of Oct. 5 and Nov. 9, 1878, May 3 and 24 and July 5, 1879, and service as a corporal in Company B of the Fortieth Ohio in Official Roster of the Soldiers of the State of Ohio in the War of the Rebellion, 1861– 1866, comp. the Roster commission, vol. IV (Akron, 1886–95), 138.
11 Norman J. Ware, The Labor Movement in the United States, 1860–1895: A Study in Democracy (New York: Appleton, 1929), 15; “Sovereigns of Industry and Industrial Brotherhood” [from Fort Scott Pioneer], People’s Press, Feb. 26, 1874; “Industrial Brotherhood and Sovereigns of Industry,” People’s Press, July 9, 1874, p. 4.
12 “Industrial Congress. Significant Meeting at Rochester. Reported by A. Briggs Davis,” Woodhull & Clafflin’s Weekly, May 9, 1874, p. 3, cols. 1–2.
13 Workingman’s Advocate, July 26, 1873; untitled notice and “Industrial Congress,” People’s Press, April 23, 1874, pp. 2, 4; “Industrial Brotherhood and Sovereigns of Industry,” People’s Press, July 9, 1874, p. 4. John R. Commons et al., History of Labour in the United States, vol. 2, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1946), 162–4, 196; Ware, The Labor Movement in the United States, 15, 17, 60, 76; Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States: Vol. 1—From the Colonial Times to the Founding of the American Federation of Labor (New York: International Publishers, 1947), 441; Foster Rhea Dulles, Labor in America: A History, 3rd ed. (Northbrook, IL: AHM Publishing, 1960), 111, 131; Samuel Bernstein, The First International in America (New York: A.M. Kelley, 1962), 59; Chester M. Destler, American Radicalism, 1865–1901, 2nd ed. (New London: Connecticut College Press, 1946), 60; David Montgomery treated the Industrial Congresses as essentially “a continuation of the N.L.U”: Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862–1872 (New York: Knopf, 1967), 194–5.
14 Terrence V. Powderly, Thirty Years of Labor (Columbus, OH: Excelsior, 1889).
15 “The Anti-Monopoly Convention,” New York Daily Times, March 4, 1875, p. 1. Day’s group followed with the “Cincinnati Conference of Mechanics and Working-men” described in “The Working-men’s Convention,” Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, Sept. 8, 1875, p. 8. “The Rag Men Come to the Surface,” “Greenback Men in Council at Cleveland, O.,” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 11, 1875, p. 2, and March 12, 1875, p. 2; “The Greenback Party,” “Greenback Convention,” “The Greenback Party,” Chicago Daily Interocean, March 11, 1875, p. 5; March 12, 1875, p. 5; March 13, 1875, p. 1; “More Greenbacks,” “Greenback Enthusiasts,” Chicago Daily Times, March 12, 1875, p. 3; March 13, 1875, p. 9.
16 Powderly, Thirty Years of Labor, 128–9. John R. Commons et al., eds., A Documentary History of American Industrial Society, vol. 9 (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1910–11), 43.
17 John R. Commons, History of Labour in the United States, vol. 2 (New York: Macmillan, 1918–35), 196; Alan Pinkerton, Strikers, Communists, Tramps and Detectives (New York: G. W. Carleton & Co., 1878), 88–9; Powderly, Thirty Years of Labor, 66, 67, 120; Craig Phelan, Grand Master Workman: Terence Powderly and the Knights of Labor (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000), 17–18, including efforts to establish a “Brotherhood of United Labor,” 213, 229–30; Robert E. Weir, Knights Unhorsed: Internal Conflict in a Gilded Age Social Movement (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000), 66–9. See Weir’s Beyond Labor’s Veil: The Culture of the Knights of Labor (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), and Kim Voss’s The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation in the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993). See also Britton A. Hill’s The Union of the Grangers and Working-men with the Greenback-men: Speech in Support of the Resolution (St. Louis: n.p., 1877).
18 “The Industrial Brotherhood” and “Sovereigns of Industry and Industrial Brotherhood” [from Fort Scott Pioneer], People’s Press, Feb. 26, 1874, p. 3; “Origin, Objects and Plan of the Industrial Brotherhood.” Members included Mr. and Mrs. S. M. Smith, H. H. Day, John G. Drew, Dr. H. H. John, and J. M. Oldham.
19 For the Independent Reform Convention at Topeka, see Wilder, Annals of Kansas, 629, 641–3.
20 “The Rag-Men,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 26, 1874, p. 2; “More Money,” Chicago Daily Interocean, November 26, 1874, p. 1; “The Independents” and “Meeting of Independent Politicians at Indianapolis,” People’s Press, December 3, 1874, pp. 2, 4; St. John, “Watchman, What of the Night?” People’s Press, Nov. 19, 1874, p. 2; “Movement of Prominent Labor Reformers,” People’s Press, Nov. 26, 1874, p. 2.
21 Per Tidball’s announcement in the People’s Press, June 27, 1878, and material from the 1880 Census, which showed him at Leadville.
