WORDS TO LIVE BY

I must tell you that Willie Sutton never said he robbed banks because that was where the money was. In his autobiography Bill Sutton, as he preferred to be known, did admit that “If anybody had asked me, I’d have probably said it.” But after robbing 200 banks over a 40 year career, Sutton enunciated his real philosophy as thus; “Go where the money is…and go there often.” And that idea becomes really interesting when you combine it with the philosophy of novelist Paul Theroux, who noted that “Almost anything is possible on a train…”

“RAILROAD, n. The mechanical device enabling us to get away from where we are to where we are no better off.” - Ambrose Bierce. The Devil’s Dictionary.

Frank Reno (above) began his criminal career running three-card monte games along the Columbus highway, which forded the White River near his family’s 1,200 acre farm, about two miles north of Seymour, Indiana. When neighbors who had been fleeced by  Frank and three of his brothers - John, Simeon (Sim) and William - complained, the boys responded with arson. Over several years, as the boys matured, most of their hamlet of Rockford was burned down at least once. The brothers then invested their winnings, buying up distressed properties, including a hotel named the Radar House.

“DISOBEDIENCE, n. The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.” ibid

Beginning in 1863 the boys joined in the Union Army, not out of patriotism but with a fiduciary respect for the $400 bounties that were being paid for new recruits. So strong was the Reno sense of capitalism, that after a day or two of military service the boys would desert,  just so they could sign up again. It was called bounty jumping if they caught you, but only William was held long enough to receive an honorable discharge.

“RASCALITY, n. Stupidity militant.” ibid

In 1864 Frank and John (above) teamed up with a black man, Grant Wilson, to rob a store and Post Office 8 miles north of Rockford, in the Wayne County community of Jonesville, Indiana. The three were quickly arrested and under pressure Grant Wilson agreed to testify against Frank. However the officials in Wayne County did not know the Reno brothers well, and all were granted bail. Shortly thereafter Grant was mysteriously shot to death answering a late night knock at his front door. The Reno boys walked away free men.

“RETRIBUTION, n. A rain of fire-and-brimstone that falls alike upon the just and such of the unjust as have not procured shelter by evicting them.” ibid

In July of 1865 the Seymour Times warned visitors to “be wary of thieves and assassins”. In 1866 this warning was reinforced when the body of Mr. Moore Woodmansee, a guest at the Radar House, was found floating in the White River, sans his head. His luggage and $2,800 in cash he had been carrying, were also missing. Then, in October, the Reno brothers got really inventive.

“HOMICIDE, n. The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy…” ibid

John and Sim Reno, along with a compatriot named Frank Sparks (above), boarded the 6:00 p.m. Ohio and Mississippi train out of Seymour. A few miles south of town they made their way to the express car, got the drop on clerk Elam Miller and removed $10,000 in gold coin and $33 in bank notes from the safe. It was the first robbery of a moving train in American history. George Kinney, a passenger on that train identified the Reno brothers as the robbers. They were arrested on October 11th.  But after Mr. Kinney met with an unfortunate accident while answering a late night knock on his front door, no other passengers stepped forward, and, again, all charges against the Reno brothers had to be dropped. But local anger was growing.

“ABSCOND, v.i. To "move in a mysterious way," commonly with the property of another” ibid

Faced with increasing hostility from his neighbors, on November 17, 1867, John Reno and a friend named Val Elliot took a train to Gallatin, Missouri and robbed the court house of $23,000. However, Pinkerton detectives tracked John back to Seymour, and arrested him there in early December. The brothers tried to raise money for a good lawyer by robbing another train out of Seymour, but this only inspired the locals to form a vigilante committee, called the Scarlet Mask Society. The remaining brothers and their “friends” (above)  decided to look for financial opportunities elsewhere. So, with a lynch mob organizing, on January 18, 1868, John Reno faced the music in Gallatin alone and was sentenced to 25 years of hard labor in Missouri.

KILL, v.. To create a vacancy without nominating a successor.” ibid

This inspired the remaining brothers and their gang to move on to Iowa, where a robbery on February 18th at Magnolia netted $14,000. But it seems the incarcerated John had been blessed with the brains of the group, because after another robbery in March, three members were arrested and jailed. They just managed to break out for April Fools Day. The brothers now decided it would be safer to practice their trade closer to home. They were wrong.

