Friday, August 06, 2021
Frank Canton
Frank M. Canton (born Josiah Horner, September 15, 1849 – September 27, 1927) was an American Old West fugitive who had a career as a deputy U.S. marshal under an assumed name. Although an ex-sheriff stock detective in Wyoming, Canton and his associates were accused of operating more by assassination than the law. Extrajudicial measures such as the lynching of Ellen Watson inflamed public opinion against the long-established big ranchers Canton worked for, and to re-establish control over grazing they funded an all out assault on those small operators considered to be rustlers. Canton directed Frank Wolcott's imported gunmen in their planned vigilante campaign, known as the Johnson County War, which was quickly ended by a local posse. Finding himself a marked man in Wyoming, Canton considered it opportune to leave the state. He spent most of the rest of his working life in law enforcement for the court of hanging judge Isaac Parker.
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I think that period in which he lived was perhaps one of the greatest in American history. Old enough to have participated (allowing that he might not have been in actual combat) in the Civil War, saw the industrial might of the nation including the invention of the auto carriage and the airplane. And young enough to have enjoyed such inventions.
ReplyDeleteEllen Watson was probably lynched over grazing rights and, if that, then certainly water rights. It was a time when people took what they claimed as theirs. Cattle barons, whether aspiring or entrenched, were the epitome of that.
good ole' vigilantism ...
ReplyDeleteit's EXACTLY what we need right now, but I don't think we have it in us any longer. Despite all the bullshit most are still too comfortable it seems.
Men and women were tough then, no fucking pretend different sex assholes, no women's empowerment bullshit and how far do you think burn loot murder would have gotten. I'm thinking not very far.
ReplyDeleteJD