22 “Indorsements of the Industrial Brotherhood,” People’s Press, March 19, 1874, p. 3; Peter J. Rachleff, Black Labor in the South: Richmond, Virginia, 1865– 1890 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 75–8; Brooks in “Indorsement of the I.B.,” March 26, 1874, p. 2. For the black Knights, see Phillip S. Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619–1973 (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974), 49. Melton A. McLaurin discussed the particular strength of the order at Richmond in The Knights of Labor in the South (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979), 40–2, 47–51, 64–7, 135–9, 142–7, 149–50, 169–70, 173–4, 184–5. See also Matthew Hild, Greenbackers, Knights of Labor, and Populists: Farmer-Labor Insurgency in the Late-Nineteenth-Century South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007).
23 See Dunning, The Farmers’ Alliance History, 11–12, 230–2, 233, 245.
24 In the mid-1880s, the Gulf, Colorado, and Sante Fe Railroad built north from Temple, establishing a small depot there and inspiring the hopeful locals to rename their community Lometa, a bastardized spelling of “lomita” for the hill just east of Main Street. The town still has fewer than a thousand people.
25 S. O. Dawes and William L. Garvin, History of the National Farmers’ Alliance and Co-operative Union of America (Jacksboro, TX: J. N. Rogers & Co., 1887), 14.
26 “Lampasas County” in “Texas Items,” Galveston Daily News, December 15, 1874, p. 2, col. 5. See also “A Trip Through Lampasas, Coryell, Bosque, Hill, Johnson and Navarro Counties,” Galveston Daily News, June 20, 1874, p. 1, col. 8.
27 Bill O’Neal, The Bloody Legacy of Pink Higgins: A Half Century of Violence in Texas (Woodway, TX: Eakin Press, 1999), 30; Frederick Nolan, Bad Blood: The Life and Times of the Horrell Brothers (Stillwater, OK: Barbed Wire Press, 1994), 24–5; Claude L. Douglas, Famous Texas Feuds (Dallas: Turner, 1936), 130–3; C. L. Sonnichsen, I’ll Die Before I’ll Run: The Story of the Great Feuds of Texas (Albany, TX: Shackelford County Historical Survey Committee, 1974), 97–118.
28 “Texas Items” [from Lampasas Dispatch], Houston Telegraph, April 17, 1873, p. 8, col. 1, and “Untitled,” Dallas Daily Herald, April 18, 1873, p. 1, col. 2; O’Neal, The Bloody Legacy of Pink Higgins, 29; Nolan, Bad Blood, 17–18.
29 Douglas, Famous Texas Feuds, 133–5; Frederick Nolan, Tascosa: Its Life and Gaudy Times (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2007), 103.
30 “Untitled,” Austin Weekly Democratic Statesman, March 12, 1874, p. 1, col. 6. “Lampasas County” under “Texas Items,” Austin Weekly Democratic Statesman, March 26, 1874, p. 2, col. 7, and “County Items” [from Lampasas Dispatch], Dallas Weekly Herald, March 28, 1873, p. 4, col. 3.
31 For this and the following paragraph, see Douglas, Famous Texas Feuds, 133–7, 137–42, 142–5.
32 Dawes and Garvin, History of the National Farmers’ Alliance and Co-operative Union, 14; Dunning, The Farmers’ Alliance History, 17.
33 Sonnichsen, I’ll Die Before I’ll Run, 133–50.
34 Douglas, Famous Texas Feuds, 148–50. For more detailed accounts, see David Johnson, The Mason County “Hoo Doo” War 1874–1902 (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2006), and Glenn Hadeler, “The Mason County Hoo Doo Wars,” 1998, available at texfiles.com/texashistory.
35 Mike Cox, The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso, 1821–1900 (New York: Forge, 2008), 439–41; Sonnichsen, I’ll Die Before I’ll Run, 164–85 and, on Shackelford County, 119–32. See also John R. Ross, “Lynching,” Handbook of Texas Online, June 21, 2016, available at tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/jgl01.
36 John Harrell, The Brooks and Baxter War (St. Louis, MO: Slawson Printing Co., 1893).
37 Wilder, Annals of Kansas, 712–13, 713–14. Through 1876, Sargent particularly fought the tendency of insurgents in that state to form coalitions with the Democrats, though he loyally supported Cooper for president after his nomination. The United States Biographical Dictionary, Kansas Volume (Chicago and Kansas City: S. Lewis & Co., 1879), 526–7.
38 The family appeared in the New York census records as “Carrey” or “Caffey,” likely the result of a later transcription error, and the Charles Shields suit against the family is noted in an untitled item under “Supreme Court-City and County of New York,” New York Tribune, December 3, 1858, p. 3, col. 4. William A. A. Carsey also used the names William A. Carsey and William Augustus Carsey; William Adolphus Carsey, who is mentioned in the 1858 lawsuit when he was only about sixteen, was probably a relative.
39 The 1865 Kansas Census and the 1870 federal census of the state clearly identified the household of the father William Carsey at Fort Leavenworth Military Reserve, along with the rest of the family. See also the obituary on “William A. Carsey,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 2, 1914, p. 2, col. 7.
