VICKSBURG Chapter Fifty-Two

The Confederate guns fired first, barking out just after 8:30 a.m. that Sunday morning, 17 May, 1863. They could see the Yankee infantry impudently marching toward the right flank of their cotton fortifications. The gunfire drove the blue bellies to ground in the plowed fields. In response, more Yankees from Carr's division approached, and began to unlimber four big cannon, The battle was shaping up just as John Bowen anticipated it would.

In command of the rebel bridgehead on the eastern shore, Brigadier General John Stevens Bowen, (above) the 32 year old profession soldier from Georgia, was not happy. His 5,000 men were low on ammunition and bone tired when they stumbled into their positions after midnight, Once again, as the day before at Champion Hill, he was being forced to fight with a river at his back. He would have preferred to defend the west bank of the Big Black River, but his commander, Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton, held out hope that General Loring's 6,000 man division would reach their lines before the Yankee army.

So Bowen did the best he could. He sited 2 big cannon throwing 24 pound shells next to the makeshift boat/bridge over the Big Black river, to protect his men's line of retreat. And he stacked 18 more cannon on his left flank, south of the Edward's Depot road, to support Colonel Francis Cockrell's brigade, where the Yankees were most likely to attack. Major General Martin Green's brigade was defending the other end of the river bend, a mile to the north.

Holding the center were 3 regiments, the 60^th, 61^st and 62^nd Tennessee, under 39 year old Brigadier General John Crawford Vaughn (above). Vaughn was far more ardent than able. He was an enthusiastic and brutal supporter of slavery and the Confederacy. Well know in his home state, his reputation helped recruit these volunteers from the “hollers” of east Tennessee - a region riddled by divided loyalties.

The volunteers were told they were signing up to protect their homes. But the Confederacy could not afford to keep that promise. And while Vaughn's Tennessee brigade helped repulse Sherman's assault on the Walnut Hills in January, letters from home chronicled the Jay Hawker guerrilla barn burnings and vendetta murders their families were suffering. The betrayal of that promise weakened the Tennesseans resolve and made them suspect in the eyes of Confederate officers. Which is why Bowen had placed them in the center, opposite a second growth wood, deemed too dense to allow an organized attack to be launch through the trees.

But the weariness of the men and officers lead to mistakes, such as sending the horse teams, responsible for moving those valuable cannon, over the railroad bridge to the west bank of the Big Black River for safety. Some how General Bowen never understood that had been done. And that was not the only mistake.

At some point in the night the regiment assigned to the very northern end Green's line, The First Missouri Cavalry (dismounted), under Colonel Elijah Gates, was ordered to pull back. So in the dark, the regiment was awakened and stumbled across the bridge. No one noticed it's absence until first light, at which point Bowen exploded in anger. Gate's weary men were shaken awake again, marched back across the bridge to return to their original position.

That belated movement drew the attention of Yankee Major General John Alexander McClernand (above).  He had already sent Peter Osterhaus's 9^th division into line between the Edward's Depot road and the dense wood. Brigadier General Theophilus Toulmin Garrard, a wealthy, half blind 50 year old Kentucky slave owner, commanded the 1^st brigade. To their right was the 17^th brigade under Colonel Daniel W. Lindsey.  But seeing the movement close to the northern end of the rebel line, McClernand suspected the rebels might be preparing to launch an attack from there. So he dispatched his reserve, Brigadier General Eugene Asa Carr's 14^th division, to anchor his left flank, north of the woods.

What changed the battle to come, was the commander of Carr's 2^nd brigade, the big Illinois Irishman, General Micheal Kelly Lawler (above). He stood over 6 feet tall and weighed over 250 pounds. One of his soldiers observed that the farmer, merchant and lawyer, “Could only mount his horse with great difficulty, and when he was mounted it was difficult for the horse”  Union observer Charles Dana would later describe Lawler as “…brave as a lion,…and has as much brains”,   But Lawler was smart and an experienced soldier. He summed up his favorite strategy as, “If you see a head, hit it.” And he noticed an opportunity to play wack-a-mole on of this seemingly featureless terrain.

