THE AFTER MATH.
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.