In 1787, Shays' rebels marched on the federal Springfield Armory in an unsuccessful attempt to seize its weaponry and overthrow the government. The confederal government found itself unable to finance troops to put down the rebellion, and it was consequently put down by the Massachusetts State militia and a privately funded local militia. The widely held view was that the Articles of Confederation needed to be reformed as the country's governing document, and the events of the rebellion served as a catalyst for the Constitutional Convention and the creation of the new government. There is still debate among scholars concerning the rebellion's influence on the Constitution and its ratification.
Shays' Rebellion was an armed uprising in Western Massachusetts and Worcester in response to a debt crisis among the citizenry and in opposition to the state government's increased efforts to collect taxes both on individuals and their trades. The fight took place mostly in and around Springfield during 1786 and 1787. American Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays led four thousand rebels (called Shaysites) in a protest against economic and civil rights injustices. Shays was a farmhand from Massachusetts at the beginning of the Revolutionary War; he joined the Continental Army, saw action at the Battles of Lexington and Concord, Battle of Bunker Hill, and Battles of Saratoga, and was eventually wounded in action.
In 1787, Shays' rebels marched on the federal Springfield Armory in an unsuccessful attempt to seize its weaponry and overthrow the government. The confederal government found itself unable to finance troops to put down the rebellion, and it was consequently put down by the Massachusetts State militia and a privately funded local militia. The widely held view was that the Articles of Confederation needed to be reformed as the country's governing document, and the events of the rebellion served as a catalyst for the Constitutional Convention and the creation of the new government. There is still debate among scholars concerning the rebellion's influence on the Constitution and its ratification.
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Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was a 14-year-old African American who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman in her family's grocery store. The brutality of his murder and the fact that his killers were acquitted drew attention to the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the civil rights movement. Till was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. During summer vacation in August 1955, he was visiting relatives near Money, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta region. He spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the white married proprietor of a small grocery store there. Although what happened at the store is a matter of dispute, Till was accused of flirting with or whistling at Bryant. Till's interaction with Bryant, perhaps unwittingly, violated the unwritten code of behavior for a black male interacting with a white female in the Jim Crow-era South. Several nights after the incident in the store, Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J.W. Milam were armed when they went to Till's great-uncle's house and abducted Emmett. They took him away and beat and mutilated him, before shooting him in the head and sinking his body in the Tallahatchie River. Three days later, Till's body was discovered and retrieved from the river. Till's body was returned to Chicago where his mother insisted on a public funeral service with an open casket which was held at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ. It was later said that "The open-coffin funeral held by Mamie Till Bradley exposed the world to more than her son Emmett Till's bloated, mutilated body. Her decision focused attention not only on U.S. racism and the barbarism of lynching but also on the limitations and vulnerabilities of American democracy". Tens of thousands attended his funeral or viewed his open casket, and images of his mutilated body were published in black-oriented magazines and newspapers, rallying popular black support and white sympathy across the U.S. Intense scrutiny was brought to bear on the lack of black civil rights in Mississippi, with newspapers around the U.S. critical of the state. Although local newspapers and law enforcement officials initially decried the violence against Till and called for justice, they responded to national criticism by defending Mississippians, temporarily giving support to the killers. In September 1955, an all-white jury found Bryant and Milam not guilty of Till's murder. Protected against double jeopardy, the two men publicly admitted in a 1956 interview with Look magazine that they had killed Till. Till's murder was seen as a catalyst for the next phase of the civil rights movement. In December 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott began in Alabama and lasted more than a year, resulting eventually in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregated buses were unconstitutional. According to historians, events surrounding Emmett Till's life and death continue to resonate. An Emmett Till Memorial Commission was established in the early 21st century. The Sumner County Courthouse was restored and includes the Emmett Till Interpretive Center. Fifty-one sites in the Mississippi Delta are memorialized as associated with