Making a Civil War in Montana Return to "Contents" Before Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated, delegates from seven southern states met together and established themselves as the Confederate States of America. They thought that his election doomed slavery in the United States, that the new Congress elected with Lincoln would begin action to end slavery. The seven states took this step to preserve the southern way of life. They elected Jefferson Davis as their president. He had been active for years in efforts to create new slave states to swing the balance. His efforts focused on the west, to bring slavery to the west coast and south into New Mexico and into Mexico itself. Now all of that might be lost unless they formed this new nation. When Lincoln took office, seven states had already withdrawn from the Union. This presented him with an immediate but expected challenge. Fort Sumpter, occupied by a unit of the Union Army, was located in the harbor at Charleston. It represented a blight against the Confederacy that could not be endured. Shortly after the establishment of the Confederacy Fort Sumpter was fired upon. Immediately the nation was at war with itself, and the President began to take action. The United States Congress was not yet meeting, so there was no chance to debate the issue. Lincoln moved forward at war with the secessionists in order to preserve the Union, to keep them in the Union. He took action and made decisions which the Congress would have to act upon when they met in three months. His decisive actions were solely to preserve the Union and not to abolish slavery. The slavery question was one for the new Congress. Furthermore there were slave states that had not seceded. There was no need to offend them. The Confederacy took steps to be recognized as a new nation fighting for its independence. Lincoln established a blockade to prevent the shipment of cotton and the importation of products which could be used in the Confederate war effort. The Union had few ships in its navy and the Confederacy had none, consequently the blockade was partially effective. Its effectiveness was enhanced by the fact that foreign governments and their merchant fleets were very afraid of the possibility of American privateers. Privateers (licensed pirates) were merchant ships which were armed and licensed by the government. Investors would then set out to seize and hold merchant ships attempting to trade with the South, taking their cargo as spoils. Privateers had been licensed by the United States during the War of 1812, and devastated the British merchant fleet, while greatly enriching the United States and those investors who armed merchant ships for war as privateers. The British chose not to face this threat again. After several months of the War Between the States the economy of the South deteriorated extensively, but so did that of the British. No cotton imports from the southern states meant there would be nothing to run in Britain's fabric mills. The mills were going bankrupt. New England mills were similarly effected. As a consequence, the British Cabinet began to call for the recognition of the Confederate States of America. This would put the Union at war with the British, if they continued the blockade or began to license privateers. Europe was beginning to view the American Civil War as a clear bid for freedom by a new nation. There was growing support for this fledgling government. Abraham Lincoln well understood the dangers of British recognition. He needed another issue integrated into the war. He chose slavery and wrote up a document called "The Emancipation Proclamation". If he issued this, the British would then be in the position of supporting slavery, a stance they could not possibly hold. Lincoln Changes the War Return to "Contents" Lincoln discussed his carefully wrought Proclamation with his former opponent and Secretary of State, William H. Seward. Seward had run against Lincoln in a bitter struggle. Lincoln appointed him Secretary of State because of the skills and abilities Seward possessed. Seward served well and loyally, and the two men became intimate friends. Seward examined the Proclamation with great care and agreed with its rightness and its desperately needed effect on England. However, he pointed out that since the Union had lost several battles, the Proclamation could be construed as a last desperate effort on the part of a government with a lost cause. He urged the President to sit on the document and wait for a significant Union victory. That event occurred on 17 September 1862 at the horribly bloody Battle of Antietam (just two months after the discovery of gold at Bannack). In this battle there was both a significant Union victory and the end of the invasion of Pennsylvania by General Robert E. Lee. But more important, this victory permitted the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation. This effectively ended the possibility that Britain could