Bloody Williamson (11 page)

By the end of a week in Marion most of the members of the investigating committee had lost their patience completely. Chairman McCarthy put into the record the statement that he had been practicing law for eighteen years and had never seen more reluctant witnesses; Igoe simply refused to ask questions; Pierce commented that he would feel safer in Springfield than in the hostile atmosphere of Williamson County. So the committee voted to resume its hearings in the state capital.

Altogether, some sixty witnesses appeared before it. W. J. Lester refused to testify,
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Hugh Willis left the state and could not be called, and one deputy sheriff and two Herrin policemen departed after the Marion sessions. But the testimony was sufficient to fill in whatever gaps in the story remained after the two trials.

On the basis of its hearing the committee drew up a report which ranks with that of the grand jury as an authoritative account of the events of June 22 and the preceding days. Its assigning of responsibility, however, was much more comprehensive. Few escaped censure. Adjutant General Black was blamed for not taking personal charge before the massacre and ordering out troops on his own responsibility, but that was a mild reproof in comparison with the castigation Colonel Hunter received. “We believe that he was absolutely incompetent, unreliable and unworthy to perform the duties assigned to him,” the committee stated. Sheriff Thaxton and his deputies were
“criminally negligent”; all the local police-officers were “absolutely derelict in their duty.” Hugh Willis could be convicted of murder in any county in the state but Williamson. If he, Fox Hughes, and other union officials “had been prompted by high and lofty motives,” the disaster could easily have been prevented. Lester, on the other hand, should not be absolved from blame: his greed and foolhardiness were sharply condemned. Of all those of whose activities the committee took cognizance, only Delos Duty drew words of praise. “His untiring efforts in trying to convict those whom he believed responsible for the murders lead us to the conclusion that he did his full duty, even to the sacrifice of his health. He deserves the commendation of this committee, the people of his county and the State of Illinois.”

Five members of the committee signed the report. The other two, Representatives Pierce and Curran, filed a minority report.

In the main, the two minority members accepted the majority’s statement of facts, though they omitted some of the most harrowing incidents, and challenged several passages reflecting on Hugh Willis and Colonel Hunter. Of the majority conclusions, however, only the condemnation of Lester was retained. All other participants were exonerated in the concluding paragraph:

Both reports were presented on June 30, 1923, in the last hours of the biennial session. As many members of the House
were not in their seats, Representative Curran tried to force the Speaker to recognize the absence of a quorum, and thus prevent either report from becoming a matter of official record. In this he failed, but he succeeded in blocking the adoption of the majority report and in keeping it from being printed as a separate document.

That same night, in the Illinois State Senate, other union sympathizers gave the Herrin investigation the
coup de grâce.
Because Hugh Willis and other witnesses were not accessible, the House investigating committee had introduced a bill setting up another commission to prolong the investigation. The House passed the bill by a vote of 84 to 11. But a few opponents in the Senate prevented a vote before adjournment, bringing this bitter comment from the five signers of the majority report: “The committee hopes that these Senators will be replaced by men of high moral stamina and courage, who will think more of the protection of the fair name of the State of Illinois than their own selfish political ambitions.”

Thus the last echoes of the guns of Herrin died away in the popping of firecrackers and the noise of the horseplay that Illinois lawmakers consider appropriate to the final hours of a legislative session.

July 1868–January 1876

I
N NEWSPAPER
accounts of the Herrin Massacre the phrase, “Bloody Williamson,” occurred repeatedly. Most readers assumed that it originated in the killings that took place on June 22, 1922, but to residents of southern Illinois the words reached far into the past. They brought to mind, first of all, the days of the “Bloody Vendetta” half a century earlier, and after that, mine wars and riots that kept alive the county’s reputation for lawlessness and bloodshed. In such a background many a thoughtful observer found an explanation, if not a cause, of the savagery that had shocked the entire nation.

Like most of southern Illinois, Williamson County was settled by immigrants from Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, and Virginia. Many of them came from the hill regions, and they were slow to lose the peculiar characteristics of mountain folk. They were generous, hospitable, hardy, independent, brave, and intelligent, but undisciplined by education. Their superstitions were many and strong, their prejudices deep and unyielding. In religion they were Protestant—usually Methodist, Missionary
Baptist, or Campbellite—and inclined to find emotional release in the excesses of the camp meeting.