Till. Henrietta Muir Edwards, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, Emily Murphy, and Irene Parlby are known in Canada as the "Famous Five." Their fame arises from asking a deceptively simple question -are women considered to by "persons" under the law? To modern readers, the question seems ridiculous, but in 1927 in Canada, the issue was very much a point of contention, and the initial answer which the Famous Five received may very well surprise you. On August 27, 1927, they petitioned the federal government to refer the issue of the eligibility of women to be senators to the Supreme Court of Canada. This petition was the foundation of the Persons Case, a leading constitutional decision. Although most Canadian women had the vote in federal elections and all provinces but Quebec by 1927, the case was part of a larger drive for political equality. This was the first step towards equality for women in Canada and was the start to the first wave of feminism. The question the federal government posed to the Supreme Court was: "Does the word 'Persons' in Section 24 of the British North America Act, 1867, include female persons?" In 1928, the Supreme Court unanimously held that women were not "qualified persons" within the meaning of s. 24 of the British North America Act, 1867. The five women appealed that ruling to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, at that time the highest court of appeal in the British Empire. The women of the famous 5 collectively came together for the supreme court on March 14, 1928 to fight for women's status as "persons". This attempt failed and the court deemed women not qualified for this status. On October 18, 1929, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council overruled the Supreme Court and held that women were "qualified persons" and eligible to be appointed to the Senate. Some saw this as "radical change"; others saw it as a restoration of the original framing of the English constitutional documents, including the 1689 Bill of Rights, which uses only the term person, not the term man (or woman for that matter). Some others have interpreted the Privy Council rule as causing a change in the Canadian judicial approach to the Canadian constitution, an approach that has come to be known as the "living tree doctrine". The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (French: Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen de 1789), set by France's National Constituent Assembly in 1789, is a human civil rights document from the French Revolution. The Declaration was originally drafted by the Marquis de Lafayette, in consultation with Thomas Jefferson. Influenced by the doctrine of "natural right", the rights of man are held to be universal: valid at all times and in every place. It became the basis for a nation of free individuals protected equally by the law. It is included in the beginning of the constitutions of both the Fourth French Republic (1946) and Fifth Republic (1958) and is still current. Inspired by Enlightenment philosophers, the Declaration was a core statement of the values of the French Revolution and had a major impact on the development of popular conceptions of individual liberty and democracy in Europe and worldwide. The 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, together with the 1215 Magna Carta, the 1689 English Bill of Rights, the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence, and the 1789 United States Bill of Rights, inspired, in large part, the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The content of the document emerged largely from the ideals of the Enlightenment. The principal drafts were prepared by Lafayette, working at times with his close friend Thomas Jefferson. In August 1789, the Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès and Honoré Mirabeau played a central role in conceptualizing and drafting the final Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. The last article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen was adopted on the 26 of August 1789 by the National Constituent Assembly, during the period of the French Revolution, as the first step toward writing a constitution for France. Inspired by the Enlightenment, the original version of the Declaration was discussed by the representatives on the basis of a 24 article draft proposed by the sixth bureau led by Jérôme Champion de Cicé. The draft was later modified during the debates. A second and lengthier declaration, known as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1793, was written in 1793 but never formally adopted. The concepts in the Declaration come from the philosophical and political duties of the Enlightenment, such as individualism, the social contract as theorized by the Genevan philosopher Rousseau, and the separation of powers espoused by the Baron de Montesquieu. As can be seen in the texts, the French declaration was heavily influenced by the political philosophy of the Enlightenment and principles of human rights as was the U.S. Declaration of Independence which preceded it. The declaration defines a single set of individual and collective rights for all men. Influenced by the doctrine of natural rights, these rights are held to be universal and valid in all times and places. For example, "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good." They have certain natural rights to property, to liberty, and to life. According to this theory, the role of government is