It is not pleasant to have to write of what occurred after the mob had
dispersed, and therefore I will be brief. The regular force of Rangers
had behaved well and obeyed orders, but now Governor Hubbard ordered
that an additional force should be recruited at Silver City, New Mexico,
to assist the authorities and restore order in El Paso County. About
thirty came. Of these the Judge Advocate General of the Army reviewing
the testimony says:
“Many outrages were committed on innocent people in the neighborhood
during the excitement, but of these not a few were perpetrated by
members of the State force raised in New Mexico under authority of the
Governor of Texas. These last seem especially to be responsible for the
rapes, homicides and other crimes of which the people justly complain.”
The United States Commissioners, Colonels King and Lewis, before whom
all the testimony was given, say:
“On December 22d, another small force of about thirty men arrived from
Silver City, who had been called into temporary service under
telegraphic instructions from the Governor, but unhappily, as was
natural and according to experience in raising volunteers along the
border, when the exigencies of the occasion does not permit that delay
which a wise discrimination in the choice of material would cause, the
force of Rangers thus suddenly called together contained within its
ranks an adventurous and lawless element, which, though not predominant,
was yet strong enough to make its evil influence felt in deeds of
violence and outrage matched only by the mob itself. Notable among these
atrocities should be classed the shooting of two Mexican prisoners, who
were bound with cords when turned over to the guard at Ysleta,
ostensibly to bury the bodies of Howard, Atkinson and McBride, then
lying in the fields of San Elizario, and when next seen, about an hour
after, were pierced with bullet holes, their appearance giving rise to
grave apprehension in unprejudiced minds that their death was ‘neither
necessary nor justifiable.’ Another was the killing of the Mexican and
the wounding of his wife in a house in Socorro, through the door of
which a shot had, it was said, been fired, and, being a spent ball, had
struck without hurting one of the Rangers belonging to Lieutenant Tays’
company. On a personal examination by the board of all the outside doors
of the house, there could be found no marks of a bullet-hole, but
through an inner door, across the ‘Sala,’ behind which the unfortunate
victim had received his death and his wife a serious wound, were counted
no less than fifteen bullet-holes, piercing the door from the outside,
and none merging from the inner side. These are regarded by the Board as
wanton outrages.”
These Rangers, like the leaders of the mob, escaped punishment.
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