recognize the Confederacy as a new nation struggling for its freedom. The British Cabinet could not possibly come out on the side of slavery. The War Between the States was now a completely different war. Internationally it was no longer the struggle of a new nation to gain its freedom but a war against slavery. The national impact of the Emancipation Proclamation was even stronger. Powerful disaffection had been brewing in the North over the seemingly unendurable cost of the war, Union Army losses and the difficulty of defining a cause (other than punishing the errant states for seceding) for the bloody and expensive war. This resulted in some attrition in Lincoln's congressional support in the elections of 1862. What the President now needed was the extensive energy and stamina that had been shown by the Abolitionists before the war broke out. The Emancipation Proclamation stimulated those voices. The war now had a moral cause for the Union. The population was increasingly moved by this cause. Now the war which had been fought only to preserve the Union against secession became a war to end slavery. To understand the political brilliance of Lincoln's actions it is important to realize that the Emancipation Proclamation freed ONLY the slaves of the Confederate States of America and specifically did not free the slaves in those slave states which remained with the Union. In wartime, Lincoln had such powers against the secessionist states, while he did not have such powers over the slave states which remained with the Union. Slavery would be decided by the Congress and not by presidential proclamation. In order to hold their affiliation with the Union, the slave states of Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland and the non-secessionist areas of Tennessee and Virginia were exempt from the Proclamation. The British were critical, because, they thought, Lincoln had freed the slaves where he had no power and retained slavery where he had power, while in fact, he had no power to free the slaves in the United States, but his wartime powers enabled him to establish the Emancipation Proclamation in the separated states. In spite of this blight on the moral issues, the Proclamation gave a new enthusiasm in the North for fighting the lagging war. Enlistments increased. Virginia City: Strategic Thorn in the Flesh Return to "Contents" From President Lincoln's perspective as Commander in Chief, by the dawn of the year 1863 he had held off any British help for the Confederacy (in spite of their languishing fabric mills) and had integrated Union sentiments behind the Union cause in this bloody and inhuman struggle. Now his focus was on the Mississippi and its waterway and population. Beyond that were several states and territories which needed to be held within Union control, especially Idaho with its immense supply of gold, which, he was told, was already occupied by a population loyal to the Confederacy. A territory, of course, was not IN the Union. It was a Federally owned political unit. It could not secede, but the population could cause problems. A few Confederate units aimlessly roamed west of the Mississippi, and others were located in the southwest. There were almost no armed forces of either side in the remote and valuable northern regions, with the exception of whatever Confederate interests secretly diverted Montana gold to the South and the contingents of fifty or so troops who escorted the Northern emigannts to the gold fields. However, the solid loyalty of the population to the South was a problem for the North because of the threat to the Union gold supply. The secessionist population certainly was a problem for the Union administrators. The population was already personally secessionist and very rebellious about it, but they had little taste for the war "back in the States". But the war had definite taste for them. That war and the entire Union cause depended to a very large extent upon the gold that flowed east from Virginia City. The Confederates had the same need. Captain James Liberty Fisk presented an opportunity for the Union to import emigrants to control the unruly Rebels. Fisk stimulated Union interest in the gold fields by bringing two beautiful gold nuggets from Alder Gulch to President Lincoln. He had been the leader of a troop of Union soldiers who protected a group of emigrants through Indian territory to the gold fields, which were at that time mostly on the western (Idaho) slopes of the Rockies. They arrived in Fort Benton on the eastern slopes of Idaho Territory in September 1862 and then the party split between the western and eastern slopes. A major part of the wagon train consisted of Republican professionals and merchants who were exempt from conscription because they had employed substitute or otherwise bought themselves out of battle. Their arrival in Idaho Territory began to make a notable difference in the management of the disruptive miners and rebellious secessionists. The Congress