to recognize and secure these rights. Furthermore, the government should be carried on by elected representatives. At the time it was written, the rights contained in the declaration were only awarded to men. Furthermore, the declaration was a statement of vision rather than reality. The declaration was not deeply rooted in either the practice of the West or even France at the time. The declaration emerged in the late 18th century out of war and revolution. It encountered opposition as democracy and individual rights were frequently regarded as synonymous with anarchy and subversion. This declaration embodies ideals and aspirations towards which France pledged to struggle in the future. The text, translated into English, of the Declaration: The representatives of the French People, formed into a National Assembly, considering ignorance, forgetfulness or contempt of the rights of man to be the only causes of public misfortunes and the corruption of Governments, have resolved to set forth, in a solemn Declaration, the natural, unalienable and sacred rights of man, to the end that this Declaration, constantly present to all members of the body politic, may remind them unceasingly of their rights and their duties; to the end that the acts of the legislative power and those of the executive power, since they may be continually compared with the aim of every political institution, may thereby be the more respected; to the end that the demands of the citizens, founded henceforth on simple and incontestable principles, may always be directed toward the maintenance of the Constitution and the happiness of all. In consequence whereof, the National Assembly recognizes and declares, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and from 1969 onwards known as the House Committee on Internal Security, was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. The HUAC was created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having fascist or communist ties. Although the House abolished the committee in 1975, its functions were transferred to the House Judiciary Committee. The committee's anti-communist investigations are often associated with McCarthyism, although Joseph McCarthy himself (as a U.S. Senator) had no direct involvement with the House committee. McCarthy was the chairman of the Government Operations Committee and its Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate, not the House. On July 31, 1948, the committee heard testimony from Elizabeth Bentley, an American who had been working as a Soviet agent in New York. Among those whom she named as communists was Harry Dexter White, a senior U.S. Treasury department official. The committee subpoenaed Whittaker Chambers on August 3, 1948. Chambers, too, was a former Soviet spy, by then a senior editor of Time magazine. Chambers named more than a half-dozen government officials including White as well as Alger Hiss. Most of these former officials refused to answer committee questions, citing the Fifth Amendment. White denied the allegations, and died of a heart attack a few days later. In an open letter dated August 24, 1948, Hiss claimed that the committee needed to end its “verdict-first-and-testimony later tactics.” On August 25, 1948, Hiss and Chambers faced each other in a public hearing before the Committee in its first live televised hearing. The Cannon Caucus Room, located in the Cannon House Office Building, became center stage for the media spectacle involving the House’s most infamous committee. Chambers repeated his allegations, with Hiss vehemently denying them. Referring to the disputed statements between the two men, Committee Chairman J. Parnell Thomas of New Jersey began the proceedings, informing both witnesses that, “certainly one of you will be tried for perjury.” After more than six hours of testimony, the day of questioning ended inconclusively. After the hearings, many Republicans asserted that the investigation demonstrated that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were soft on communism; Democrats claimed it was a “smear” campaign. During the hearing, Hiss challenged Chambers to repeat his accusations outside the hearing chamber where he would not be shielded from a claim of slander. Chambers did so, and Hiss filed a civil action against Chambers. This, however, proved his undoing, as subsequent to the hearing additional evidence was uncovered that supported certain claims made by Chambers. Hiss lost the civil action and was subsequently indicted for perjury. In 1950, a trial jury convicted Hiss and he was sentenced to five years in prison. Hiss maintained his innocence, a claim that stirred controversy among historians for decades afterward. In the 1990s, relying on Soviet archives and records from the Venona project - a secret U.S. program that decrypted Soviet intelligence messages - some scholars argued that Hiss had indeed been a spy on the Kremlin’s payroll. Magna Carta (not "The" Magna Carta, as the translation of Magna Carta form the Latin includes the definitive article "The Great Charter") is universally recognized as the foundation of English, and by extension, American, constitution government. Except, of course, that it isn't. Although many of the ideas expressed in Magna Carta are similar or identical to modern concepts of liberal democracy - trial by jury, no taxation without consent of the governed, the government is subject to the law, etc. - the fact is that Magna Carta was imposed on King John by the