John Wesley Hardin Gunfighter and Lawyer Part 2 Written by Goliath Edited by K. Staton
In part 1 of this series, I explained how I had come to be interested in John Wesley Hardin (JW) and how I had used his unique status as both a lawyer and a gunfighter – now dead and presumably in Hell – as a device by which to discuss legal cases and issues in the public eye.
I took a deeper dive recently, reading in his autobiography stories of some of the desperados and lawmen encountered in his short pre-prison life. (He was sent to prison at about age 25). He is said to be one of the most prolific killers of the Old West, and I had always read there was controversy over how many men he had actually killed in his career of lethality. Best I can tell, by the time he was finally captured and imprisoned, he claims to have killed or assisted in killing some 40 men. To understand how this can happen, it helps to take a good long look at the places where and period wherein Harden operated.
Southcentral Texas, leaning toward the east, was really a wild and leaderless country. There were sheriffs and marshals with deputies, but in truth they weren't one lick better than the men they sought to oppress. In line with JW's accounts, lawmen led lynch mobs as often as they tried to break them up. (But when a lawman led the mob, they used another word for it: a posse. A rose by any other name…can draw blood that’s just as red!)
You can go on Google Earth and take a look at the landscape in the region between Dallas and Houston that was his old stomping ground. Its endless grass plains were good for farming or ranching but generally not much else. It looks like a pretty soul-crushing place. The summers are oppressively hot. It's muggy. It's probably never comfortable, especially in those days. Thus, at least in part, I put down the violence as originating in boredom and discomfort… which may lead to a lot of drinking… which may lead to a lot of arguing over stupid stuff… which could lead to throwdowns, even… killings. It may have been just too easy just to pull out a six-shooter and start firing away.
Born in 1853 in Texas, JW was just a boy when the Civil War started. We only wonder whether it was his people or his place that more provoked him to want to join the Rebel army by age 9; both factors may well have encouraged the notion.
Then, imagine, after the war, the federal government came into Texas and turned life upside down: slaves were freed; the government was now run by “carpetbaggers;” the federal army occupied the territory. Rebs and their sympathizers were treated harshly, flipping the script of the pre-war period. Families and kinfolk aligned with the feds got power – appointments as sheriffs or deputies or federal marshalls, typically – which exacerbated long-standing ill feelings between clans, and the feuding life was ignited. One famous feud there was known as the Taylor-Sutton Feud. After the war the Taylors generally got the short end of the stick as the Suttons got federal rewards of power and authority. The Taylors were allied with Hardin's extended family, and in large part it was this feud that fueled the violence Hardin was involved in.
What all this feuding was about is, frankly, too boring to try and figure out and get to the bottom of. Whatever its origins, it clearly evolved into simple revenge. A guy or two on one side would kill a guy or two on the other side. That led the friends of the slain party to seek and get revenge on the guys that did that killing, which led to their friends getting revenge on the revengers for their killing, and so on and on, ad infinitum. It can become quite tedious…provided that you are not directly involved of course. But one can imagine that in those days – if not our own? –it might just be more interesting to get involved with high adventure, despite the meaningless of the escapades, than to sit around watching cattle graze while picking off ticks. (JW makes quite a to-do about how his family sold – practically gave away – a farm place because of an infamous tick infestation.)
(Texas tick infestation was a regional problem in the latter part of the 19th century, and, according to the Texas History site, it led to a sort of agricultural crisis shorthanded as Texas Fever. It was fatal to non-immunized cattle in other regions that somehow would pick up ticks from Texas.)
Apparently, Hardin was not a natural born criminal. Unlike other gunmen of the Old West, he did not rob banks or trains. His occupation generally appears to have been legal and legit. As a teen, he taught school for a short time. He was a cowboy and/or a cattleman. He traded goods. I'd speculate that the closest he might have gotten in those days to crime (with a capital “C”) would have been “cattle rustlin'.” These were open range days, and when it came time to gather a herd to drive up to Kansas, I doubt JW was too meticulous about being sure the cattle he gathered all had his brand.
No, the only crime JW developed an appetite for was… homicide.
The killer in him first manifested at age 15. His victim was a former slave named Maje. The animosity arose from some roughhousing between Maje (JW says he is a grown man), JW and a friend. The two teens got the best of Mage that day, which outraged him to the point of vowing revenge. JW tells it as if he –saintly fellow – did all he could the next day to avoid violence. But Maje persisted, says JW, trying to hit him with a stick and swearing he’d kill him. Although JW was mounted and Maje was not, it was not the "Texas way" for JW to have ignored the threat and ridden on by and away. No, JW chose to pull a pistol and shoot him down.
Due to the time, place and circumstances of this first killing, JW may have been talked into the life of a fugitive by loved ones. JW claims his father and other family members told him that because his first victim had been a slave, he must go on the run. The local federals would not give him a fair trial, he was told. Then they commit injustice upon him and would execute him. Later we read that JW ambushes a detachment of three federal soldiers sent to bring him in. When he finds their camp, he kills them in cold blood. Of course these killings were again justified because the soldiers had been “intent on doing him bodily harm.” And so it goes.