40 Carsey and his wife had three children together. He then had one son from another relationship.
41 U.S. Congress, Report of the Tariff Commission, Appointed Under Act of Congress Approved May 15, 1882, vol. 1 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1882), 341; 1900 United States Federal Census; see also “Cheap Transportation,” New York Daily Times, Sept. 10, 1873, p. 8, and Sept. 11, pp. 1, 4–5. The Socialist discussed some of the prominent figures in the Industrial Workingmen’s Party in “Christian Mayer,” two pieces on the “Industrial Political Party” and one on “Political Action” in the issues on July 18 and 25, August 8, and September 26, 1874; “Independent Labor Party,” New York Evening Post, 1876, p. 1, col. 4. See also Bernstein, The First International in America, 246. See Carsey’s comment as an IWA spokesman in the Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 12, 1874, and “A Row Among the Nationalists,” New York Daily Times, May 9, 1878, p. 5. “The Currency Question,” New York Daily Times, July 29, 1875, p. 2; “Greenback Democrats,” New York Daily Times, Feb. 20, 1876, p. 2; “The New York Inflationists,” New York Daily Times, March 3, 1876, p. 2; “The Democratic Inflationists,” New York Daily Times, March 15, 1876, pp. 1, 2; “Democratic Greenback Convention,” New York Daily Times, March 22, 1876, p. 8; and “A Greenback Convention,” New York Daily Times, March 25, 1876, p. 8.
42 Appleton’s Cyclopedia 1876, 599–602. The Democratic convention adopted a national platform in 1868 which was not revised in 1872. Many continued to question the new party’s emphasis on Greenbackism. Lincoln’s former law partner and future biographer, William Herndon, had supported the independent farmers’ tickets in Illinois but considered it a mistake to give currency the central role. David Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon (New York: Knopf, 1948), 262–3, 286. So did Berkey in Michigan and Joshua King Ingalls, the old National Reform Association leader in New York.
43 “Knights Badly Organized, Surplus of Labor the Cause of All Trouble. W. A. A. Carsey Describes the Knights as in a Chaotic Condition—Compulsory Arbitration,” New York Times, February 13, 1887, p. 3.
44 “Rah for Rags,” Chicago Daily Times, May 18, 1876, p. 3, and “Base and Bottomless,” Chicago Daily Times, May 19, 1876, p. 3; “The Greenback Party,” Chicago Daily Interocean, May 17, 1876, p. 5; “The Greenbackers,” Chicago Daily Interocean, May 18, 1876, p. 5; “The Greenback Party,” Chicago Daily Interocean, May 19, 1876, p. 5; and “Independents” in Buchanan’s paper, the Indianapolis Sun, May 20, 1876, pp. 1–2, 5, with editorial on p. 3.
45 American Almanac and Treasury of Facts, Statistical, Financial, and Political, for the Year 1880, ed. Ainsworth R. Spofford (New York and Washington, 1880), 281.
46 “Work Before Reformers,” New York Daily Times, July 15, 1877, p. 6. See also “Trouble in City Politics,” New York Daily Times, June 9, 1878, p. 12.
47 “The Nationals Organizing,” New York Times, June 28, 1878, p. 5; “‘Dick’ Schell for Mayor,” New York Times, October 4, 1878, p. 8; “The Greenbackers’ Convention,” New York Times, October 6, 1878, p. 1; and “W. A. A. Carsey’s Convention,” New York Times, October 11, 1878, p. 2.
48 Powderly, Thirty Years of Labor, 131.
49 I covered this amazing and neglected bid for the presidency in my The Civil War’s Last Campaign: James B. Weaver, the National Greenback-Labor Party and the Politics of Race and Section (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2000). On Chambers, see A Memorial and Biographical History of Johnson and Hill Counties, Texas (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1892), 86–8, 116; A. J. Byrd, History and Description of Johnson County and Its Principal Towns (Marshall, TX: Jennings Bros., 1879), 52–3, 53–4; “The Greenback Party’s Ticket,” New York Daily Times, June 12, 1880, p. 5. See also Alwyn Barr, “B.J. Chambers and the Greenback Party Split,” Midamerica XLIX (1967), 276–84, and Chambers’s own The Great War of Monarchy versus Republicanism; or the Sovereignty of One Man or the Few Versus the Sovreignty, Equal Rights and Liberties of the People … (Cleburne, TX: Chronicle Job Office Print, 1888).
Two: The Wrong Side of the Tracks: The Dangerous Classes of the New American West
1 A few references to western lore offer only erroneous definitions of “saddle tramp.” The “Western Slang & Phrases” page on the Legends of America website implies laziness, defining “saddle tramp” as “a cowboy who spends most of his time in the chuck line” (legendsofamerica.com/we-slang-s.html). Cowboy Bob’s Dictionary presents a thoroughly romanticized definition: “A cowboy with wanderlust, staying on a job just long enough to earn the ‘road stake’ needed to carry him over the next horizon” (lemen.com/dictionary-s.html). For background on cowboys, see Keri Leigh Merritt, Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
