Border Troubles in Morris County - Page 2

Another thing that tended to save Council Grove and its people from the ravages of Yeager, was the fact that Captain Rowell, with a company of the Second Colorado Regiment, was stationed close to the town to guard the mail and Santa Fe trains. Throughout 1864, the people were kept constantly on the alert. Now it would be a guerrilla raid that would call them to arms, and now a visit from hostile Indians. Many were the depredations committed that year by marauding bands of both whites and Indians, but the people, knowing the insecurity of life and property in those harassing years, were always on the alert, and while the depredations perpetrated in the adjoining counties were quite serious, Morris County escaped with but few, and these were of a trifling character.

In 1867 occurred the lynching of one of the guerrillas, and the affair caused a great deal of excitement in Council Grove. In the fall of 1866 a man named McDowell came from Missouri and made Council Grove his stopping place. During the Civil War, McDowell had  been a bushwhacker, and when the war was over he became an outlaw. He boasted of his crimes and seemed to take pride in telling how many men he had killed. People paid very little heed to his boasting at the time and set it all down to braggadocio. At that time one W.K. Pollard kept a livery stable in Council Grove, and one day McDowell went to the stable and hired a team, ostensibly for the purpose of going to Junction City. When McDowell didn't return, Pollard became suspicious and started after him next morning. On reaching Junction City he found that McDowell had gone farther, and was, by that time, probably out of the State. His next step was to procure a requisition from Governor Crawford, after which he started in pursuit of the thief, and succeeded in overtaking him at Nebraska City, where he arrested him and brought him back to Council Grove. Here, he had a preliminary examination and was held for trial at the District Court.

While McDowell was in jail  he was visited by a Shawnee County Deputy Sheriff named Cunningham who attempted to smuggle him a gun. Cunningham was detected in the act, however, and before McDowell had an opportunity of using the gun, it was taken from him. When word got out about what Cunningham had done, a group of resolute men threatened to hang him. As Cunningham pled for his life a rope was prepared, but in the end, the vigilantes let him go and Cunningham left town never to be seen again.  McDowell; however, would not be so lucky. The men then seized McDowell from the jail and carried him to the center of the bridge that crossed the Neosho River.

McDowell begged and pleaded and screamed for mercy, but all his pleading fell upon deaf ears, for he was about to taste of that kind of mercy that he, by his own boasting, had shown to his helpless victims when they appealed to him. One end of the rope was fastened around his neck and the other end secured to the railing of the bridge. Up he was lifted and over he was dropped, and there he was left dangling until the next morning. An inquest held on his body rendered a verdict of death by strangulation.

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