The Big Black River had once followed a straighter path, before some long forgotten floods had carved out the present westward bend. The new bend abandoned the old flood levees marking the old stream bed, which angled to within a hundred yards of the rebel cotton bale defenses. That old levee now offered chest high cover for attacking Yankees, starting on the north and ending opposite the center of the rebel line, held by the Tennessee Brigade. And because everybody on the southern side was so tired, nobody had noticed that old levee.

To be fair, the rebels were distracted. Not long after 8:00 a.m. General Osterhaus appeared, leading four 20 pound Parrott guns, which unlimbered at the south western edge of the wood and just 400 yards from the cotton bale fortifications. At what was point blank range for the big guns, they began to methodically dismantle the cotton bale fortifications. Colonel Cockrell's artillery tried to suppress the Wisconsin guns, and managed to hit one of the Union ammunition limbers, exploding it. The blast wounded an officer and 3 gunners, and it sent a chunk of shrapnel spinning, which clipped Peter Osterhaus' thigh, forcing him to withdraw for a short time. All that fire and fury drew attention away from what was about to happen in the center.

As a test, Lawler sent the 11^th Wisconsin regiment charging up the old river bed, 200 yards to the relative safety of the levee. The sudden movement, almost perpendicular to their lines, caught General Green's rebels off guard. That success encouraged Lawler to send the 21^st and 23^rd Iowa after. They took a few causalities but arrived essentially intact. 

At about the same time, Lawler was informed of the discovery of a hidden farmer's lane cleared through the woods to the center opposite the rebel lines. Lawler sent to six guns, from the 2^nd Illinois Light and 22^nd Iowa artillery, down that path. The charge of the Iowans drew rebel eyes away from sudden appearance of the guns. Within fifteen minutes Lawler could lay down direct fire on the Confederate center.

Lawler then galloped on horseback across the open space under heavy fire.  Somehow he arrived uninjured. And while he stripped off his heavy jacket, and strapped his sword around his substantial chest,  he ordered Iowa sharpshooters to lay down a musket fire on the unfortunate Tennesseans that was so heavy that one shot snapped the reigns of General Vaugnn's horse.

Crouching behind the cotton bales, the East Tennessee boys could sense if they could not see  the vice closing in on them. A few began to drift away from the front line. And they were joined by some from Colonel Cockrell's brigade. These men had fought hard the day before. They were the troops farthest from the boat/bridge over the river. It was as if it slowly began to dawn on the entire Confederate line that they were about to suffer a repeat of yesterday's debacle. And atop the west bank of the Big Black, the engineer Major Lockett saw that realization begin to set in. He sent a messenger galloping the mile and a half back to Bovina, to urge General Pemberton to authorize the destruction of the boat'bridges over the river.

The only thing holding Lawler back was that he had no support should the attack fail. After 2 years of war even the amateur McClernand knew the foolishness of such an oversight. Since he had already committed his reserve, McClernand reached out to first available troops, which turned out to be a brigade from General A.J. Smith's division, part of Sherman's Corps. These men, marching from Jackson, had not turned right at Bolton. Rather they continued west to the ammunition wagons parked around the Champion House. They were now escorting those same wagons carrying the shot and shell for Sherman's entire Corps. They had intending on turning north at the Big Black. But McClernand diverted them. When they arrived the final regiment in Lawler's brigade, the 22^nd Iowa, moved forward.

It turned out to be only a 20 minute delay -about the same time it took the messenger to gallop the 3 miles round trip between Bovina and the bridges. Receiving permission to fire the crossings, Major Lockett ordered both bridges soaked with turpentine. Soldiers with burning torches were ordered to fire the bridges before the first Yankee soldier began to cross. The hand full of deserters filtering toward the rear continued to grow. And then, just past 9:00 a.m. Lawler launched his assault.

A newspaper reporter called it “the most perilous and ludicrous charge”, but the battle that followed took no more than three minutes. The 23^rd Iowa went over the levee first, 30 year old Colonel William Henry Kinsman (above), leading the way. He was a Canadian lawyer who had moved to Council Bluffs, Iowa 9 year earlier. His regiment was mustered in at Des Moines in September of 1862. Less than a year later, this charge was his idea. Before he had gone very far a rebel Minnie ball fired from a Missouri rife on the regiment's exposed left flank, knocked him down. He staggered back to his feet. He resumed the charge, urging his men forward. Then a shot thudded into his lung. And hour later William died, right where he had fallen. Just another of the 6 officers and 69 enlisted men killed, maimed and wounded as the 23^rd Iowa crossed that 100 yards, a small part part of an army which came from all over the world to fight for the idea of a government of, by and for the people.

