The Vigilance Committee at Helena and at Diamond City, Confederate Gulch, were occasionally called upon to make examples of irreclaimable, outlawed vagrants, who having been driven from other localities, first made their presence known in Montana by robbery or murder; but as the lives and career of these men were low, obscure and brutal, the record of their atrocities and punishment would be but a dreary and uninteresting detail of sordid crime, without even the redeeming quality of courage or manhood to relieve the narrative.
The only remarkable case was that of James Daniels, who was arrested for killing a man named Gartley, with a knife, near Helena. The quarrel arose during a game of cards. The Vigilantes arrested Daniels and handed him over to the civil authorities, receiving a promise that he should be fairly tried and dealt with according to law. In view of alleged extenuating circumstances, the Jury found a verdict of murder in the second degree, (manslaughter.) For this crime, Daniels was sentenced to three years incarceration in the Territorial prison, by the Judge of the United States Court, who reminded the prisoner of the extreme lightness of the penalty as compared with that usually affixed to the crime of manslaughter by the States and Territories of the West. After a few weeks imprisonment, the culprit, who had threatened the lives of the witnesses for the prosecution, during the trial, was set at liberty by a reprieve of the Executive, made under a probably honest, but entirely erroneous constitution of the law, which vests the pardoning power in the President only. This action was taken on the petition of thirty-two respectable citizens of Helena. Daniels returned at once to the scene of his crime, and renewed his threats against the witnesses, on his way thither. These circumstances coming to the ears of some of the Vigilantes, he was arrested and hanged, the same night.
The wife of Gartley died of a broken heart when she heard of the murder of her husband. Previous to the prisoner leaving Virginia for Helena, Judge L. E. Munson went to the capital expressly for the purpose of requesting the annulling of the reprieve; but this being refused, he ordered the rearrest, and the Sheriff having reported the fugitive’s escape beyond his precinct, the Judge returned to Helena with the order of the Acting-Marshal in his pocket, authorizing his Deputy to rearrest Daniels. Before he reached town, Daniels was hanged.
That Daniels morally deserved the punishment he received there can be no doubt. That, legally speaking, he should have been unmolested, is equally clear; but when escaped murderers utter threats of murder against peaceable citizens mountain law is apt to be administered without much regard to technicalities, and when a man says he is going to kill any one, in a mining country, it is understood that he means what he says, and must abide the consequences. Two human beings had fallen victims to his thirst of blood—the husband and the wife. Three more were threatened; but the action of the Vigilantes prevented the commission of the contemplated atrocities. To have waited for the consummation of his avowed purpose, after what he had done before, would have been shutting the stable door after the steed was stolen. The politic and the proper course would have been to arrest him and hold him for the action of the authorities.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES OF THE LEADING ROAD AGENTS OF PLUMMER’S BAND, AND OTHERS.
CHAPTER XXX.
HENRY PLUMMER.
The following brief sketches of the career of crime which terminated so fatally for the members of the Road Agent Band, are introduced for the purpose of showing that they were nearly all veterans in crime before they reached Montana; and that their organization in this Territory was merely the culminating of a series of high-handed outrages against the laws of God and man.
Henry Plummer, the chief of the Road Agent Band, the narrative of whose deeds of blood has formed the ground-work of this history, emigrated to California in 1852. The most contradictory accounts of his place of birth and the scene of his early days are afloat; upwards of twenty different versions have been recommended to the author of this work, each claiming to be the only true one. The most probable is that he came to the West from Wisconsin. Many believe he was from Boston, originally; others declare that he was an Englishman by birth, and came to America when quite young. Be this as it may, it is certain, according to the testimony of one of his partners in business, that, in company with Henry Hyer, he opened the “Empire Bakery,” in Nevada City, California, in the year 1853.
Plummer was a man of most insinuating address and gentlemanly manners, under ordinary circumstances, and had the art of ingratiating himself with men, and even with ladies and women of all conditions. Wherever he dwelt, victims and mistresses of this wily seducer were to be found. It was only when excited by passion, that his savage instincts got the better of him, and that he appeared—in his true colors—a very demon. In 1856 or 1857, he was elected Marshal of the city of Nevada, and had many enthusiastic friends. He was re-elected, and received the nomination of the Democratic party for the Assembly, near the close of his term of office; but as he raised a great commotion by his boisterous demeanor, caused by his success, they “threw off on him,” and elected another man.
Before the expiration of his official year, he murdered a German named Vedder, with whose wife he had an intrigue. He was one day prosecuting his illicit amours, when Vedder came home, and, on hearing his footsteps, he went out and ordered him back. As the unfortunate man continued his approach, he shot him dead. For this offense, Plummer was arrested and tried, first in Nevada, where he was convicted and sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary; and second, in Yuba county, on a re-hearing with a change of venue. Here the verdict was confirmed and he was sent to prison.