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JW gives us the accounts, in greater or lesser detail, of having killed 40 men. 40! All by the age of 25. For the statistics aficionados among you, that averages out to 1 killing every 3 months for ten years. (Of course, actually there were episodes of killing 2 or 3 men in a single encounter, but still...that's killing with regularity. A serial killer before the time of such labels.)
Now, it is not my intention to recount all the lethal encounters JW describes in his book. I mention the first killing because it is illustrative of the excuses he expounds in every other killing, too, to which he would come to confess. In JW's telling, he was (always) at a disadvantage – boy vs. man. He was (always) innocent of ill will – we were just goofing around. His victim was (always) a villain with a black temper who was (always) openly threatening and expressing his intent to kill JW. Obviously then, there should be no question that his use of deadly force was “justified,” always.
We just need to think about it like he might have: Poor old JW experiences, at age 15, the trauma of killing a man, which sets him off on a ten-year killing spree, because...you know...life is so-o-o-o unfair! He’s totally misunderstood! He’s at heart a peace-loving man who just could not escape his past and the dreadful northern federales who so oppressed him, denied him the chance to own slaves! Bastards all!
What I see in JW is characteristic of every sociopath I’ve ever encountered.
Still, JW does manage to give a breakdown of some notable encounters that I must pass along. Some are deadly, some are not. He recounts a time in Abilene, Kansas when Wild Bill Hickok was the town marshall. JW had a precarious relationship with Wild Bill, but he was smart enough to avoid an outright deadly conflict. He preferred instead to drink and play cards with the notorious marshall. They behaved as friendly acquaintances and nowhere does JW claim that he has a better gunhand than Bill. He describes Hickok personally and physically in a positive light. Bill, in turn, takes to calling JW Li'l Arkansaw. It's all good fun until JW shoots a man in Bill’s hotel. Legend has it that JW couldn't abide the man's snoring. According to JW, it was just another case of self-defense as the man was trying to rob him using a knife while JW was asleep. (Whatever dude!) After that JW beat it out of town fearing, he says, that Wild Bill would come gunning for him.
In another short but notable encounter, JW is the would-be victim in a game of The Badger. It goes like this. JW meets a prostitute, whom he refers to in the book as a “sweetheart.” He is walking her home and on the way they are intercepted by a man claiming to be her boyfriend but who is actually her pimp. Pimp demands JW hand over his money. JW gets his money out and drops it on the ground in front of the villain. When the man bends over to retrieve the cash, JW lets him have it right between the eyes. Another man who just deserved it, according to JW.
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As his story moves towards its end, we see JW married and living on the lam. He leaves Texas and goes East. Ultimately settling for a while in Florida where he establishes a commercial store buying and selling goods and livestock. He adopts the name "Swain" but just can't seem to avoid trouble. He ultimately is captured on a train. It takes nearly thirty men to take him. What a tough guy!
JW gives a brief account of his time in captivity. He catalogues various escape plots and the various punishments he receives at the hand of the law, which includes a flogging at one point. Even when relating his slow conversion into man better behaved, studying the law and religion in his cell, there is never a hint of reflection on the conduct that led him into the life of a killer nor any remorse at his having become one. Nor is there any resolution to turn over a new leaf and live a better life, even though he now has a wife and family to think about.
No, for JW the story is always going to be how he was a victim of circumstances, and his implacable, irreversible decision to live and die with (his kind of) honor – or to kill – if that's what he thought the situation called for.
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Hardin was released from prison in February of 1894. He was by then almost 41 years old. His wife, who had been faithfully waiting while he served his time, had died shortly before he was released. He received a pardon from the Governor of Texas for his crimes, and good wishes came his way as he began to practice law. It appears he plunked around at first in a small town where his family was, but after a few months moved on to El Paso. One is left to assume that his children, a son and a daughter, were passed off to be raised by other family members. JW does not tell us about them; maybe they just weren’t that important to him.
Thus ends the book. JW doesn't tell us much about his life after prison, but we know it didn't last long. He was drawn to El Paso to represent a cousin, "Killin' Jim" Miller. AKA "Deacon Jim."
THE END OF John Wesley Hardin
Hardin's legal career was rather short. By August of 1895 he has a shingle hanging at the corner of El Paso and San Antonio Streets in El Paso. His second-story office is right across El Paso street from The Gem saloon. On a Monday night. Hardin has strolled across the street to while away some hours drinking and tossing dice on the bar. He'd been in a dispute with El Paso deputy, John Selman Jr. over the arrest of a woman JW fancied. John Selman Sr., also a lawman in the town, kept it simple. He just walked into The Gem, and without saying a word shot JW in the back of the head. Put a few more slugs in him while he was down just to “make sure.” Selman Sr. was later acquitted by an El Paso Jury, grateful perhaps, for having rid them of a man born to killing and trouble. It's worth noting that, so far as I know, old JW did not actually kill anybody after he was released from prison and occupied as a lawyering man. Maybe it’s lawyering that brings out the best in people!
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