The 21^st Iowa were right beside their fellow buckeyes. One participant wrote later, “To stop one instant was to die, and so onward they rushed, yelling, screaming madmen, wild with excitement, and shaking the gleaming bayonet.” The 21^st regiment's Colonel, 40 year old Protestant tea-teetotaler and abolitionist Samuel Merrill, whom Grant called "eminently brilliant and daring”, also went down, shot through both hips. He survived but his military service was over.

The 290 men of the 23^rd lost 13 killed in that charge, and 70 wounded. Clambering through the abatis, the 23rd's color bearer, Corporal John Boone was shot dead. The regimental flag was quickly recovered by Corporal John Shipman, who continued to lead the attack. As Colonel Lawler, mounted atop his horse, passed over the rebel line he saw the Tennessee regiments scattering before his men, and the panic infecting the entire Confederate line. Lawler turned and called for the 49^th and 69^th Indiana regiments to come up in support. In fact the entire Federal line began swelling forward, drawn by the scent of victory.

The Illinois 33^rd, AKA, “the brain's” regiment was surged forward with everybody else. These were the men who had swept up the exhausted rebels from the road before dawn. And now, just after 9:00 a.m., Private James “Jimmy” Adkins jumped astride the barrel of one of the 14 cannon the 33^rd captured that morning. It was a fine party until the exuberant private, “looking like a little bedraggled rooster” pulled the lanyard and the gun expectantly went off, throwing Adkins to the ground, and sending a shell out over the heads of his own regiment. Said the regimental historian, “It was the first time that Jimmy was known to be frightened.” That day the 33^rd suffered 1 officer and 12 men wounded.

Some rebels escaped over the burning bridges. Some survived by swimming across the rain swollen river, while an unknown number drowned in the Big Black. In all another 18 cannon were captured by the Yankees, along with 1,400 rifled muskets, as well as 1,750 men killed, wounded and taken prisoner.  In two short horrible days, out of a 17,000 man army, Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton had lost 5, 000 men killed and captured, 39 cannon lost, and had another 6,000 man division that wander off in search of a better field commander.

Grant's reaction to the victory was to order McPherson's Corps to cross the Big Black upstream, at the tiny community of Amsterdam, midway to Sherman's crossing at Bridgeport. Ulysses had his eyes fixed firmly on the Yazooo Heights. And by 10:00 a.m. that Sunday, 17, May, 1863, it was almost in his hands.

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VICKSBURG Chapter Fifty-One

 

The apparitions rose from the fen so coated with mud they appeared to be the earth itself. It was a few minutes before 9:00 a.m. on Sunday, 17 May, 1863. The night chill was just melding into the heat of the day. The demoralized rebels, crouching behind cotton bales, had endured a demoralizing hour of heavy cannon fire methodically dismantling their fortifications from almost point blank range. And then, abruptly, a host of shouting banshees materialized almost on top of them, rising from the clinging mire, teeth and steel blazing in the sunlight. Reason evaporated. Logic dissolved. The rebels ran for their lives.

The Big Black River should have made a strong defensive position. The west bank was 60 feet above the meandering river and the swampy eastern shore. The railroad was carried 150 feet above  the marshes and an oxbow lake on great stone supports, a bridge 1,250 feet long. Normally wagons and travelers on foot had to use a browbeaten ford, and then clamber up the steep slope. The 5 divisions of Lieutenant General John Clifford Pemberton's army of Mississippi could have easily held the west bank against Grant, at least for awhile. With a little stupidity on Grant's part, even the 3 divisions which had crossed Baker's Creek 2 days earlier might have resisted. But the broken parts of the army which had escaped the debacle at Champion Hill, stood no chance of stopping the victorious Yankee army less than 18 hours later on the eastern shore.