English barons at Runnymede under duress. As soon as the barons had returned to their estates and, more importantly, most, but not all, had disbanded their retinues of knights and men-at-arms, John set about undoing what had been done. His first act was to send an emissary to the Vatican, seeking to have Pope Clement III declare Magna Carta to be contrary to God's will. John had good reason to hope that the Pope would respond positively to this entreaty. Magna Carta had not appeared full born on June 15, 2025, but was the process of a years long process of negotiation during which John sought to delay having to make any concessions to the barons while gather international support. During these negotiations, it was John's hope that the Pope would give him valuable legal and moral support, and accordingly John played for time; the King had declared himself to be a papal vassal in 1213 and correctly believed he could count on the Pope for help. John also began recruiting mercenary forces from France, although some were later sent back to avoid giving the impression that the King was escalating the conflict. In a further move to shore up his support, John took an oath to become a crusader, a move which gave him additional political protection under church law, even though many felt the promise was insincere. Letters backing John arrived from the Pope in April 2015, but by then the rebel barons had organized into a military faction. They congregated at Northampton in May and renounced their feudal ties to John, marching on London, Lincoln, and Exeter. John's efforts to appear moderate and conciliatory had been largely successful, but once the rebels held London, they attracted a fresh wave of defectors from the royalists. The King offered to submit the problem to a committee of arbitration with the Pope as the supreme arbiter, but this was not attractive to the rebels. Stephen Langton, the archbishop of Canterbury, had been working with the rebel barons on their demands, and after the suggestion of papal arbitration failed, John instructed Langton to organize peace talks. The result was the great gathering at Runnymede and the sealing (not signing, as is often incorrectly stated) of Magna Carta. Having failed at obtaining Papal arbitration, John simply requested that the Pope declare the charter to be null and void. Clement, who viewed any surrender of power by a temporal ruler to be a challenge to the Church's own power, obliged. In fact, Clement had dispatched commissioners even before John's request was received who arrived in England and promptly excommunicated the barons who had refused to disband their forces. Once aware of the charter, the Pope responded in detail: in a letter dated 24 August and arriving in late September, he declared the charter to be "not only shameful and demeaning but also illegal and unjust" since John had been "forced to accept" it, and accordingly the charter was "null, and void of all validity for ever"; under threat of excommunication, the King was not to observe the charter, nor the barons try to enforce it. By then, however, violence had broken out between the two sides; less than three months after it had been agreed, John and the loyalist barons firmly repudiated the failed charter: the First Barons' War erupted. The rebel barons concluded that peace with John was impossible, and turned to Philip II's son, the future Louis VIII, for help, offering him the English throne. The war soon settled into a stalemate. The King became ill and died on the night of 18 October 1216, leaving the nine-year-old Henry III as his heir. Although the Charter of 1215 was a failure as a peace treaty, it was resurrected under the new government of the young Henry III as a way of drawing support away from the rebel faction. On his deathbed, King John appointed a council of thirteen executors to help Henry reclaim the kingdom, and requested that his son be placed into the guardianship of William Marshal, one of the most famous knights in England. William knighted the boy, and Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, the papal legate to England, then oversaw his coronation at Gloucester Cathedral on 28 October. It would not be until 1217 that peace was nominally restored in England with Henry confirmed on the throne and a modified version of the Charter adopted (but only occasionally and inconsistently adhered to). The primary reason the conflict ended was the real concern that Louis would gain the throne of England and, in effect, incorporate the nation into a larger French state once he succeeded to that throne, without any guarantee concessions. The rebel barons began to defect to Henry when they realized that they might have to face a powerful, perhaps indomitable, French monarch rather than a relatively weak English one still in his minority. Thus, while many of the principles set out in Magna Carta were subsequently repeated and enhanced in subsequent documents and eventually adopted as formal laws, the Great Charter was, essentially, a failure in that it neither produced the hoped for peace nor resulted in more than a token acceptance by King John. The Pope's declaration that the Charter was null and void was never "reversed" by any authority - Magna Carta effectively ceased to be enforceable on August 24, 2015, two months and nine days after it was sealed. Jacob Barsimson was one of the earliest Jewish settlers at New Amsterdam (New York City), and the earliest identified Jewish settler within