Background

“… the northern part of the state was not destitute of its organized bands of rogues in murders, robberies, horse stealing, and making and passing counterfeit money.  These rogues were scattered all over the north, but most were in Ogle, Winnebago, Lee, and DeKalb counties.  In the county of Ogle, they were so numerous, strong, and organized that they could not be convicted for their crimes.” —Thomas Ford, Governor of Illinois

Governor Ford’s rogues were called by several names, among them prairie bandits, banditti, and prairie pirates, and they operated with impunity in the states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and the territory of Iowa.  It was a loose-knit group of desperados that operated from the early to mid-19th century.  While roaming bandits were common throughout Illinois, these dangerous men especially plagued the counties of Lee, DeKalb, Ogle, and Winnebago.

Why this should be so — at that time and place — is partially explained by an increase in “no-nonsense lawmen” in the southern states and a dramatic increase in vigilantism.  Southern folks refused to put up with lawlessness.  More than a few desperados met their fate at the end of a rope or a lead ball.  These circumstances prompted prairie pirates to move north into Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Iowa — for their safety.  One criminal syndicate effectively broken by southern lawmen was the Mystic Gang, headed by John A. Murrell.

The Mystic Gang

John A. Murrell (1806-1844) was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, and raised in Williamson County, Tennessee.  The third of eight children, Murrell received his first criminal conviction for horse stealing.  His punishment was flogging, six years imprisonment, and branding his thumb with the letters “H.T.” — meaning “horse thief.” Jailers released Murrell in 1829.

Murrell’s second conviction occurred in 1834 for slave stealing.  For this offense, he served ten years in the Tennessee State Penitentiary.  In those days, the penitentiary system followed the Auburn, New York system, a combination of punishment and rehabilitation where prisoners worked during the day in groups and were kept in solitary confinement at night with enforced silence at all times.  This enforced regimentation over ten years of imprisonment broke Murrell mentally and allegedly left him imbecilic in the last months of his life.

Now, about the slave stealing: In December 1835, Murrell and his clan planned to incite an uprising in every slave-holding state by invoking the image of the Haitian Revolution.  In rising against Southern Whites, the slaves involved in Murrell’s conspiracy would cause enough chaos to allow Murrell to take over the South, with New Orleans serving as the capital of his criminal empire.

Virgil Stewart wrote an account of the slave rebellion, sponsored by highwaymen and Northern abolitionists.  Mr. Stewart wrote under the pseudonym Augustus Q. Walton, Esq., for whom he invented a fictitious background and profession.  Some historians claim that the Stewart pamphlet was entirely fictional and that Murrell and his clan were — at best — inept thieves.  But at the time, many Southerners believed the story, which led to what was referred to as the “Murrell Excitement.”

In 1835, tension between the races and locals and outsiders increased.  On the evening of 4 July, disturbances occurred in the red-light districts in Nashville, Memphis, and Natchez.  Twenty slaves and ten white men were hanged after confessing to complicity in Murrell’s plot.  Two days later, in Vicksburg, an angry mob decided to expel all professional gamblers from that town based on rumors that gamblers were part of the insurrectionist plot.  When the gamblers resisted, the mob lynched at least five of them.  These racial panics continued in the south, along with municipal cities appointing councils charged with identifying Murrell’s conspirators long after he died in 1844.

John Murrell was known as a land pirate.  According to some periodicals, Murrell employed between 1,000 and 2,500 fellow criminals to pull off his caper.  Many were members of cultural/ethnic groups, such as the Melungeon people and the Redbone..[1],[2]  Murrell was also a bushwhacker along the so-called Natchez Trace.  To cover up his deeds, he played the role of a traveling preacher.  In one account, Murrell delivered a sermon to a congregation while his men stole their horses and wagons parked outside.  Some historians claim he had hideouts in Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Georgia.  Whether or not true, people called the Natchez Trace “Murrell’s Row.”

Just before lawmen apprehended Murrell in 1835, he was about to spearhead a slave revolt in New Orleans in an attempt to take over the city and install himself as a sort of Louisiana potentate.  Some contend that Murrell began to plot his takeover of New Orleans in 1841 — but the problem with that is that in 1841, he was in the sixth year of a 10-year sentence in the prison at Nashville.  Murrell died of tuberculosis a short time after his release from prison in 1844.