acted to set aside a significant sum for the War Department specifically to protect emigrants who wished to go from St. Paul to Virginia City. Captain Fisk was now regarded as part of the war effort as he brought northern Republicans into Virginia City to assure that the immense flow of gold was for the Union and not the Confederacy. Through the efforts of these men the Territory of Idaho (later to become the Territories of Idaho and Montana) was subdued in its lawlessness and in its most rebellious expressions of its continued secessionist sentiments, although those secessionist sentiments were later expressed in the ballot boxes. The Civil War that was fought in Montana was a vital part of the whole war effort. It is well known that a main reason for the defeat of the Confederacy was its lack of resources. It certainly had the finest of officers, especially generals. The blockade of the Confederate States by the Union was partially effective. The soft slave-based agricultural economy of the South and the general lack of manufacturing capacity and skill contributed greatly to the defeat of the South. However, the most powerful force in the demise of the Confederate military capacity was the lack of liquid wealth. In reference to the Confederate currency, it was facetiously said that small purchases had to be made with bales of the stuff. Arms and war materiel were almost impossible to purchase without some form of recognized fluid money. Factories could not be built without dependable cash, which meant gold. In the North the greenback had some value abroad, but for both sides the availability of silver and gold was universally essential for the war economies. Attempts were made to ship precious metals from Virginia City, Nevada, to the Confederacy. They were usually thwarted. Evidently Union interference was also effective in preventing the movement of significant amounts of gold from Idaho and Montana to Confederate causes. This was a central war concern of Abraham Lincoln, his Cabinet and the United States Congress. It was because of the tremendous liquid wealth being mined in the Montana gold fields and because Montana was, in fact, a Confederate settlement within Union territory during the entire Civil War, that a plan to hold these resources for the Union cause was essential. Consider the facts, as closely as they can be estimated. Using N.P. Langford's 1864 estimates, which are as reliable as any, Montana was eighty percent avowed, vociferous and active secessionists. They were mining over six hundred thousand dollars worth of gold each week in Virginia City alone. To understand the quantity of "liquid assets" that means, expressed in today's gold prices and conservatively defined, the boys were extracting eighteen million dollars in gold from the ground every week. You can look at it from another point of view, to get a more accurate estimate of what Montaña meant to Lincoln's government while thousands of his troops were dying for the Union Cause. Three hundred dollars was a basic annual wage for a working man at the time, while, again conservatively, fifteen thousand is the equivalent today. That means that the boys were extracting in laborers' salary the equivalent of thirty million dollars from the ground each week. On an annual basis, that's over six billion dollars worth of gold or one billion dollars in cash (today's equivalent) for the year. That is why Montaña was a keystone in Old Abe's fortress and war machine. It was absolutely necessary to keep this huge source of liquid assets away from the Confederacy and available to the Union. This would be a bit of a trick, considering the overwhelming dominance of Confederate sympathizers. All effort would be made to assure that the flow of liquid assets would continue East to support Washington's war effort, with no leaks to assist the South. This also meant that no significant wealth would be left to enrich Montaña, a debilitating process which continues to this day. Action in Montana Return to "Contents" The Civil War was actively being fought in Montaña. It was being fought in several different ways, each leaving its own footprints behind. The geographical struggle was bloodless and complicated. Bannock, Montaña was founded as Bannock, Dakota Territory. The government of the Territory was too far away to be able to manage these rowdy intruders from the California gold rush who had been digging gold on the western slopes of the Rocky Mountains in the Territory of Washington until richer diggings were found on the Eastern slopes of the Rockies in Dakota Territory. A large population center began to grow on both sides of the Rockies, at first on the western slopes. In response to the new need for control of the wealth and the people in these areas, a large slice of eastern Washington Territory was united with a similar piece of western Dakota Territory to form Idaho Territory in the Spring of 1863. Idaho Territory consisted of what is today the State of Idaho together