the present limits of the state of New York and probably the first permanent Jewish settler in what would become the United States. Barsimson had been sent out by the Jewish leaders of Amsterdam, Dutch Republic to determine the possibilities of an extensive Jewish immigration to New Amsterdam. With the fall of Dutch Brazil, it was imperative for Jews planning to leave Europe to find other new homes. He arrived at that port on the ship Pear Tree on August 22, 1654, having left the Netherlands on July 8. Barsimson was succeeded by a party of 23 Jews, who arrived at New Amsterdam in September, from Recife, Brazil, and established the first Jewish settlement in what would become the United States. Shortly after his arrival, a party of 23 Jews arrived in New Amsterdam aboard a Portuguese vessel that had been diverted from its planned return to Europe by a pirate attack. Unlike Barsimon, who had a passport from the Dutch West India Company, these arrivals were not welcomed by the local officials, who viewed them as a corrupting influence in the Christian colony. Nonetheless, Jews came from the West Indies, heavily dominated by Catholic Spain, and Brazil, where the former Dutch colony had been lost to the Portuguese, because they were disillusioned with the religious and political situations that existed there. The Jews settling in New Amsterdam were seeking the equality of free men in a land of liberty where they could freely worship and have equal opportunities and obligations alongside the Christian citizens. In 1655, Barsimson and another early Jewish settler, Asser Levy, joined in a petition to Governor Peter Stuyvesant and council of New Netherland to be permitted to stand guard like the other burghers, or to be relieved from the special tax imposed upon their nation in lieu thereof by resolution of governor and council, but their request was curtly refused with the remark that they might go elsewhere if they liked. Instead of following the latter advice, Barsimson and other early American Jews succeeded before long in obtaining instructions to Governor Stuyvesant from his superiors, the Dutch West India Company, condemning such unjustified and illiberal discriminations. Despite this victory, Barsimon and the other members of the Jewish community continued to suffer prejudice at the hands of the local authorities, obtaining relief only when Jewish leaders in the Netherlands applied pressure to the governors of the Dutch West India Company, who were heavily dependent on Jewish bankers and investors to finance their operations, to permit the New Amsterdam Jews to have certain rights including the ability to purchase their own burial plot. In 1658, Barsimson succeeded in securing from the Dutch municipal court in New Amsterdam a ruling which is surprising even in the light of latter-day principles of religious liberty. He was summoned to court as defendant on a Saturday, but the court decided, in the terse language of the record that "though defendant is absent, yet no default is entered against him, as he was summoned on his Sabbath." Can a king seize power from a democratically elected government in order to advance the Rule of Law? As peculiar as this notion sounds, it is effectively what happened in Sweden in 1772. At least that is what was intended. In practice, the corrupt elected government that was replaced by the "enlighten despotism" of the monarchy fell victim to the same foibles of the parliament it replaces. Sweden's Constitution of 1772 (Swedish: regeringsform, "Instrument of Government") took effect through a bloodless coup d'état, the Revolution of 1772, carried out by Gustav III, who had become king in 1771. It established once again a division of power between the parliament and the king. The period came to be known as the Gustavian era. This was a response to a perceived harm wrought upon Sweden by a half-century of parliamentarism during the country's Age of Liberty practiced according to the Instrument of Government (1719), as many members of the Swedish parliament then used to be bribed by foreign powers. Formally, the 1772 Constitution was adopted by the Parliament (Riksdag) on 21 August 1772, but this took place as members of the Parliament and the Privy Council were under threat by the royal garrison on order by King Gustav III outside of Stockholm Palace, where the Parliament and Privy Council were assembled in different parts of the palace. Leading members of the Caps party who sat in the Privy Council (as well as in Parliament) were arrested, as they were locked up in the Privy Council Room and released shortly after the adoption of the constitution. The 1772 Constitution was partly inspired by the current Enlightenment ideas of separation of powers by Montesquieu, but also based on earlier traditions in Sweden, especially from the era of King Gustav II Adolf, and two of the offices of the ancient Great Officers of the Realm were revived. King Gustav III also cherished other Enlightenment ideas (as an enlighted despot) and repealed torture, liberated agricultural trade, diminished the use of death penalty etc. The somewhat later Freedom of the Press Act of 1774, a part of the constitutional law and largely edited by Gustav III, was actually commended by Voltaire. The earlier first Freedom of the Press Act of 1766 was repealed by the Constitution in 1772. The outcome of the constitution and its deliberately vague formulations, partly attributable to it being written in haste, was however a more or