John Murrell and his gang were involved in nearly everything illegal: burglary, horse stealing, cattle rustling, stagecoach robbery, highway robbery, slave stealing, and counterfeiting.  Southern lawmen and vigilantes (often calling themselves regulators) were big on killing such rogues, either by firearm or by dangling them at the end of a rope.  The thing about vigilantes is that such behavior as taking the law into one’s own hands is generally frowned upon by legislatures, courts, and governors sworn to uphold the law.

Land Pirates

Well, then … how bad were these prairie pirate fellows?  According to a detective at the time, it wasn’t good.  They kidnapped Colonel George Davenport (the namesake of Davenport, Iowa), tortured and murdered him.  This sordid event unfolded on Independence Day, 1845.  Colonel Davenport sent his family on ahead to the Illinois mainland from their home on Rock Island.  While he was home alone, several criminals accosted him while attempting to burglarize his home.  We aren’t sure at this point whether Davenport was shot to death or beaten to death.  Whatever his punishment, Davenport lived long enough to fully describe his attackers, which aided lawmen in their capture.

Some of these fellows were so much a part of their communities that no one would rat them out, give testimony against them, or, if selected as jurymen, vote to convict them.  So, the gangsters had complete control of these counties, and no lawman with a lick of sense would pursue them inside their home turf.  At least not initially.  They wielded their greatest influence in the area known as Rock River Valley following the wave of immigrants that came after the Black Hawk War in 1832.  And speaking of the Black Hawk War, the Prairie Bandits posed a greater danger to local citizens in the Midwest for a longer period than any Indian uprising.  In Lee County, for example, every government official was a member of the Banditti.  Law-abiding citizens kept their mouths shut until around March 1841, when law-abiding citizens took the law into their own hands.

On 21 March 1841, state law officers arrested six members of the Prairie Bandit Gang and charged them with counterfeiting.  The county magistrate bound them for trial in Oregon, Illinois, and held them without bail in the Ogle County Jail.  It was a new jail constructed across the street from the new courthouse.  The bandit trial would be the first case heard in the new courtroom.  As it turned out, the court clerk was crafty and carefully hid the court records in his home until the trial was convened.  The night before the scheduled trial, unknown persons set fire to the courthouse, intending the fire to act as a diversion so that the bandits could escape from their holding cells.  The courthouse did burn to the ground, but the diversion didn’t work.  The bandits went to trial on schedule.  The judge in this case was Thomas Ford, a future governor of Illinois.

In this case, as it had been in earlier criminal trials, a jury member was also a member of the Bandit Gang.  This individual refused to vote to convict the six defendants.  The problem was solved when the jury foreman threatened to lynch the jury member who was holding out.  Ultimately, the jury convicted three of the six defendants, and all might have ended well (for justice) were it not that all six men escaped from jail, thereby avoiding their sentences.

In April 1841, Ogle County had reached a boiling point.  A group of citizens (possibly acting under the direct counsel of Thomas Ford) met at a schoolhouse in White Rock Township and formed a vigilance committee.  Within a short time, a hundred citizens were vowing to drive the outlaws from their county.  Another vigilance group formed near Rock Island.  In Winnebago County, the group called itself the Lynch Club; in Lee County, citizens called themselves the Association for the Furtherance of the Cause of Justice.

The Ogle County Justice League began by capturing and whipping two horse thieves, one of whom repented his sins and joined the vigilantes.  John Driscoll led the Ogle County bandits, joined by his four sons: William, David, Pierce, and Taylor.  After Vigilante leader W. S. Wellington stepped down, John Campbell became the new Captain of Regulators.  John and William Driscoll thought it would be a neat idea to intimidate Campbell early on in his new assignment, so they wrote him a letter offering to kill him.  Campbell was not amused.  He organized 200 men and marched to the Driscoll home near Killbuck Creek in DeKalb County.  Observing that they were seriously outnumbered, the Driscolls ran off to find protection under their county sheriff — who, as it turned out, sided with Campbell.

The Driscoll family promised to leave Illinois within twenty days.  Instead of leaving, though, Driscoll and his men held a meeting and decided that Campbell and Phineas Chaney should be murdered immediately.  The timing wasn’t right, so the Driscolls waited three months before moving.  An attempt to kill Cheney was made on 24 June 1841.  Two days later, David and Taylor Driscoll attacked John Campbell at his farm, killing him with a single shot to the head. Campbell’s son Martin, armed with a shotgun, fired at the Driscoll brothers, but the weapon failed to discharge.

