1857.]

A KANSAS TEMPLE OF JUSTICE.

65

Haller was arrested, and strongly guarded by the police; but they were intensely Pro-slavery, and Lyle's friends were arming and threatening to lynch the prisoner. So, the Free State men with rifles and revolvers were on duty to protect their comrade and watch the officers. The Pro-slavery party was also gathering and bearing weapons.

Through the long night streets resounded with tramping feet, and five hundred men were under arms, in drinking saloons, at street corners, in front of the guarded building in which Haller was confined, and around the little office where rested the white, fixed face and rigid form of Lyle. But no further outbreak occurred. The next morning a preliminary investigation was held before a relic of Border Ruffian rule, who had risen from a livery stable to the justice's bench. It was in the unfinished stone court-house, with unhewn walls, rough benches and a single table. The cigars of the lawyers darkened this temple of justice, and the magistrate heard the testimony while reading a newspaper. Many witnesses were examined, and, as in all affrays, persons who looked on from the same point at the same moment, swore to exactly opposite statements. Once an attorney for the defense took his cigar from his mouth, and behind a huge puff of smoke, objected to certain testimony on the other side as inadmissible. The justice gravely replied:

'The court sustains the objection and rules that the question cannot be asked at this stage of the game.'

The inference was, that 'the court' played poker. Haller was held for trial. Application for his admission to bail was argued before Judge Lecompte, chief justice of the supreme court of the Territory. His decisions had been so uniformly and flagrantly partisan, that he was nicknamed 'Jeffries Lecompte.' Under the 'bogus code' framed by his own party, all degrees of homicide were bailable; and Lecompte had released notorious criminals charged with the murder of Free State men, upon their giving bonds for appearance at trial.

But this was his own ox which had been gored. In summing up the testimony, he called Lyle's bowie 'a small knife which he did not purpose to use offensively,' though witnesses had sworn that it was from eight to twelve inches long, and that deceased

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A MURDER FOR MONEY.

[1857. had raised it to strike when he received the mortal wound. He refused to admit Haller to bail, ordering him to Fort Leavenworth for safe keeping. The prisoner was taken from the court-room in the custody of six United States soldiers, amid the flashing eyes and suppressed breathing of the Free State lookers-on, who despite their reverence for the Federal uniform, wanted only a leader to have rescued him by force. (At Lawrence one morning the following winter, I encountered several mud-stained men who during the previous night had escorted Haller from the fort, whence he escaped by bribing the guards. He reached Ohio safely, and six months later resumed his residence in Leavenworth, where he was never again disturbed.)

Leavenworth was the scene of frequent violence. On a July evening upon the river bank, a stranger named James Stephens, was murdered, and his body robbed of one hundred and eight dollars. Quarles and Bays, two of his friends residing in the city, testified before the coroner's jury that they were walking with him, when robbers attacked the party and murdered him, while they ran for their lives. But 'conscience is a thousand witnesses;' their statements were so contradictory and improbable, that the jury returned a verdict charging them with the murder, and they were at once taken into custody. Then Quarles made a full confession.

Hitherto, every homicide in Kansas had resulted from the slavery controversy. According to historians, the remorseless Marats and Robespierres of the French Revolution, who shed blood like water, did not take a piece of money or a watch from their butchered victims. They even guillotined their own wretched agents detected in plundering. They would have life, not gold. So the Kansas conflict had witnessed no mercenary element in all its atrocious crimes. But here was a cold-blooded murder for money. Free State and Pro-slavery men, alike hopeless of the laws, meant to punish it.

Two thousand people gathered at the jail. Judge Lecompte addressed the mob, deprecating violence, and asserting that all who engaged in it would be liable to indictment for murder. This was answered with the howls: 'Indict and be d-d!' Lecompte attempted to go on but he only elicited hoots, and at last ominous

1857.]

A MOB ADMINISTERING JUSTICE.

67

suggestions about making an example of him for permitting and aiding criminals to escape; so he wisely withdrew. Then another speaker sprang upon a box and commanded the peace, announcing himself as the United States marshal for Kansas. Instantly arose a storm of cries:

'Down with him!' 'He's the greatest scoundrel in the Territory.' 'Let's hang him !'