less authoritarian political system more weighted in favor of the king's power. In 1789 it was amended in a still more autocratic direction by the Union and Security Act. In theory, the king was required to "listen" to the privy council of the parliament, but in practice "listening" did not equate with accepting the advice of the elected government. In certain matters the council did have the power to veto an act by the king, but only on a unanimous vote, which was difficulty to achieve. The king did require approval of the parliament to raise taxes, enact new laws and declare war, but again the practice was to present these matters to the parliament as fait accomplis. So was the 1772 Constitution a better expression of the Rule of Law than the 1720 constitution under which a corrupt parliament was ruining the Swedish economy and frittering away its sovereignty? Arguably it was. While the king did abuse his power, he also instituted reforms that benefited the people. Ultimately, however, the failure of the crown to honor the ideals of the constitution led to its downfall. The 1772 Constitution was replaced by the 1809 Instrument of Government following the defeat in the Finnish War and the removal of King Gustav IV Adolf from the throne. When did the American Civil War begin? Most people will answer "with the firing upon Fort Sumter." A few may even remember the date -- April 12, 1865. This date is disputed by some who argue for the secession of South Carolina, or the seizure of federal forts and munitions in the weeks before Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated. Still others will argue for June 25, 1861, the date of the formal resolution by Congress that the War was being fought to preserve the Union, not to end slavery. But ask when the Civil War ended, and mostly you will get a thoughtful stare in reply. This is because most people remember being told that Lee's surrender at Appomattox on April 9, 1865 was not the end of the war. A few students of history will cite the date a month later when President Andrew Johnson, having assumed the office following the assassination of Lincoln, officially declared an end to the insurrection on May 9, 1865. Others will cite the surrender of Cherokee leader Stand Watie, who became the last Confederate general to surrender his forces on June 23, 1865. The final Confederate surrender was by the CSS Shenandoah on November 6, 1865 at the port of Liverpool, England, having sailed there from the Pacific in order to avoid internment and possible trial as commerce raiders, bringing all hostilities of the four year war to a close. But was the war over? Well, no. despite the formal surrender of all field and navel commanders, the insurrection was not suppressed in many regions were forces of the confederacy either refused to disband or reconstituted into new insurgent forces (often little more than criminal gangs and vigilantes meting out revenge on union sympathizers and occupying forces). It was only in a presidential proclamation issued on April 2, 1866, President Johnson declared that the insurrection that had existed in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Florida, and Virginia, was at an end. The one exception was Texas, where organized resistance still continued. Later that summer, the President declared that the insurrection in Texas was suppressed. The President acknowledged that "adequate provisions had been made by military orders to enforce the execution of the acts of Congress, aid the civil authorities and secure obedience to the Constitution and the laws of the United States in the state of Texas." On August 20, 1866, President Johnson issued a proclamation announcing the end of the American Civil War: "And I do further proclaim that the said insurrection is at an end and that peace, order, tranquility, and civil authority now exists in and throughout the whole of the United States of America." With that proclamation the United States officially closed a costly, bloody, and deadly chapter in its nation's history that started at Fort Sumter several years—and hundreds of thousands lives—earlier. August 19, 1895 – John Wesley Hardin is gunned down by killed by John Selman in an El Paso saloon8/19/2021 John Wesley Hardin (May 26, 1853 – August 19, 1895) was an American Old West outlaw, gunfighter, and controversial folk icon. Hardin often got into trouble with the law from an early age. He killed his first man at the age of 15, claiming he did so in self-defense. Pursued by lawmen for most of his life, in 1877 at the age of 23, he was sentenced to 24 years in prison for murder. At the time of sentencing, Hardin claimed to have killed 42 men,[3] while contemporary newspaper accounts attributed 27 deaths to him.