“BRANDY, n. A cordial composed of one part thunder-and-lightning, one part remorse, two parts bloody murder, one part death-hell-and-the grave and four parts clarified Satan.” ibid

On May 22nd, twelve men boarded a train Marshfield, Indiana, broke into the express car, threw the clerk off the train, and grabbed about $96,000. The clerk died of his injuries. Then on July 9th the Reno gang went a robbery too far. This time, when they broke into the express car, 10 Pinkterton detectives opened fire. Theodore Clifton and Charles Rosenberry, were wounded, and Volney Elliot, was captured. On July 10th, as the three prisoners were being transported south to the county courthouse, the Scarlet Mask Society waylaid that train, removed the prisoners at gunpoint and hanged them from a tree at a nearby crossroads. Indiana, it seemed, and gotten civilized enough to lynch evil doers.

“TREE, n. A tall vegetable intended by nature to serve as a penal apparatus.” ibed

On the 11th three more gang members, Henry Jerrell , Frank Sparks and John Moore, were arrested in Illinois, and dispatched to Seymour via wagon. On July 25th they were also intercepted by the Scarlet Mask and introduced to the same tree. The site became known as Hangman’s Crossing -  today, simply as “The Crossing”.

“GALLOWS, n. A stage for the performance of miracle plays, in which the leading actor is translated to heaven” ibid

Two days later, on July 27th, William and Sim Reno were arrested in Indianapolis, where they had gone to gamble. They were tried and convicted of the Marshfield robbery, and after local officials heard rumors that the Scarlet Mask was preparing another neck tie party, the two men were shipped south to the strongest jail in Indiana, in the Ohio River town of New Albany (above). Said the misnamed Sheriff Thomas Fullenlove, “These men were sent here for safekeeping and they will be safely kept, if it is in the power of the authorities to do so”. Shortly thereafter Frank Reno and Charlie Anderson were arrested in Windsor, Canada, arriving in New Albany at the end of October, 1868.

“ACCOMPLICE, n. One associated with another in a crime, having guilty knowledge and complicity, as an attorney who defends a criminal, knowing him guilty.” ibid

Just after midnight, Saturday, December 12th an unscheduled train arrived in New Albany. Some 65 hooded and masked men disembarked and made their way to the jail. There they surrounded the building and beat up Sheriff Fullenlove before securing a rope to an iron stairwell support. Then Frank Reno was dragged from his cell and made to dance at the end of that rope. After he was dead, the mob lynched William and then Sim, with Charlie Anderson being strung up at about 4:30 a.m. However the overused rope finally broke under the strain of Charlie, dropping him to the floor. So the members of the lynch mob simply procured another rope and strung up poor Charlie again, and this time the rope held. It appears that the members of the Scarlet Mask also adhered to that other lesson later espoused by Willie Sutton, “Success in any endeavor requires single-minded attention to detail and total concentration.”

HANGMAN, n. An officer of the law charged with duties of the highest dignity and utmost gravity, and held in hereditary disesteem by a populace having a criminal ancestry.” ibid

No one was ever accused of participating in any of the lynchings. Ten years later, in February 1878, John Reno was finally released from the Missouri prison and returned to Rockford. He quietly worked on the family farm for five years before being arrested for counterfeiting. After serving another three year sentence, he died in his home, January 31st, 1895. And that was the end of the Reno gang of Indiana, if not the world’s best train robbers, at least the world’s first. And there is something to be said for that.

“A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car. But if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.” Theodore Roosevelt.

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ETERNAL TRIANGLE Pt. Two

I have been in love and been this stupid. You have been in love and just as stupid as this "triangle of delinquency" in our story. Or you will be. It is part of the human condition to be in love and be this stupid at least once in your life. And there is little shame in doing it twice. And although Edward Stokes had the opportunity to break free from his love sick stupidity when the judge threw out his arrest for embezzlement in early 1871, he did not. He could not. Like a Tom Cat with his eyes locked on a caged bird, Edward Stokes had lost what the Buddhists refer to as his third eye, the ability to see himself from afar, detached from the emotion of the moment. Edward Stokes was in love with Josie Mansfield, and love makes you stupid. Edward and Josie were both in love with money. And greed makes you doubly stupid. That made Edward a triple threat. 