with the states of Wyoming and Montaña. The new Territory, created in 1863, was administered from what is now Lewiston, Idaho, near where most of the population could be found. Thus Bannock, which had been Bannock, Dakota Territory, now became Bannock, Idaho Territory. And that was a problem. Not three hundred miles away in Washington Territory there was another Bannock. That meant that there were two Bannocks in Idaho Territory. Consequently, to distinguish between the two cities, they were briefly known as "East Bannock" and "West Bannock". Then Bannock, Montaña changed its name to Bannack, Idaho Territory. Some time later, Bannock, Idaho Territory, changed its name too. Today Bannock is known as Idaho City, Idaho. For the citizens, these geographical shifts were confusing. In county records for Bannack, Montaña, properties located near each other are recorded on 4 April 1863 in Idaho Territory, and the next deed dated 5 April 1863 is recorded as located in Dakota Territory. Wallace Street, Virginia City Representatives to the new government of Idaho Territory found that the trip to the capitol in Lewiston was almost impossible. They had to push through deep snow in the mountain passes to get to the western slopes. At just about the same time that the new Territory of Idaho was created with its administration on the western slopes, the population started to move across the Rockies to the eastern slopes and thus further out of the control of the Union government whose possession it was. The governing organization could not possibly control the unruly Rebels on the other side of the mountains. On 21 January, after being satisfied that five bodies swung from a rafter on Wallace Street in Virginia City as part of the Union effort to control this Rebel area, Sidney Edgerton, whom Lincoln had appointed Chief Justice of Idaho Territory, hurried back to Washington carrying a large display of gold for the President and Congress which would dramatize the importance of Montaña to the war effort and to stimulate the creation of another new territory to consist of the eastern regions of Idaho Territory. Did I say "hurried"? In mid winter he mushed off on snow shoes, or perhaps on a horse, headed to the stagecoach in Salt Lake City four hundred miles away. On 26 May, 1864, the Territory of Montaña was signed into being. There was no opposition to the establishment of the new Territory or to appropriation of the money for Fisk to deliver the emigrants. After all, this was war. The Commanding Officers in Montana Return to "Contents" Sidney Edgerton, who was Abraham Lincoln's "commanding officer", arrived in Bannack in a small wagon train from Omaha on 17 September, 1863. Edgerton was one of the founding members of the Republican Party. He had been appointed Chief Justice of Idaho Territory, with the mission of staying on the richer gold bearing eastern side of the Rocky Mountains to control the necessary flow of precious metal for the Union. He was accompanied by his family and a nephew, Wilbur Fisk Sanders, a capable lawyer whom one might call Edgerton's "aide de camp". His most able field officer was Captain James Liberty Fisk, who commanded a unit of the Union Army whose mission was to transport emigrants from St. Paul to the gold fields. These emigrants were Northern sympathizers who would either mine the gold or subdue the overwhelming number of strong and vociferous secessionists in the area. Edgerton's "Unit Commander" in charge of identifying and hunting down the victims to be lynched was Sergeant James Williams. In the spring of 1863, when Idaho was made a territory from Dakota and Washington Territories, Lincoln appointed W. W. Wallace (for whom Wallace Street in Virginia City, Idaho, was named) as governor of Idaho Territory, and Sidney Edgerton Chief Justice. The strategy was to have Edgerton govern the increasingly strategic eastern slopes of the Rockies (now Montana). In the few months after Edgerton's arrival he observed the rapid increase in population and productivity on the eastern slopes, especially in Virginia City. He experienced the dangerous hold the secessionists had on the area, and the impossibility of governing the area from Lewiston across the often impassable Rocky Mountains over on the western slopes. Consequently he set out almost immediately for Washington, D.C. (which the local secessionists insisted was now in Rebel hands) to create once again a new territory. He took with him on his long, cold ordeal, a considerable show of gold with which to dramatize the necessity of a new territory and the importance of his personal "command" for the war effort. As a result of his efforts the proposal was quickly acted upon and Montaña Territory was born with Sidney Edgerton appointed Governor by his friend, Abraham Lincoln. That this strategy was clearly planned ahead by Edgerton and Lincoln as a vital part of the war effort is made clear by the opposition to the plan. There was none. Even the "luxury" of Captain