[4] While in prison, Hardin studied law and wrote an autobiography. He was well known for exaggerating or fabricating stories about his life and claimed credit for many killings that cannot be corroborated. Within a year of his 1894 release from prison, Hardin was killed by John Selman in an El Paso saloon. Like many gunfighters and outlaws of the American West, it is difficult to separate fact from fiction in the mythology that has grown up around Hardin. Hardin was born in 1853 near Bonham, Texas to James "Gip" Hardin, a Methodist preacher and circuit rider, and Mary Elizabeth Dixson. He was named after John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist denomination of the Christian church. In his autobiography, Hardin described his mother as "blond, highly cultured . . [while] charity predominated in her disposition." Hardin was the second surviving son of ten children. In 1862, at age nine, Hardin tried to run away from home and join the Confederate army. Hardin's father traveled over much of central Texas on his preaching circuit until he settled his family in Sumpter, Trinity County, Texas, in 1859. There, Hardin's father established and taught at the school that John Hardin and his siblings attended. In 1867 while attending his father's school, Hardin was taunted by another student, Charles Sloter. Sloter accused Hardin of being the author of graffiti on the schoolhouse wall that insulted a girl in his class. Hardin denied writing the poetry, claiming in turn that Sloter was the author. Sloter charged at Hardin with a knife, but Hardin stabbed him with his own knife, almost killing him. Hardin was nearly expelled over the incident. Hardin first killed a man in 1868, a freedman who had been a salve of Hardin's uncle, again claiming self defense Fearing that his son would not receive a fair trial from the reconstruction government, Hardin's father encouraged him to become a fugitive. When his hideout was betrayed, Hardin ambushed an killed three soldiers sent to arrest him. Hardin then roamed west Texas using aliases and occasionally holding honest professions, but eventually he would engage in some act of violence that required him to again flee. In January 1871, Hardin was arrested for the murder of Waco, Texas, city marshal Laban John Hoffman; however, he denied committing this crime. Hardin procured a pistol and killed one of the men escorting him to Waco for trial. Hardin again claimed that he acted in self defense when the man started to beat him. Hardin later claimed to have been taken into custody by three men, probably bounty hunters, killing them all when they became "drunk and careless." Hardin turned to cattle rustling, often working as a legitimate cowboy, even claiming to have been made a trial boss. Hardin crossed paths with J.B. "Wild Bill" Hickok. Respecting Hickok as a shootist, if not a lawman, Hardin was alleged to have told an acquaintance who tried to incite Hardin to kill the Marshall, "If Bill needs killing why don't you kill him yourself?" Nonetheless, Hardin confronted Hickok when the latter attempted to enforce the town ordinance that barred wearing guns within the town. When ordered to turn over his weapons, Hardin reached down, picked his revolvers up from the holsters, and handed the guns to Wild Bill butts forward, then swiftly rolled them over in his hands and suddenly Wild Bill was staring right into their muzzles. However, both men did back down. Hickok had no knowledge that Hardin was a wanted man, and he advised Hardin to avoid problems while in Abilene. Hardin met up with Hickok again while on a cattle drive in August 1871. This time, Hickok allowed Hardin to carry his pistols into town - something he had never allowed others to do. For his part, Hardin (still using his alias of Wesley "Little Arkansaw" Clemmons") was fascinated by Wild Bill and reveled in being seen on intimate terms with such a celebrated gunfighter. On August 6, 1871, Hardin, his cousin Gip Clements, and a rancher friend named Charles Couger put up for the night at the American House Hotel after an evening of gambling. Clements and Hardin shared one room, with Couger in the adjacent room. All three had been drinking heavily. Sometime during the evening, Hardin was awakened by loud snoring coming from Couger's room. He first shouted several times for the man to "rollover" and then, irritated by the lack of response, drunkenly fired several bullets through the shared wall, in an apparent effort to awaken him. Couger was hit in the heart by one of the bullets as he lay in bed and was killed instantly. Although Hardin may not have intended to kill Couger, he had violated an ordinance prohibiting firing a gun within the city limits. Half-dressed and still drunk, he and Clements exited through a second-story window onto the roof of the hotel. He saw Hickok arrive with four policemen. "Now, I believed," Hardin wrote, "that if Wild Bill found me in a defenseless condition he would take no explanation, but would kill me to add to his reputation." A newspaper reported, "A man was killed in his bed at a hotel in Abilene, Monday night, by a desperado called 'Arkansas'. The murderer escaped. This was his sixth murder." Hardin leapt from the roof into the street and hid in a haystack for the rest of the night. He then stole a horse and rode to a cow camp 35 miles outside town. Hardin claimed he ambushed lawman Tom Carson and two other deputies there. According to Hardin, he did not kill them but forced them to remove all their clothing and walk back to Abilene. The next day, Hardin left for Texas, never to return to Abilene. Over the next four years Hardin became involved in different criminal intrigues including being a participant in the Sutton-Taylor feud through his relationship to the Taylors. Having married and after having been seriously wounded in the feud, Hardin sought to "clear his slate" and surrendered to local authorities. However, upon learning that he would be charged with many murders and likely would hang, he escaped jail. Relocating briefly to Florida, Hardin, then just 21, assumed a new alias and returned to Texas in an effort to settle with his wife and newborn daughter. However, the ongoing feud again involved Hardin in more violence