Instead of defending the west bank, Pemberton had posted a third of the battered remnants of his army with their backs to the river – just a day after the same sin had led to disaster at Champions Hill. Sent ahead late on the afternoon of Saturday,16 May the seemingly tireless Chief Engineer, Major Samuel Lockett, had conjured a defense across the boggy neck of the east bank of the Big Black river bend.

Cotton bales awaiting shipment at Bovina Station were brought by locomotive to the west bank and rolled down the shoulder of the railroad levee. Stacked several deep in a line across most the open face of the river bend they formed an instant fortification. With dirt thrown against them to dampen any sparks, it was the same defense which had worked so well at Fort Pemberton, in February. 

Then, in front of the main battle line, Lockett added a trick developed by the Roman Army 2,000 years earlier – abatis. These were tree branches driven into ground with their brittle arms facing the advancing Yankees. Like barbed wire a generation later, these abatis were intended to break up attacking formations.

Crossties were also brought forward from Bovina Station and dropped between the rails on the railroad bridge. Then dirt was scattered down,  making it usable for horse drawn wagons.  

But vividly aware of the disaster the day before, Lockett was determined to provide a second line of retreat. Close at hand was a small fleet of steamboats – the Dot, the Charm, the Paul Jones and the Bufort - which had plied the Big Black until the Yankees had captured Grand Gulf, at the river's mouth. Lockett had one of these, the Dot, brought south of the railroad bridge. Her engine was stripped and sent north on the river, and everything above her bottom deck was stripped off.  Anchored to both shores, she formed a second bridge, for the men, if not their equipment.

Major General John Bowen's battered division filed into the new “fortifications” after midnight.  Although they had suffered heavily at Champion Hill, they grew confident with the defenses they found awaiting them. 

Brigadier General Francis Marion Cockrell's brigade was south of the road, and 47 year old Brigadier General Martin Edwin Green's brigade at the northern end of the line. Sandwiched between them were the 3 regiments of impressed draftees from east Tennessee, under General John Crawford Vaughn. Most of the rebels to the southern rebellion had already drifted away from their units by this time. But Pemberton had little faith in those who remained. And the weary Tennesseans who collapsed behind the cotton walls in the dark morning hours of Sunday, 17 May, knew their bodies were being offered as a sacrifice in the forlorn hope that Major General Loring's wayward division would soon arrive to rejoin the army.

As usual, Lieutenant General Ulysses Grant was prepared for this next step. His army was just as tired as the rebels. The only difference was that his men had won the day before. The Saturday night of 16 May, Grant let his men sleep where they were, atop the bloody hill.  Alvin Hovey's 12^th division was too damaged by the day's butchery to move the next morning. Better to allow them a day of rest, to recover those separated in the chaos, those confused or wounded or frightened, to find their way back to their units. Better to let them bury their own dead. They would follow the next day. But the rest of the army would not wait a moment longer than was necessary.

In the pitch black of 3:30 A.M., Major General Alexander McClernand  (above) pushed his XIII corps west out of Edward's Depot.  Brigadier General Eugene Carr's 14^th division lead the way, with a skirmish line of Colonel Charles Lippicot's 33^rd Illinois regiment sweeping both sides of the road ahead, collecting rebels who had collapsed and fallen asleep. Brigadier General Peter Joseph Osterhaus' 9^th division was next in line, with Andrew Jackson Smith's 10th division bringing up the rear. James McPherson's entire XVII Corps would follow up the same road, but would not be required to form up until well after dawn.

William Tecumseh Sherman's (above) XV Corps – consisting of Frederick Steele's 1^st division and James Tuttle's 3^rd division - was just catching up with the army after occupying Jackson. 

They had turned north at the town of Bolton, crossed Baker's Creek and were already marching west to reach the Big Black River 11 miles upstream at Bridgeport.  Here Sherman expected to be rejoined by General Francis Blair's 2^nd division, before crossing the river on a pontoon bridge he had been dragging along since Raymond. This crossing would outflank the entire Big Black River line, should Pemberton have decided to defend the west bank. Luckily for Grant, Pemberton had made it easy for him.

The Yankees were confident and careful. Examining the cotton bale defenses, General Carr spread his men out south of the Bovina Road. The Prussian immigrant Osterhause formed his division into a battle line north of the road and into the woods on his right. And like a carpenter choosing his his tools, Peter reached out the perfect weapon for the situation – the 10 pound Parrott rifle.