Fisk's mission, to escort emigrants from the north to the gold fields at government expense while Congress was trying to find money to fight a very expensive war was not opposed. The money bill specifically for Fisk's mission appears in the records next to another money bill to fund troops for Kentucky to hold off Confederate threats. There is not one word of opposition to either of these appropriations because they were known to be part of the Union strategy for conduct of the Civil War raging around them. Montaña Territory was born as part of Abraham Lincoln's strategy to win the War Between the States. But Edgerton soon discovered that this was just one of the beginnings of the battle. Another had begun as he left Montaña on snow shoes to set aside a new territory. Lawlessness usually brings to mind images of rebellious people doing illegal, violent or hurtful things to other citizens. The very hard and frightening life on the frontier certainly commended violent actions on every quarter. The Civil War, raging "back in the States" nurtured cruelty as a way of life, as has already been described in the Sand Creek, Colorado, massacre of friendly Indians by Union forces. This was an action of inhuman proportions carried out by officers and men of the United States Army. The men of Bannock had their own little Sand Creek. On 19 January 1863 two men, Charley Moore and Charley Reeves, went up a hill just a few yards out of Bannock looking for an escaped squaw. They commenced firing their revolvers into the wikiups of a small band of friendly Bannock Indians who lived there. They killed a man and a boy and wounded another. They went away and reloaded and then returned and killed and wounded a few more. They were convicted and sentenced to permanent banishment, but Reeves was back within a month. Violence to cover fear was a characteristic of the time and place. A Culture of Violence Return to "Contents" Even the "good" side of life was violent. In Virginia City, school teachers were hired on the basis that they could beat up the large boy bullies in the classroom. Hangings became spectacles that "good" mothers took their children to, in order to show them what would happen if children were "bad". Indian chiefs were beheaded and their heads stuck on stakes. Bodies were dug up by Vigilantes and their skulls taken and used in various ways. Bullets were used for emphasis, killing whom they would. Strangling was used rather than hanging because the horror of watching someone die slowly, struggling to stop the pain, was more terrorizing than the broken neck of a quick hanging. It also pleased the emotions of vengeful or frightened hangmen such as X. Beidler. Violence was deeply ingrained in the life of the gold camp, and most citizens were not concerned about who might be the victim as long as it wasn't them. This was the culture of Virginia City. Into this setting poured individuals who had other relationships with violence. There was a large number of wanted criminals (like Boone Helm), many of whom had been violent in a much less violent society, and who enjoyed the opportunity to express a level of violence which exceeded the "norm" in societies outside the gold camp. Along with them were a considerable number of deserters and recovering or invalid soldiers. They had often been involved in a level of violence which made violence in Virginia City look like a Sunday School picnic. They had watched their friends killed in the midst of a nightmare of violence and many had participated in battlefield rapes and plundering as they made their way through "enemy" territory as the Union forces did as they ravaged the Carolinas because (they believed) this is where the horrid war started. Killing and abuse of every kind was an incidental coincident to all aspects of life. In addition to this was the specter of the ongoing war back in the States, which everyone wanted to forget but everyone had strong feelings about. In mid September 1862, less than two months after the quiet discovery of gold on Grasshopper Creek, which led to the establishment of Bannock, the bloodiest battle of the Civil War was taking place at Sharpsburg, Maryland on Antietam Creek. There, so many miles away, Confederate General Robert E. Lee met head on the Union Army of the Potomac. In a very short while twenty six thousand Americans lay dead, dying or wounded on the battlefield. Some who could move piled other corpses around them to protect them from further fire. Bodies were mutilated beyond recognition by the actions of war. Arms, legs, heads and exploded torsos were strewn in bloody messes. The moans and cries of the wounded filled the air. Bayonets, bullets and hammers were used to quiet the wounded so they would not be so annoying. Then, in another two months, a future governor of Montana, General Thomas Francis Meagher, led his Irish Brigade into devastating Confederate fire at Fredericksburg, Virginia. His soldiers marched over bodies of their comrades and