To the thoughtful bystander all this preparation had its significance
and its portent, which became the stronger when he contemplated the
dispositions of the Law and Order party. The latter had been not less
vigorous, and its strength could not be doubted. The same day that
marked the organization of the Vigilantes saw the regular police force
largely increased. In addition, the sheriff issued thousands of
summonses to citizens, calling on them for service on a _posse_. These
were in due form of the law. To refuse them meant to put one's self
outside the law. A great many of them were responded to, for this
reason only, by men not wholly in sympathy with either side. Once the
oath was administered, these new deputies were confronted by the choice
between perjury and service. To be sure the issuance of these summonses
forced many of the neutral minded into the ranks of the Vigilantes. The
refusal to act placed them on the wrong side of the law; and they felt
that joining a party pledged to what practically amounted to civil war
was only a short step farther. The various military companies were
mustered, reminded of their oaths, called upon solemnly to fulfil their
sworn duty, and marched to various strategic points about the jail and
elsewhere. Parenthetically, their every appearance on the streets was
well hissed by the populace. The governor was informally notified of a
state of insurrection, and requested to send in the State militia. By
evening all the forces of organized society were under arms. The
leaders of the Law and Order party were jubilant. Their position
appeared to be impregnable. They felt that back of them was all the
weight of constituted authority, reaching, if need be, to the Federal
Government at Washington. Opposed to them was lawlessness. Lawlessness
had occasionally become dignified revolution, to be sure, but only when
a race took its stand on a great issue; never when a handful espoused a
local quarrel. Civil war it might be; but civil war, the wise
politicians argued, must spread to become effective; and how could a
civil war based on the shooting of an obscure editor in a
three-year-old frontier town spread anywhere? Especially such an editor
as James King of William.
For King had made many bitter enemies. In attacking individual members
of a class he had often unreasonably antagonized the whole class. Thus
he had justly castigated the _Times_ and other venal newspapers; but in
so doing had by his too general statements drawn the fire of every
other journal in town. He had with entire reason attacked a certain
scalawag of a Roman Catholic priest--a man the church itself must soon
have taken in hand--but had somehow managed to offend all Roman
Catholics in doing so; likewise, there could be no question that his
bitter scorn for "the chivalry" was well justified, but the manner of
its expression offended also the decent Southerners. And all these
people saw the Vigilantes, not as a protest against a condition that
had become intolerable, but as the personal champions of King. The
enemies of King, many of them worthy citizens, quite out of sympathy
with the present methods of administering the law, became the enemies
of the Vigilantes.
No wonder the Law and Order party felt no uneasiness. They did not
underestimate the determination of their opponents. It was felt that
fighting, severe fighting, was perhaps inevitable. The Law and Order
party loved fighting. They had chosen as their commander William
Tecumseh Sherman, later to gain his fame as a great soldier. His
greatness in a military capacity seems to have been exceeded only by
his inability to remember facts proved elsewhere by original historical
documents. This is the only possible explanation for the hash of
misstatements comprising those chapters in his "Memoirs" dealing with
this time. In writing them the worthy general evidently forgot that
original documents existed, or that statements concerning historical
events can often be checked.
And as a final source of satisfaction, the Vigilantes had placed
themselves on record. Every man could be apprehended and made to feel
the weight of the law. A mob is irresponsible and anonymous. These
fools had written down their names in books!