The judges’ decision was based on a technicality, that the Brooklyn Refinery was not a corporation but a partnership between Edward and “Big” Jim Fisk. As a partner Edward could not steal money owed to the refinery, which he had pocketed, since he would have been stealing from himself. So Edward walked out of court a free man. And if Edward had just left it there, he might have stayed a winner. But being Edward, it was in his nature to carry things too far. That was one of the things that made Josie fall in love with him. That made her a triple threat, too.

So Edward sued “Big” Jim for slander, asking for that $200,000 again. “Big” Jim counter sued, demanding that his love letters be returned. Why Josie had given them to Edward passes beyond common sense, but I think we are well beyond sense of any kind in this case. Edward's lawyers argued that the letters might provide evidence of Erie railroad stock fraud, and might be needed in some future criminal trial. In truth, the only crime the letters were proof of was blackmail, which Edward and Josie were attempting to commit, with the letters. And they were using the courts to carry out this crime/ That was what “Big” Jim’s lawyers argued. So the judge ordered the letters be read by an arbiter, to determine just what they proved, if anything. 

The arbiter came to the conclusion that the love letters were maudlin, melodramatic, meretricious and – surprisingly – mundane, and contained no evidence of stock fraud. Given that the letters had only prurient value, the judge issued a restraining order preventing anyone, including the newspapers, from publishing them as long as the various court cases continued. And with that their value as blackmail material against “Big” Jim, evaporated. After all, as James Gordon Bennet, Jr., publisher of the New York Herald, used to say, “The purpose of a newspaper is not to instruct but to startle.” 

It was at about this point that Edward’s wife took their daughter and fled to Paris. And "Big" Jim's wife, living in far off Boston with her female lover, did the same. Clearly the married women in this case were smarter than their husbands, because they thus escaped being tainted with what that blue-nosed blue-blooded lawyer George Templeton Strong described as “a special stinkpot”.  All of New York was snickering about the tr-cornered stench. The newspapers kept fanning the stink, even without the letters, and day after day they mocked the participants’ peccadilloes. But “Big” Jim had long ago chosen to ignore the opinions of others, and Josie never had even the pretense of virtue. The only member of the triumphant with any self respect left, and with a super abundance of that, and thus the only individual wounded by the continued public mocking, was Edward. And he had been the one who had pushed the letters into court.

Having lost the letters as a weapon, Edward was forced to settle out of court.  “Big Jim" allowed him to keep the $27,500 he had filched from the refinery, plus $10,000 compensation for the weekend he had spent in jail, and $5,000 for his legal fees. Edward exchanged all of that for his half of the refinery. Edward was now freed from his immediate financial difficulty. Of course he was now $38,000 in debt to five different attorneys, all for lawsuits against “Big:” Jim Fisk,  and Edward had yet to win a single one. But being a pompous popinjay, he was convinced that he deserved to win at least one. And so he urged Josie to push ahead with her lawsuit against “Big” Jim. Not that he could have stopped her.

Josie was claiming that during their multi-year affair James Fisk had invested $25,000 for her, and now she wanted it back, with interest. “Big” Jim’s lawyers were arguing that the cash had never been hers, and that Josie’s entire life had been one money scam based on lies after another.  On the witness stand Jose began with another lie. “I will be twenty-four years of age on the 11th of December next.” She was actually 28. 

It was perfectly predictable that under cross examination her past would be used to impeach her. She was asked if, in California “a pistol was pointed in your presence at a man's head?” Reluctantly Josie replied, “There was a circumstance of that kind happened.” “Was it a man by the name of D. W. Perley…Was (the gun) pointed at him by (Josie's stepfather)? (And) did (Perley) sign a check before he went out?” All of this, Josie was forced to admit, was the truth. The jury, and the press, knew a badger game when they heard one.

Over three hours on the stand Josie was also forced to admit that Fisk had bought her the house on 23rd Street, from the knocker on Josie's front door to the curtains in the parlor and the commode in the bedroom. She was even forced to admit that she had handed over her love letters from Fisk because Edward thought they “would benefit him in the case…pending between him and Mr. Fisk.”  All of this was predictable, as her lawyer must have predicted. But Josie had insisted on proceeding. She was also three times stupid; she was in love, she was in love with Edward, and she was greedy. 