approached within a few feet of their enemies' stone wall before the few Federal survivors were turned back. Violence in the forms of killing and abuse were common to the day. The miners were used to it, while most of the early day carpet baggers and reconstructionists had been exempt from the violence. The secessionist majority would often let their anger out. They would hoist a Rebel flag and dare anyone to interfere. They were angered by the consistent Union side expressed publicly by newspapers, and they delighted in their stories (which everyone believed) of Union defeats, the sacking of Washington and the capture of President Lincoln. Feelings always ran high and erupted in violence. Then they were just as quickly avoided to permit the violence to subside. The free hand of the merchants to charge exorbitant prices for food and supplies added to the resentments. In 1865 the merchants raised the price of flour from $27 to $150 per hundred pounds. An orderly armed invasion of homes and businesses stopped this abuse. The constant flow of gold from the hard working miners to the merchants, the gamblers, the banker, the barkeep, the killer, the robber and the whore kept a high level of resentment running at all times. The anger and resentment hovered, just waiting for an act of extreme violence such as a beating, shooting a Chinaman's back or a lynching through which to relieve their unmanly fear by expressing anger and resentment. A Vigilante Hanging Law for a Lawless Land Return to "Contents" Then add to that the difficulty of establishing a structure of law in the unstructured Territories. In the first days of the existence of Bannock, a charter and legal structure were created by the miners and merchants (lawyers being specifically excluded). This was one of several attempts to establish some semblance of law and safety in the midst of lawlessness, violence and danger. A more serious problem with "law and order" was the simple fact that from time to time the United States Congress (involved in fighting a war) simply neglected to enact laws for the territories they were creating. There were times when there simply was no law in Idaho and Montana Territories. That means that while a specific act of violence might be a terrible thing to do from the perspective of some personal moral standard, you would have a perfect right to murder anyone you chose. It means that anyone had the freedom to do anyone else any harm they chose, take away possessions or burn your house down. Of course it made little difference because violence and abuse was rampant even when it was against the law. If you abused a woman (other than a wife or daughter) you would be soundly thrashed by the miners, but that was whether there was a law or not. The occasional lack of law simply added to the lax attitude toward behavior, the constant expression of violence and the general danger to everyone, especially families. Violence was a part of everyday life in Bannack and Virginia City. Shootings occurred regularly, and often the only ones hit were innocent bystanders. Montaña was not a safe place to bring your family. And Edgerton found that Montaña was an impossible place to govern. When the secessionists came to vote they selected people who would not possibly go along with Edgerton's Union loyalties and made laws that the United States Congress would then nullify. Edgerton and his associates had another tactic, which he had seen in effective operation by the time he set out for Washington on snow shoes and a horse to separate out Montaña as a territory. Paris Pfouts, Nick Wall, Wilbur F. Sanders, Alvin V. Brookie and John Nye held a secret meeting and determined to form a Vigilance Committee modeled on those in California during the '49 gold rush. They agreed to another meeting the next night, each man bringing another of known trustworthiness. All swore to secrecy. After three or four such meetings the Committee grew to about fifty members. By ten days the organization had extended to over a thousand members from an extensive area of the mining country. Paris Pfouts, with a naive complete faith in his Masonic associates, was elected Chief and immediately caused to be written up an obligation to which each man had to swear and remain silent on pain of death. He selected an Executive Committee which then conducted investigations of wrong doing and began to sentence men to death and then strangle them. Their first actions were not entirely popular. Pfouts and other members were individually threatened. They continued to create enemies for themselves until the terror of more lynchings gave the Vigilantes the power to simply order such critics, and the lawyers who defended them, out of town. "E PLURIBUS UNUM" on a banner in the beak of an eagle Union Soldier Graffito written secretly The composition of the Vigilance Committee was almost entirely Republican Masons from the North. Their victims were almost entirely Democrat secessionists who were non-Masons from the