Bloody Williamson

M
Y INTEREST
in the subject of this book started with the Herrin Massacre. At that time I was a college graduate of two weeks’ standing, and certain that there were at least two sides to every question, even when mass murder was involved. In the Herrin Massacre my father, a Republican of the McKinley school, could see only one side. We had some sharp arguments, and I think he must have questioned the wisdom of permitting his eldest son to be exposed to the “education” he himself had been denied.

Three years later I took a position in Springfield, Illinois, where I lived until 1945. There Herrin and Williamson County were frequent subjects of conversation. From former residents of southern Illinois, from state officials, from militia officers, from lawyers who had prosecuted or defended gangsters, from judges who had presided at their trials, I heard stories that were always fantastic and often incredible.

Then I came to know Williamson County at first hand, and to feel at home on the quiet, tree-shaded streets of Herrin and Marion, so different from the bare black camps of other coalfields. I came to take it as a matter of course that I should spend an hour, one evening, talking with a Marion businessman about the works of Plato and Aristotle, and the relative merits of the various editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica—subjects about which his information far exceeded mine. “I keep goin’ back to the ninth edition time after time,” he said in the edgeless drawl that reminds one of Egypt’s proximity to the South, “because of the high authority of the articles.” He mentioned Huxley and
Darwin, and in philosophy Leibnitz and Schopenhauer. “And who was that monism fellow?” he asked. “I can’t think of his name.” I took two wild shots: “Kant? Fichte?” He shook his head, and we talked of other matters. “I’ve got it,” he said as we parted. “Hegel!”

On another evening, in Herrin, the talk ran to fine printing, to an obscure pamphlet of Sir Thomas Browne’s that my host had not been able to find, to London antiquarian booksellers, to the maps in William Camden’s
Britannia
, which lay open before us.

I do not mean to imply that such interests are the rule in Williamson County. Neither are they the rule in Chicago or New York or Boston. I do contend that in friendliness and hospitality the people of this region are unsurpassed. Walk along the street in any town in Egypt—the proud name of the southernmost quarter of Illinois—and most of the pedestrians you pass will smile and wish you good morning. Walk a block or two farther, and a car will pull to the curb and stop. The driver, who has never seen you before, will ask whether he can’t take you where you are going. One afternoon, as I was walking toward the square in Marion, a car stopped and the driver rolled down the window. “Ask that old fellow over there,” he said, pointing to an elderly man, poorly dressed, who was leaning against a building, “if he’s going anywhere. I’m going to Carterville, and I’ll be glad to take him along.” No, the old man replied, he wasn’t going anywhere—and then he asked me, with grave courtesy, to thank the gentleman in the car. As I passed him after I had conveyed the message he nodded in gratitude.

This contrast between the people of Williamson County as I know them and their record of violence and lawlessness is one of the reasons why I decided to write this book. Another is the experience I had when I undertook, some years ago, to write a short paragraph on the Herrin Massacre for the
Dictionary of American History.
I could find no accounts of that event on which I could rely, so I spent many hours quarrying what I took
to be the essential facts. (I now know that that article, of only 150 words, contains at least two inaccuracies.) My third reason is the superficiality, not to say shoddiness, of almost everything that I have seen in print on this subject. I decided that if there was enough interest in “Bloody Williamson” to justify magazine articles and feature stories every few months, there should be a place for one book based on careful research and written with as much objectivity as a fallible human could achieve.

My fourth and most compelling reason is my conviction that the story of “Bloody Williamson” is much more than a record of lawlessness in one small Illinois county. That county, as I have pointed out, is strongly “American” in population and background; I fear that it is no less “American” in those phases of its history which are my concern.

We Americans—and now I apply the term to the people who have occupied the present United States since the first English settlements in North America—have never been slow to resort to violence, sometimes in passion, sometimes in the conviction that legal processes were either inadequate or too slow in their operations; sometimes simply because the law interfered with what we wanted to do. The resort to violence may take the form of a Boston Tea Party or a Whiskey Rebellion and become a matter of national pride; it may assume the shape of a Civil War draft riot or a reprisal crusade of the Molly Maguires and go down in obloquy; it may manifest itself in Frank and Jesse James or the Hatfields and McCoys and become a legend; it may materialize at Cripple Creek or the Haymarket, and appear as a blaze of tragic glory to some and a dark stain to others. It may erupt in the latest lynching or the Cicero race riot of 1951. Its forms are as diverse as the emotions of our people, and its power to break through conventional barriers, and to thrive on itself, has been demonstrated in every part of the country at every period in our history.

Williamson County, Illinois, I believe, offers an almost unrivaled setting for a study of this phenomenon. There one can
identify a wide variety of its causes—family hatreds, labor strife, religious bigotry, nativistic narrowness, a desire for money and to hell with the rules; one can observe its recurrences over more than half a century; and, because of the setting’s limited geographical extent, one can see what went on with a degree of clarity impossible on a larger stage. With the possible exception of Harlan County, Kentucky, I know of no other American locality possessed of these attributes.

Some of my Williamson County friends will criticize me for writing this book. They are sensitive about their county’s history, and doubtless the more so because they know their own innate decency and friendliness, and realize that odium was brought upon them either by a small minority, or by a majority acting abnormally for short periods. They contend that what Williamson County is known for is misrepresentative, and they resent, understandably, the books and articles that treat of its past, as this book does, in terms of crime and violence.

Others of my southern Illinois friends—a majority, I believe—will agree with my contention that no segment of the American past is immune to investigation, and that the story of “Bloody Williamson,” so long the province of the sensationalist, needs a thoroughgoing recital more than most.

I have put the free time of five years into this book. As it stands, after repeated revisions, it is as good a book as I am capable of writing. (That is not to say, of course, that it is as good a book as could be written.) Its weaknesses stem from my deficiencies as historian and writer; it owes its merits to many besides myself. I wish I could name all who have been helpful, but if I were to do so, the list would exceed any reader’s patience. Nothing, however, could excuse me for not thanking publicly those who have read my entire manuscript, and improved it greatly, in style and accuracy, by their criticisms: Willard L. King, Chicago lawyer, author, and grammarian; Margaret Scriven, librarian of the Chicago Historical Society; Virginia Marmaduke of the editorial staff of the
Chicago Sun-Times
;
Earl Schenck Miers, author and publisher; and E. W. Puttkammer of the University of Chicago Law School. To others—Elizabeth P. Brush of Rockford, Illinois; R. H. Sherwood of Indianapolis; Dr. Chauncey C. Maher of Chicago; and Dean Robert B. Browne of the University of Illinois—I am equally grateful for help with certain phases of the story. As a research assistant, Julian S. Rammelkamp placed me permanently in his debt. One tends to take the services of librarians for granted, but Winifred Ver Noy of the University of Chicago Library, David C. Mearns of the Library of Congress, and Louis M. Nourse of the St. Louis Public Library took more trouble in my behalf than I had a right to expect.

I hope all those whom I have not named will accept my assurance that I am well aware of my obligation.

PAUL M. ANGLE

Chicago