And then, on January 6, 1872, Edward took the stand in Josie’s case. Even under friendly direct examination, the spectators could not suppress a giggle when Edward insisted he and Josie were “just friends”.  When court broke for lunch at 1:00 p.m. Edward stormed out, infuriated. He lunched at Delmonico’s on 14th street, and it was there that he learned from "a friend" that he and Josie had been indicted for blackmailing “Big” Jim Fisk. It was the last straw.

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MR NICE GUY

I think everybody liked Robert Williamson Steele. Every one who knew him speaks in glowing terms; he was genial, honest, an entrepreneur, a good neighbor and a true friend. Maybe he was a little distracted by his pursuit of money, but that's no sin in America. Then, in 1860, with the Civil War building to a roiling boil, “J.W.” presented the Federal government with a ready-made, right-out-of-the-box, pro-union local government to smooth passage of the gold rich Colorado territory into the federal union. And his fellow politicians turned him down flat. For some reason they just didn't trust “JW”. And that was only partly because he was a Democrat.

See, in the 1850's there were only two kinds of Democrats, southerners willing to go to war to protect slavery and northerners who were willing to make any compromise to keep southern Democrats happy. The leader of the latter group was Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, who shepherded the Compromise of 1850 through Congress - protecting slavery but keeping it south of the Kansas border. And then four years later Douglas flip-flopped with his Kansas-Nebraska act, which let the locals decide the issue of slavery. His spin was “Let the people rule”, but the effect was to allow slavery supporters to drag their grievances north, across the Kansas border, where they barged into abolitionists. This intimate mixing of political ideologies set off “Bleeding Kansas” where neighbors like John Brown began settling political arguments by literally beheading their opponents. That was the real start of the American Civil War; not at Fort Sumter in 1861, but in Kansas in 1855. And, surprisingly, if anybody had taken notice, a practical solution to the political anarchy unleashed by Senator Douglas had appeared in July of 1858.

William Greenberry Russell was a Georgia peach who was a “49'er”. He had been fairly successful in the California gold fields, running other people's claims. But he really struck gold with his in-laws. His wife, Susan Willis Russel, was 1/8 Cherokee, and that side of her family had been forced marched across the Mississippi River in the infamous Trail of Tears, back when Kansas and Nebraska were supposed to be the new “Indian Territory”- like Indiana before them and Oklahoma afterward. Separate but equal has never worked in America, not for Indians, not for blacks, not for women and not for gays.

Anyway, Susan's Cherokee relatives wrote her about rumors of gold in the Rocky Mountain foothills. Looking to make his own fortune, Russel immediately rushed To Denver. One early July day he panned 20 ounces of gold out of Cherry Creek, a tributary of the South Platte River. And news of that one day bonanza was like opening a safety valve on an overheated steam engine. Overnight, violence levels across Kansas dropped as the most adventurous (meaning the most violent) young males packed up all their excess energy and marched 300 miles westward toward the 14,000 foot high Pikes Peak. They weren't actually going to Pike's Peak, but it was the most visible bit of the Rocky mountains as you crossed the rolling prairies; thus “Pike's Peak or Bust”.

Over the first two years of the Pike's Peak gold rush, one hundred thousand abolitionists and pro-slavery men came pouring out of Kansas and Nebraska. You might have expected a repeat of Bleeding Kansas in the gold fields. In 1860 a Kansas newspaper noted that “It is difficult...to walk half a square (mile) in Denver, without meeting some familiar face...” So the “59'ers” were the same folks who had been shooting each other back in Kansas in '58. Oh, they were still shooting each other in the gold fields, just not over slavery. Now it was over failed business deals and cheating at cards. In fact, it seems that all these violent people were suddenly no longer interested in politics. Greed had changed the political ethos.

The two largest towns in the region sat right atop the gold fields. One, Auraria, even adopted the Latin word for gold as its name. But the other was named to curry the favor of the governor of Kansas Territory, James W. Denver. See, the gold fields were part of the huge Arapahoe County, Kansas Territory, and the residents of the town of Denver were hoping for win favorable treatment over Auraria.. But by the time the town of Denver had adopted its new name, Governor Denver was out of office, and the toadying to him did them no good. So Denver the town returned the favor. They kept the name, but when the ex-governor visited his namesake, the residents largely ignored him. And that would prove the new reoccurring theme in Colorado politics.