South. Paris Pfouts is a good example of "exception". He was an outspoken secessionist and a Democrat, but part of the Union strategy. His belief in his Executive Committee as honest fellow Masons permitted them to do as they wished while keeping Pfouts in the dark. Paris Pfouts the secessionist presided over one of Abraham Lincoln's most important war efforts, that of preserving the vital flow of gold for the Union cause. For example, when Deputy Sheriff Jack Gallagher was brought before Pfouts to be sentenced to death, Pfouts assumed that a trial had been held and that he was found guilty. In fact, there was not a shred of evidence against this good man, who had personally offended a Vigilante, and he was not even on "the list" of people to be hit. Gallagher was strangled and struggled in agony there on Wallace Street that fateful day because Paris Pfouts was reliably naive. Edgerton could rely on this process as a tool with which to govern his unruly Territory. Sidney Edgerton had initiated a strategy of terror before his epic journey to Washington. He had at hand his naive Chief of the Vigilance Committee, Paris Pfouts. He had an able strong arm in the person of X. Beidler, whose cruelty could be relied upon to avoid breaking the necks of the victims but to see to it that the strangulation was slow and agonizing. He had an ambitious field leader, Sergeant James Williams, who pursued those whom the Vigilance Committee or he himself labeled "Villains". Then, in addition to horribly painful lynchings, the Vigilance Committee created the myth that the problem the area was having was the result of a "secret society of road agents". They used secret signs and the password, "I'm Innocent". They spied out gold shipments and then passed the word to the agents out of town who would rob the stage, wagon or traveler. Since Henry Plummer, with personal conflicts with some Vigilantes, was a Democrat and spoke with a strange accent (Maine), he and his deputies were easily included, with Plummer having the honor to be named the secret leader. The Vigilantes represented the whole series of lynchings as necessary punishment for robbers and murderers bound into a dangerous secret society. The result was a wave of terror among all. Everyone feared they might be accused. This strategy resulted in the great movement of support for the Vigilante activities that followed. Swift Terror Return to "Contents" Accusation was as good as conviction. The citizenry was moved as a frightened mob and supported the lynchings. The lynchings were carried out with a cruelty that appears to have been designed to promote dread and terror. With few exceptions, the hangings were all strangulations. The last desperate behaviors of the victims included one who wrapped his legs around a nearby post. He thus kept himself alive for about ten excruciating minutes of torture and pain. Another choked out, "You're choking me" and desperately clutched at the rope. Still another, whose toes touched the floor, did a desperate tap dance to try to relieve the agony of his torturous death. Others struggled and suffered and died in the usual eight minutes of excruciating pain. These scenes added to the terrorism of secrecy imposed by the Vigilantes in order to control the populace. The torture also pleased and relieved the vengeful and frightened emotions of such men as X. Beidler. The victims were absolutely not who the Vigilantes said they were. A variety of individuals were involved in the Vigilance Committee for several different purposes. Their motivations were personal enmity and vengeance, political adversity, racism, elimination of a danger to the community and punishment for robbery or murder. Some were political enemies of the "solid citizens", the Republican merchants, bankers and lawyers. One was the wrong victim. Boone Helm, an escaped murderer from the East, one of the five victims who were strangled in the hangman's building in January, 1864, cried out, "Hooray for Jeff Davis" and leapt off his box to his death. That was hardly the exit line of a road agent. Another victim was a popular rowdy who couldn't behave. The deputy, Jack Gallagher, was not on the "list" of bad men, and there was absolutely no evidence against him. However, some, like Helm, were actually robbers and murderers in other locations. One thing is clear. There was not an organized secret society of road agents controlled by the sheriff. That myth was created and, together with the terror of the secrecy of the Vigilance Committee and the agony of strangulation, the myth effectively worked to galvanize the citizens in support of the series of lynchings. It was an effective way to fight the Civil War in Montana Territory. The terrorism worked. Overall the effect was striking. A new degree of safety prevailed. The secessionist cause was very quiet and the Territory with its remarkable and vital flow of gold was secure for Abraham Lincoln. The result was the absolute and terrorizing control of the