They were the largest field artillery piece used in the war. Being formed from brittle cast iron they were relatively inexpensive. Once drilled and rifled, water was poured down the barrel while a red hot cast iron band was clamped around the breech (above, rear). This reinforcement increased the muzzle velocity to over 1,100 feet per second, giving them an effective range of 3,500 yards – over a mile.

But the 20 pound Parrott had 2 disadvantages. First the gun and carriage weighed over 2 and ½ tons, requiring 8 horses to pull and 10 crew members to manhandle. And secondly, 22 of the big Parrotts were engaged during the Battle of Antietam the previous September, and 3 of them had blown out their breeches, killing many of their crews. This tendency of the brittle metal to fail caused more than a little unease among the crew of the 1^st Battery of the Wisconsin Light Artillery, who had 6 of the behemoths in their care. But it was these guns that General Osterhause reached for on that Sunday morning, telling their commander, 25 year old Lieutenant Oscar F. Nutting, in his broken English, “I shows you a place where you gets a good chance at 'em”.

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MISTER UN - LUCKY - Life and Death of Alfred Brady

 

I don't believe in curses, but the hard luck existence of Alfred James Brady may yet cause me to reconsider this conviction. Alfred was born on 25 October,  1910  in the isolated crossroads of Kentland, atop the flatlands of northwest Indiana - four miles from the Illinois border and just about forever from anywhere else.  Curse number two was delivered when Alfred was just two years old and his father, Roy Brady, died in a farming accident. 

His mother Clara eventually remarried, to Mr. John Biddle.  He moved Clara and the boy 140 miles south on the Monon Railroad to New Salem (above), northwest of Indianapolis. At the age of sixteen Alfred suffered yet another loss, when Clara died in December of 1926. She was just 37.  And in 1928 Alfred's stepfather also died. That was four strikes before Alfred was twenty.

It might be well to pause here to discuss the differences between Alfred Brady and that other Hoosier handful, John Herbert Dillinger (above), who grew up forty-one miles south of North Salem in Mooresville, Indiana. Dillinger – or Public Enemy Number One as the FBI liked to refer to him - was seven years older than Alfred, and his mother had died when he was three. 

But perhaps the most interesting thing these two men had in common was that Dillinger's Prussian born father ran a grocery store for a time, and four months after his own stepfather's death, Alfred Brady sought his fortune by walking into a grocery store.  Alfred pretended to have a gun in his pocket and demanded all the money in the till. The clerk pulled his real gun and opened fire. Alfred got shot three times, and was arrested – strike number five.

Alfred (above) served six months on the Indiana State Prison Farm, learning how to shovel horse manure, Upon his release tried to go straight.  Despite the Great Depression Alfred (above) found work as a delivery boy for a hot tamale stand, a stock boy in a men's clothing store, a welder in an automobile factory, and later, the same job in a mattress factory.  Alfred's dissatisfaction with entry level jobs reached a crescendo on 10 July, 1934, when he was arrested for vagrancy.  Alfred was adrift and looking for a career.

The next turning point in Alfred's life came when he met James Dalhover (above). James was a five foot four inch tall career criminal, four years older and two inches shorter than Alfred. 

James' skill set was mostly at making moonshine, which financed his purchase of a farm outside of Hanover, Indiana (above) -  strategically located along the distribution route for bootleg booze between Louisville and Cincinnati. But revenue agents had recently shut down this home industry just before  James was released from a term at the State Farm. This setback, plus his time in jails in New Mexico, Kentucky and Ohio, tempted James to team up with Alfred.

Their first joint venture was in mid October 1935, robbing a movie theater 50 miles south of Indianapolis, in Crothersville, Indiana. Unfortunately they chose a Monday night for their holdup, and the cash register contained just $18. The two crooks marked this up to a learning curve, and did better on the following Saturday night, 19 October , when they robbed a grocery in Sellersburg, Indiana, about ten miles north of Louisville, Kentucky. This time they walked out with $190 dollars (the equivalent of $3,000 today). The Brady Gang, as it would later be referred to, was in business.