Being ignored by territorial officials in distant Kansas, on 5 September, 1859, the citizens of Denver and Auraria voted to form their own government, which they labeled the Provisional Government of Jefferson Territory. They laid claim to a huge expanse of plains and mountains, almost as big as California or Texas. The genial Robert Williamson Steele, a lawyer out of Chillicothe, Ohio was elected Governor. Not yet forty, his sole qualification was that he was genial and had served a single term in the Nebraska Territorial legislature before catching gold fever. The prickly Pennsylvanian born lawyer, Lucien W. Bliss, was elected Lieutenant Governor. He had sought his fortune in Leavenworth, Kansas, but had moved on to Denver where he helped start the Rocky Mountain News, and a couple of freight lines. And they were typical of pretty much everybody in the the self proclaimed Territory.

Everybody in Jefferson who wasn't actually mining gold, was trying anything they could to make money off those who were. Governor “J.W.” even started a town in the foothills 12 miles west of Denver, which he called Mount Vernon.(He had a Tea Party 'thing' about the founding fathers). He sold town lots, and built toll roads heading to the new mines further up-slope. Lt. Governor Bliss started a couple of freight lines of his own, hauling equipment, food and fuel into the mines, and carrying the ore out. All of the men elected to the Jefferson Territorial legislature were only part time politicians, often business partners with their political allies and enemies. Even the judges appointed had to fit court sessions into their busy schedules - one of them never did show up for work. And Oscar Totten had been elected clerk of the Supreme Court because nobody else wanted the job.

The whole rickety structure survived for only 16 months. You see, most of the residents of Jefferson Territory, like their political leaders, saw themselves as entrepreneurs first. And being businessmen they hated to pay taxes. So, they supported their new government with a one dollar poll tax. But the natural response from all these entrepreneurs when faced with a tax on voting, was to not vote, and thus not pay the tax. This left the Provisional Government of Jefferson Territory on a very shaky financial and political foundation, made worse by the rickety nature of any business on the frontier.

Of the 100,000 who had joined the Pikes Peak gold rush, seven out of ten went bust and headed back home. The 1860 census of “Jefferson Territory” could find only 25,329, still looking for their Eldorado.  Governor “J.W.” argued that many had gone uncounted because they were working isolated claims up in the hills. But being isolated, said the census takers, meant they were not interested in being counted, and so, they should not count. And the evidence was in the ballot box. The vote to create the Provisional Government of Jefferson Territory had been 1,852 to 280 – barely 2,000 participating citizens out of the supposed 25,000 - not what you would call a “popular” election. Certainly Washington didn't call it that.

After their request for recognition had been rebuffed by Washington, in August of 1860 “J.W.” asked Kansas Territory to absorb Jefferson Territory and its power structure, meaning himself and all those other entrepreneurs. Kansas didn't say no, but they didn't say yes, either. They just waited. In November of 1860, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois won election as President of the United States, sweeping the Republican party into power. They were made stronger when most of the southern Democrats walked out, to form the Confederacy. On 29 January, 1861, the new Republican Congress voted to admit the state of Kansas into the union, as a free state, sans the territory claimed as Jefferson. One month later, on 26 February, 1861, the Republican congress created the Territory of Colorado, ignoring the Provisional Government of Jefferson Territory to death. A month later the rebels in Charleston, South Carolina opened fire on Fort Sumter, and the civil war began in earnest.

On 3 June, 1861, Stephen Douglas died in Chicago, of typhoid fever. Three days later “J.W.” admitted reality, declaring the Provisional Government of Jefferson Territory disbanded. It had lasted barely 16 months. And even before it was gone, nobody missed it, not even its leaders. Lt. Governor Lucien Bliss eventually sold his businesses at a profit, and moved on to Montana, where he repeated his success. But Robert Williamson Steele, like most early entrepreneurs in Colorado, was not quite as successful.

His toll roads closed when the mines they served ran out in the early 1860's. His town of Mount Vernon died shortly thereafter. Today, the only thing to mark its existence is an abandoned cemetery and a roadside plaque. “J.W.” fell back on the law to make a living, but he kept prospecting in his spare time. He lived a long and a productive life, and everybody liked him, right up to his death in Colorado Springs in 1901.

And I suppose if you believed lives can teach lessons, you should remember that genial makes for a good politician, but it ain’t enough to make a viable government - and neither do entrepreneurs. Good government requires shared sacrifice and commitment. And people infected with gold fever aren't interested in sharing anything.

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