community by a secret, arbitrary and autocratic government, the Vigilantes. Outsiders who recognized this were able to speak out against the Vigilantes, who ruled the land. When the votes were counted, though, the Democrats and secessionists always won, often by more than the number of registered voters. Ironically, the Democratic candidate for mayor was none other than Paris Pfouts, and he easily became the town's first mayor. His own person characterizes the work of the Vigilantes. Although it was Northerners killing Southerners and Republicans killing Democrats for the most part, Paris Pfouts was a southern Democrat and a secessionist, and he was the Chief and founder of the Vigilantes. Thanks to his naiveté he believed the veracity of the completed convictions when the condemned were brought to him by his fellow Masons. He was deceived and used by them. The five victims strangled in the Hangman's Building were all presented to Pfouts as "tried and convicted", while in fact there were no trials and no evidence against at least one victim. Pfouts then ordered their "execution". He could not know whether there was any evidence against the victims. Several Vigilante actions were, as Langford himself stated, worse than anything the victims were accused of. Viewing these actions in the context of being a strategy in a vital battle of the Civil War, the terror and tortures of the Vigilante lynchings in Montana were a picnic. Just place it for a moment alongside battlefields strewn with decaying putrid bodies, wounded crying out for water and being bayoneted so that they would not have to be tended as prisoners, or even dying Indian women being raped by soldiers of the United States Army. Seen in context, the strategy concluded successfully by Sidney Edgerton in Virginia City, Montana Territory, on behalf of the Union cause was as humane as any in this inhuman struggle called the "Civil War". Epilogue Return to "Contents" Over time, the Vigilantes themselves became worried about what they had done and how they had done it. They had murdered and lynched many people without trial or authority. They knew that under some circumstances they could be convicted of murder, while at other times there had been no law. They took steps to prevent that possibility. They had Thomas Dimsdale write his famous book describing how it was that they had to execute these members of the secret criminal gang. The Plummer Myth was at the core of the book and was as carefully documented as any lie could be. Price: $2.00 in good gulch gold or $2.25 in greenbacks In Defense of the Vigilantes Then they met together for another purpose. They formed the Montana Historical Society. This would permit them to have some continued control over what evidence would be saved for posterity. But the secessionists had their day. The South won the war in Montana and continued to express that victory for many years, often at their own great cost. Citizens of Virginia City celebrated the assassination of President Lincoln. Paris Pfouts, the Mayor of Virginia City, reluctantly led a town memorial for the assassinated President. The secesh had the vote. The Republican Party ruled through the appointed officers of Montana Territory, but all over Montana the Rebels enjoyed their ability to disrupt Sidney Edgerton's government. They outnumbered and outvoted him on all kinds of issues. They could turn out six hundred Democratic votes in towns of one hundred. They didn't need to flaunt their ability to flood the ballot boxes, they had the plurality anyway, but they loved being able to do it. Paris Pfouts, mayor of Virginia City, left town as he came to realize that his fellow Masons had deceived him in his role as "Chief" of the Vigilantes. Sidney Edgerton left Montana Territory in frustration as the secessionists opposed his every move. Montanans took the Territorial Legislature into ridiculous directions (such as disenfranchising Negroes, Chinese and Indians and granting legislator salary increases for which there was no money). These were later nullified by the United States Congress and then still later reenacted by Territorial legislatures. Over all, the Rebel victory in Montana disrupted many of Montana's possibilities and led to the postponement of statehood for several years. In 1916, the Daughters of the Army of the Confederacy erected a beautiful stone fountain in the Women's Park, directly across from the Civic Center in Helena Montana. This is the furthest north monument to the Confederate Army. With this, the Civil War in Montana came to an end. As an important battle in the Civil War, the Vigilante action was a relatively painless victory for the Union, a success, it can be argued, that won the war for them. Please comment on these pages. Tom Sargent P.O. Box 134 Virginia City MT 59755 Tel. (406) 843-5503 or 22A Lakeshore Drive #2 Farmington CT 06032 Tel. (860) 674-1635 Please Write Us Click HERE to go to the Virginia City Home Page Page last updated 9 September 1999