The boys brought in twenty year old Clarence Lee Shaffer junior , who stood five feet five inches tall. And the new gang began a regular Saturday night robbery routine around southern Indiana and Ohio. James Dalhover would later boast that by the spring of 1936 they had successfully robbed about 150 gas stations and groceries, and they began to aim higher.  

On Wednesday, 4 March, 1936 they hit a jewelry store in Lima, Ohio for $8,000 cash.  So on Monday, 27 April, 1936, they returned to the scene of that crime and robed the same store again, this time making off with $27,000 in money and jewelry.  And then, the next morning,  fifty miles away, outside of the little town of Geneva, Indiana, Alfred's curse struck again.

In a farmer's field, Geneva, Indiana Police retrieved one of the numbered boxes taken from the Ohio jewelry store. This meant the proceeds of the felony had crossed state lines. And J. Edgar Hoover, the bureaucrat running the FBI, used that slim opening to label Alfred Brady as the new Public Enemy Number One.

You see, 1936 had been a presidential election year, and under pressure, Roosevelt had pulled back on New Deal spending. To ward off those budget cuts, Hoover (above) needed a replacement for his very successful John Dillinger, Public Enemy Number One campaign.  And Dillinger's “neighbor” Alfred Brady looked like the perfect fit.  

Hoover's F.B.I. issued wanted posters (above) and held press conferences, and on Wednesday, 11 May , the Indianapolis Police arrested Alfred and Clarence Shaffer. Four days later James Dalhover was arrested in Chicago, where he had gone to fence the jewelry.

To their shock, the three crooks were charged with the murder of an Indianapolis Police Officer. Whether they actually committed this murder is questionable. They were prolific crooks, and they did carry guns, and sooner or later somebody was going to get shot. But if Alfred was so cold blooded, why didn't he shoot the would-be hero who interrupted the robbery by jumping on his back? In any case Alfred must have realized it was too late now. The F.B.I. had labeled the trio as “mad dog killers”. If he ever got loose again, Brady must have known he was on a dead end road. It was enough to make you think Alfred Brady was cursed.

On Sunday morning, 11 October,  1936 , a sheriff in the Hancock County Jail was delivering breakfast to the three prisoners when they hit him over the head with an iron bar, stole his .38 revolver and made their escape in his car.  If anybody thought to ask, they might have wondered why the blood-thirsty members of the Brady gang left behind the living injured sheriff.  But Hoover and the Indianapolis police made certain nobody gave that little conundrum more than a passing thought.

The reunited trio - Alfred, James and Clarance - now permanently allied by circumstances and the police, fled to Baltimore, Maryland. Here they attempted to establish quiet, respectable lives under assumed names. James Dalhover and Clarence Shaffer even married a pair of nice Italian sisters (despite James still having a wife and two children back in Hanover). For his part, Alfred bought himself a bar. Oh, they periodically returned to Indiana to rob grocery stores and banks, but that was just “what” they did. It wasn't “who” they were. It became who they were on 27 May,  1937.

The original plan had been to rob a bank in Sheldon, Illinois, but that institution had failed in the 1937 economic downturn. So instead they robbed a bank in Goodland, Indiana, less than ten miles from Alfred's birthplace in Kentland. They walked out with all of $2,528. 

And in crisscrossing back roads making their getaway, the gang stumbled upon an intersection called Royal Center, where their careers collided with Indiana Highway Patrol Officer Paul Minneman (above) and Cass County Sheriff's Deputy Elmer Craig. 

In the ensuing fulsade of gunfire, which pierced the windshield and engine compartment of the car, Officer Minneman and Deputy Craig was both severely wounded. 

Paul Minneman would three days later.  Elmer Craig would recover, and was able to tell the police of the exchange he heard after the gunfire ended.  One of the gangsters approached the car, said Craig, and pointed a rifle at him. Craig said he heard the gunman ask, “Shall I finish this guy too? ” Another unseen gang member responded, “No, come on, let's get the hell out of here.” 

Trooper Minneman left behind a wife and an as yet unborn daughter, who would never know her father.