Vigilante investigators discovered that a total of five men came to kill John Campbell.  They followed the hoofprints back to the Driscoll home.  After summoning Ogle County Sheriff William T. Ward, the angry regulators confronted Driscoll.  After questioning Driscoll, Ward concluded that Driscoll was involved in Campbell’s murder and arrested him.  David and Taylor, the actual killers, fled the county.  Regulators arrested William and Pierce later that day.

A regulator court convened at Stephenson’s Mill in Washington Grove, Illinois.  In addition to witnesses and court staffers, some 500 people showed up to observe the proceedings.  Sheriff Ward asked the regulators to turn Driscoll over to his custody, but the presiding officer, Mr. E. S. Leland, denied his request and ordered the court to proceed.[3]  After ensuring everyone present was a bona fide regulator and dismissing nine “imposters,” Leland appointed the remaining 111 men as “members of the jury.”

The vigilante trial began on 29 June.  William Driscoll admitted to telling his brother to kill John Campbell but testified that he only said it “in jest.” John Driscoll denied that he had anything to do with the murder but admitted to stealing several horses.  Regulators released Pierce due to a lack of evidence that he violated any laws.  At the end of the trial, the regulators found the Driscolls (John and William) guilty as charged and sentenced them to hang.  John refused to allow any man to hang him, so he demanded a firing squad instead.  The regulators granted his final request.  Before the sentence was carried out, William confessed to six murders; John admitted to nothing.

Everyone was interested in becoming involved in the execution part of the festivities.  The jurors formed two firing squads: 55 men in one squad — 56 men in the other.  John was the first to go, with 56 bullets piercing his body.  William had to contend with second place with only 55 bullets.

The Driscoll executions didn’t stop bandit crimes in Illinois, but they did bring an end to the Driscoll’s role in them.

Three Finger Birch

Robert Henry Birch (1827-1866) was an adventurer, a criminal, a soldier, a lawman, a postmaster, and a prospector.  His involvement in the torture-murder of Colonel George Davenport led to his turning state’s evidence against his co-conspirators.  Birch is also known as a co-founder (along with Jacob Snively and James Hicks) of the Pinos Altos gold mine.  During the American Civil War, Birch served as a Confederate with the 2nd Texas Cavalry and Arizona Rangers.

Birch was born in North Carolina but moved to Illinois with his family as a toddler.  According to Detective Edward Bonney, Birch was continually suspected of committing felonies from the time he was fifteen years old and used his “conversion” to Mormonism to help hide from the law.

A few historians have pushed forward the notion that Robert Birch may have had criminal ties to John Murrell, but most feel the proposition stretches credulity.  In 1834, Robert Birch was seven years old; it is doubtful that he would have been much worth to someone with Murrell’s criminal interests.  If there were any connection between Birch and Murrell, it would have involved his father, uncles, or much older cousins who could associate with the Mystic Clan.  Significantly, after Murrell’s incarceration, the so-called Banditti decided to pull up stakes and move to Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and the Iowa Territory.

Birch was 18 years old when James Henry Tevis accused him of participating in the torture and murder of George Davenport.  He was granted a reduced sentence in the matter in exchange for his testimony against the others.  Law officials put three of Birch’s cohorts to death in Davenport’s murder.  In 1847, Birch broke out of jail to escape prosecution.  Ten years later, Birch was a reformed man working as a postmaster in Arizona and later in pursuit of gold mines in New Mexico.  When the Civil War broke out, Robert Birch volunteered for service with the pro-Confederate Arizona Rangers under Second Lieutenant James Henry Tevis (his earlier accuser) but later transferred to John S. “Rip” Ford’s Second Texas Cavalry.  We don’t know how Birch died, only that his final breath came in 1866.  If he was referred to as “Three Finger Birch,” no one knows why.