including the killing, again allegedly in self-defense, of Brown County Deputy Sheriff Charles Webb . Vigilantes lynched several of Hardin's relatives and his wife and parents were arrested, allegedly for their own protection, but more likely in an effort to force Hardin to surrender. On January 20, 1875, the Texas Legislature authorized Governor Richard B. Hubbard to offer a $4,000 reward for Hardin's arrest. An undercover Texas Ranger named Jack Duncan intercepted a letter sent to Hardin's father-in-law by Hardin's brother-in-law, Joshua Robert "Brown" Bowen. The letter mentioned that Hardin was hiding out on the Alabama-Florida border using the name "James W. Swain". In his autobiography, Hardin admitted that he had "adopted" this alias from Brenham, Texas, Town Marshal Henry Swain, who had married a cousin of Hardin's named Molly Parks. In March 1876, Hardin wounded a man, in Florida, who had tried to mediate a quarrel between him and another man. In November 1876, in Mobile, Alabama, Hardin was arrested briefly for having marked cards. In mid-1877, two former slaves of his father's, "Jake" Menzel and Robert Borup tried to capture Hardin in Gainesville, Florida. Hardin killed one and blinded the other. On August 24, 1877, Rangers and local authorities confronted Hardin on a train in Pensacola, Florida. He attempted to draw a .44 Colt cap-and-ball pistol but it got caught up in his suspenders. The officers knocked Hardin unconscious. They arrested two of his companions, and Ranger John B. Armstrong killed a third, a man named Mann, who had a pistol in his hand. Hardin claimed that he was captured while smoking his pipe and that Duncan only found Hardin's pistol under his shirt after his arrest. Hardin was tried for Webb's killing, and on June 5, 1878, was sentenced to serve 25 years in Huntsville Prison. In 1879, Hardin and 50 other convicts were stopped within hours of successfully tunneling into the prison armory. Hardin made several attempts to escape. On February 14, 1892, during his prison term, he was convicted of another manslaughter charge for the earlier shooting of J.B. Morgan and given a two-year sentence to be served concurrently with his unexpired 25-year sentence. Hardin eventually adapted to prison life. While there, he read theological books, becoming the superintendent of the prison Sunday School, and studied law. He was plagued by recurring poor health, especially when wounds he had received became re-infected in 1883, causing him to be bedridden for almost two years. In 1892, Hardin was described as 5.9 feet (1.8 m) tall and 160 pounds (73 kg), with a fair complexion, hazel eyes, dark hair, and wound scars on his right knee, left thigh, right side, hip, elbow, shoulder, and back. On November 6, 1892, during Hardin's stay in prison, his first wife, Jane, died. While in prison, he wrote an autobiography. He was well known for wildly exaggerating, or completely making up, stories about his life. He claimed credit for many murders that cannot be corroborated. Hardin wrote that he was first exposed to violence in 1861 when he saw a man named Turner Evans stabbed by John Ruff. Evans died of his injuries and Ruff was jailed. Hardin wrote, "... Readers you see what drink and passion will do. If you wish to be successful in life, be temperate and control your passions; if you don't, ruin and death is the result." On February 17, 1894, Hardin was released from prison, having served seventeen years of his twenty-five-year sentence. He was forty years old when he returned to Gonzales, Texas. Later that year, on March 16, Hardin was pardoned, and, on July 21, he passed the state's bar examination, obtaining his license to practice law. According to a newspaper article in 1900, shortly after being released from prison, Hardin committed negligent homicide when he made a $5 bet that he could "at the first shot" knock a Mexican man off the soapbox on which the man was "sunning" himself, winning the bet and leaving the man dead from the fall and not the gunshot. On January 9, 1895, Hardin married a 15-year-old girl named Callie Lewis. The marriage ended quickly, although it was never legally dissolved. Afterward, Hardin moved to El Paso, Texas. An El Paso lawman, John Selman Jr. arrested Hardin's acquaintance and part-time prostitute, the "widow" M'Rose (or Mroz), for "brandishing a gun in public". Hardin confronted Selman and the two men argued. Some accounts state that Hardin pistol-whipped the younger man. Selman's 56-year-old father, Constable John Selman Sr. (himself a notorious gunman and former outlaw), approached Hardin on the afternoon of August 19, 1895, and the two men exchanged heated words. That night, Hardin went to the Acme Saloon where he began playing dice. Shortly before midnight, Selman Sr. entered the saloon, walked up to Hardin from behind, and shot him in the head, killing him instantly. As Hardin lay on the floor, Selman fired three more shots into him. Hardin was buried the following day in Concordia Cemetery, in El Paso. Selman Sr. was arrested for murder and stood trial. He claimed self-defense, stating that he witnessed Hardin attempting to draw his pistol upon seeing him enter the saloon, and a hung jury resulted in his being released on bond, pending a retrial. However, before the retrial could be organized Selman was killed in a shootout with US Marshal George Scarborough on April 6, 1896, during an argument following a card game. |
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