The officer's voice grew husky, and his face bloodless; and he too, disappeared in the crowd.

The mob picked up the city marshal and police as if they had been children; carried them a few yards, and there held them; battered down the iron door of the jail with a stick of timber; dragged forth Quarles, and hung him from a cottonwood tree overlooking the city. For a moment the poor wretch clutched the rope above his head, lifting himself up; but a heavy ruffian caught him by the feet, his grasp gave way,and he never struggled again.

Two hours later the crowd again surrounded the jail and demanded Bays. In vain the Free State mayor and other leading citizens sought to restrain them. The prisoner's wife, a vigorous young Irish woman fought like a tiger, but they took her away as gently as possible, again used the battering ram, brought out the criminal, and ran with him to the gibbet. He refused to confess; held his own hands behind him to be tied; and cast on the crowd a half-scornful, half-triumphant expression, while he was swung off from the limb. To what base uses may come the stuff of which martyrs are made!

Meanwhile, Woods, an alleged counterfeiter, and Knighten, a weak young man, who like poor dog Tray had fallen into bad company, were arrested as accomplices and confined in the mayor's office. Blood inflames a mob like a wild beast; the appetite grows by what it feeds on. On Sunday night, twenty-four hours after the executions, six hundred persons collected in the street and began to clamor for Woods, with shouts of: 'Hang him!' 'hang him.' But this was not so easy. The mayor's office in the second story of a high frame building, was only approachable by an outside flight of rickety stairs. At the foot stood four determined guards, with drawn revolvers. If the crowd overpowered them and made a rush, the stairs would certainly give way, and

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'THE MAN WITH THE ROPE.'

[1857. precipitate the ministers of vengeance into a yawning cellar, twenty feet below.

While calmer citizens were expostulating, and urging that the prisoner should have a trial, the shouting mob surged like a heavyswelling sea. One young man sprang upon a brick pile and displayed a rope. Then went up tremendous cries,

'Woods!' 'Woods!' 'Bring him out!'

'Hang him!' But now another, mounting the brick pile, harangued them

'With throat of brass and adamantine lungs.'

He approved yesterday's proceedings; but now let us impanel a jury of twelve leading citizens, and try these prisoners.

'All right!' 'Go ahead.' 'We'll give you just twenty minutes for doing it.'

Eleven residents answered to their names, and went up the stairs; but there was difficulty in finding the twelfth; and one or two whose names were called, declined to serve.

'Send along any man,' suggested the volunteer marshal; 'send the man with the rope.'

Enthusiastic cheers followed. The crowd bore their champion to the foot of the stairs, where, with American respect for the jurybox, he left his rope behind before ascending.

The open sesame of 'the Press,' admitted me to the trial room, whose windows were raised that the crowd outside might see the prisoner. Woods was a Kentuckian, fifty years old, who had been spending the day in making a will, leaving eight thousand dollars of property to his two daughters in Tennessee. Knighten was a thin-witted boy whom the criminals had taken into their confidences. But he only knew from the statements of Quarles and Bays, that Woods was their confederate in circulating counterfeit bank-notes. Woods was closely interrogated, but denied every thing.

The crowd now grew impatient, fired with the usual fondness of mobs for hanging a man first and trying him afterward. Shouts of 'Time up!' 'We have waited long enough!' 'Hang them both any how!' rent the air.

The scene was exciting. A single dim candle lighted the room,

1857.]

i

AN EXCITING NIGHT SCENE.

69

showing the anxious, troubled faces of jurors, grouped around the prisoners, in momentary expectation that the bloodthirsty outsideers would rush in. The questioning ceased, and the suppressed painful breathing of every man present was heard. Knighten grew pale as death, and great drops of sweat stood upon his forehead. Woods, huge, brawny and hardened, sat erect, waiting his fate. He spoke doggedly:

'Well, gentlemen, you can't hang me but once!'

Despite this bravado, his facial muscles twitched, and as all confirmed lovers of tobacco use it more freely under strong excite. ment, he tore off great shreds of Virginia leaf, and his craunching jaws rose and fell with the haste of desperation. Outside, it was light as day, and the full moon of that Sabbath night illumined a moving sea of fierce, upturned faces-a dense, surging mass of clamoring uncontrolable men. Lady Wortley, surprised at the