Whatever the truth about Alfred Brady's (above, left) responsibility in any previous killings attributed to the Brady Gang, there can be no doubt about this one. Even if he had not pulled the trigger, or had been the voice telling the gunman not to shoot the wounded deputy, he was now legally responsible for the murder of a State Police officer.

Time Magazine quoted Captain Matt Leach, head of Indiana's State Police, as saying that "because of their viciousness and the way they operate, the Brady mob is going to make Dillinger look like a neophyte.” Reading that, Alfred must have known how his story was going to end. The only questions were  “when” and "where".

In late September, the three Hoosiers drove to Bangor, Maine, looking to purchase guns and ammunition. They told the clerks in at least two sporting goods stores that they were hunters. But nobody in Maine could mistake these Indiana hoods for outdoors men. The trio returned to Bangor in early October to buy even more guns, and paid the owner of Dakin's Sporting Goods for some additional ammunition that was not in stock. The store owner told the men to return in a week to pick it up.  

And that was why, at 8:30 on the Tuesday morning of Columbus Day, 12 October , 1937, the “Brady Gang” pulled their black Buick sedan over to the curb in front of 25 Central Street, Bangor. Alfred was in the passenger seat. Clarence Shaffer, and James Dalhover got out, with James entering the store.

James Dalhover approached a clerk and asked, “Where's the stuff I ordered?” His answer came when the clerk - actually F.B.I. agent Walter Walsh (above) -  poked a gun into the back of Jame's head. Instinctively James turned, and Walsh hit him across the bridge of the nose with the pistol. Dalhover fell, and immediately struggled to regain his feet.

Outside, Clarence Shaffer saw the assault, and began firing through the store's windows. He hit agent Walsh in the shoulder. But as Clarence fired,  F.B.I. and Maine State Police “marksmen” stationed on the rooftops along Central Street, opened up on him.

Beneath those snipers, 19 year old Poppy Valiades was sitting before the front window of her family's restaurant, the Paramount Cafe, typing up the day's menus. Hearing the shots she looked up and saw Clarence staggering into the street. “ "I saw his clothes - oh, blood spilling out – bullets...he went into a kind of a coil as he moved into the street. I was probable 10 to 15 feet from him when he dropped.”

Inside the store, James Dalhover broke for the back door, and ran right into the arms of two Bangor city cops, who placed him under arrest. Meanwhile, two agents approached either side of the big Buick. They called for Al Brady to give himself up. Alfred put up his hands and responded, “Don't shoot, don't shoot, I'll get out." But he came out of the car firing and running.

He didn't hit anybody and he didn't get very far. The concentrated gunfire from the rest of the fifteen F.B.I. Agents, and 15 Indiana and Maine State Police Officers, dropped the newest Public Enemy Number One in the very middle of the busy street. Alfred had in his cold dead hand the .38 revolver taken from the holster of murdered Officer Minnemen.

Seventy-four years later, Andrew Taber, who had been on his way to the Dakin's when the shooting exploded on the street, remembered seeing Alfred Brady's body lifted into the wicker basket used to transport fatalities. He watched silver coins glinting in the bright morning sunlight as they fell out of Alfred's pocket and onto the pavement. The two dead gang members had over sixty wounds in their bodies.

The second the shooting stopped people rushed from all over to have a look;  Kalil Ayoob was having breakfast along Main Street that morning, and he remembered, “It looked like the running of the bulls in Spain.”

The only surviving member of the “Brady Gang”, the battered and beaten James Dalhover (above), was tried and convicted of the murder of Officer Minneman.  And that was the only murder any member of the gang was ever convicted of.   James died in the electric chair at the Indiana State Penitentiary, in Michigan City,  on 18 November, 1938, 

Clarence Shaffer's family sent for his body, and had it brought home to Indiana. But Alfred Brady had no family.

In the end,  he was lowered into a unmarked charity grave in Mount Hope Cemetery, in Bangor (above). Well, most of him was. For many years Alfred's brain sat in a jar at the Eastern Maine General Hospital, alongside the Penobscot River, where curious nursing students could wonder if its convolutions hid an explanation for the violence of its lifetime  -  until it finally disappeared. And with it, perhaps the Brady curse also escaped. As the longtime caretaker for the Mount Hope cemetery often told author Stephen King, “In the end, there's always Hope”.

http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=77377

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