Giving Credit

We would probably only know about the Prairie Bandits because of the work of Edward Bonney, whom historians describe as an adventurer, hotel keeper, city planner, counterfeiter, bounty hunter, private detective, and author.  A New Yorker by birth, Bonney was raised in Hittsboro until he married and moved west to Elkhart County, Indiana, in 1837.  Several of his “known fors” occurred in Indiana and were more the result of his failures than successes.  He did plan a city within an area of 80 acres he purchased in Elkhart County, but there is no city, and never was.  The best Mr. Bonney could do was construct a grist mill, which remains part of the Elkhart County Parks administration today.  He was also a hotel keeper, but the hotel was a rat-infested shamble that didn’t survive its first ten years.

In 1842, lawmen arrested Edward, charging him with counterfeiting U.S. currency.  While transferring him under guard to Indianapolis for trial, Bonney escaped to Illinois, where he joined a Mormon community at Nauvoo (a small town along the Mississippi River).  Mormon leader Joseph Smith was sufficiently impressed with Edward Bonney to appoint him to the so-called Council of Fifty.  During this time, Bonney served as Smith’s aide-de-camp, a position he retained up to the time when Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were murdered while awaiting trial in Carthage, Illinois.  With Smith dead, Bonney lost his influence with the Mormons, who promptly “cast him out” — and off Edward went, with his wife, to the Iowa Territory.

Bonney moved to Montrose, Iowa, in 1845, operating a livery stable and serving as a bounty hunter.  He eventually earned a reputation as a detective but was better known in the community as “one of those Mormons.” Because of his location, Bonney began looking into the Banditti of the Prairie.  This is where the story becomes a bit strange:  Bonney was convinced that the prairie pirates were “self-styled” Mormons so that they could achieve a haven in the Mormon communities.

It was not until Bonney went undercover within the organization, posing as a counterfeiter, that he was able to connect the gang to the torture-murder of Colonel George Davenport.  After a four-month chase through Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, and Ohio, he finally brought most of the murderers to justice.  Of the eight men taken into custody, a county executioner hanged three of the four men involved in Davenport’s murder: Granville Young and brothers John and Aaron Long.  The fourth man, Robert Birch, agreed to turn state’s evidence and later escaped from jail.  Two of the convicts received prison sentences.

The Underlying Problem

While there is no doubt that the vigilante justice administered by the Regulators turned the tide against the Prairie Bandits, some questioned whether such conduct can be justified in a society that purports to be governed by law.

In early July, the editor of the Rock River Express, Philander Knappen, wrote, “If two or three hundred citizens are to assume the administration of lynch law, we shall soon have a fearful state of things, and where, we ask, will it end?  It will be argued that we have no means or proper places for securing offenders in this new country, to which we answer — then build them.”

Mr. Knappen’s lack of insight was either staggering, or he was involved with the criminals.  Whatever the case, it wasn’t long before local citizens ransacked the offices of the Rock River Express as a demonstration of how unhappy they were with the suggestion that good citizens should do nothing to protect their safety — particularly when members of law enforcement and the courts were also engaged with the Banditti in their conspiracy against the innocent. 

Concerned that some future county prosecutors might share the views expressed by Mr. Knappen, the Regulators and their allies staged a rigged trial to make their point.  Thus, on 24 September, more than 100 men were tried in separate, back-to-back cases for the murders of John and William Driscoll. Thomas Ford again presided over the trials; the same jury heard both cases.

The prosecution produced no witnesses to the 29 June events at Washington Grove.  What they did produce were unconfirmed rumors, which Seth Farwell, a defense lawyer, described as “An utter failure to prove that any person had been killed, much less than any of the prisoners had taken any part in killing anybody.” The jury, which included at least one Regulator among its members, announced its verdict of not guilty without bothering to leave the jury box.

Here is a case for the many ordinary law-abiding citizens who did what seemed to them as necessary to end the outlaw reign and those who shared Philander Knappen’s concerns.  Those supporting the notion of extra-legal security may not have been aware of the views of a young lawyer-politician who, in 1838, opined, “When men take it in their heads today, to hang gamblers or burn murderers, they should recollect, that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang someone who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is — and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of tomorrow, may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake.  There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.”

The young lawyer was Abraham Lincoln. 

Notes:

[1] An ethnic group from the southeastern U.S. who descend from European and sub-Saharan African slaves.  They were closely associated with settlements in the Cumberland Gap area of Appalachia (East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and Eastern Kentucky).

[2] Redbone is a word denoting a multiracial individual or culture. 

[3] Leland later became a county judge in Ottawa County. 

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