Almost without exception they were hot-blooded, proud, obstinate, jealous of family honor, and quick to resent an insult. Given what they considered sufficient provocation, they could kill with little compunction. Milo Erwin, the first historian of the county, counted 495 assaults with a deadly weapon and 285 murderous assaults between 1839, when the county was organized, and 1876, the year in which he wrote. He also listed almost fifty murders that had been committed in those same years. Of the murderers, he could find only six who had been convicted and given prison sentences, although two were under indictment or awaiting trial at the time he made his compilation.
All the others had either escaped detection, fled the country, or been acquitted on pleas of self-defense.

The Heart of “Egypt”: Williamson and Contiguous Counties

Murder, then, was no novelty. Yet in the “Bloody Vendetta” the taking of life became so commonplace that hundreds of people lived in mute fear, while to the rest of the state the mere fact of residence in Williamson County was a reproach.

By all accounts, the Vendetta began with an ordinary tavern brawl. On the Fourth of July, 1868, several members of a family named Bulliner were playing cards in a dramshop near Carbondale. Felix Henderson, commonly known as “Field” Henderson, took a hand in the game. Before long an argument developed, and Henderson made the mistake of calling one of the Bulliners “a damn lying son-of-a-bitch.” In the fight that followed, Henderson was badly beaten.

Thus the Bulliner and Henderson families became bitter enemies. Both clans were relative newcomers. The Bulliners—two families headed by brothers—had lived in southwestern Tennessee until the last year of the Civil War, when they settled south of Crainville, a hamlet in the west-central part of Williamson County. There they bought good farms, established several business enterprises, and quickly came to be known as honest, industrious, and enterprising.

They also acquired the reputation of having “sand in their craws” and of not liking to be “put upon.” The men were big-boned, broad-shouldered, muscular, good-looking, and pleasant in manner, yet they could be most disagreeable to anyone who crossed them. This propensity, with the influence that their standing in the community gave them, made them formidable enemies.

The Hendersons—three brothers and their families—were Kentuckians. Like the Bulliners, they settled in Williamson County, north of Crainville, during the last year of the war. All were large, strong, and fearless. Though not wealthy, they too owned good farms, and soon became as influential in their neighborhood as the Bulliners were in theirs.

While the enmity between the two families smoldered, another Bulliner quarrel gave the Hendersons an ally. On the farm adjoining that of “Old George” Bulliner lived George W. Sisney, one of the leading citizens of the county. He had served as captain in an Illinois regiment during the Civil War and had been elected sheriff in 1866. A contemporary characterized him as “a man of more than ordinary ability,” of “medium size and compactly built, dark complexion, a very passionate and fearless man, but high-toned, generous and open-hearted.” He had three grown sons, all “full of grit and fight.”

A year after the first Bulliner-Henderson fracas Sisney and one of the Bulliner boys had a lawsuit over a crop of oats. In court, Sisney won. Some months later the two men met to settle several business transactions. Their accounts differed. In the argument that followed Bulliner accused Sisney of swearing to a lie in the lawsuit of the previous year, whereupon Sisney knocked him down. Young Bulliner rounded up his father and two brothers and the four men, all armed, set out to redress the wrong. As they approached the Sisney house on the run, with “Old George” shouting: “Here we come, God damn you, to kill you!” Sisney, armed with a repeating rifle, left by the back door. When the Bulliners saw him running across an adjoining field they opened fire. Every few yards Sisney stopped and fired back. Although hit four times, he managed to reach the shelter of a big tree. His assailants, afraid to close in on him, called off the fight.

Later, all the participants were fined one hundred dollars each. Then Sisney brought a suit for damages against the Bulliners which they settled out of court. Henceforward, however, the Sisney family was in the Vendetta.

For almost two years the animosities these incidents aroused lay dormant. A series of brawls brought them to life, and led the large and pugnacious Crain family, whose members had lived in the county for two generations, into the feud on the side of the Bulliners. The first trouble came on Christmas Day,
1872, when several Crains and Sisneys met by chance in the general store at Carterville, two miles west of Crainville. Bantering talk led to a full-scale fight, which bystanders finally quelled. Several of the participants were arrested, and ordered to appear for trial before a justice of the peace.

At the trial the Crains turned out in force. So did the Sisneys and Hendersons, now their enemies, and the Bulliners, allies of the Crains by virtue of their feud with the other two families. What had been scheduled as a judicial proceeding turned into a small-sized riot, with several of the participants seriously injured. The State’s Attorney filed informations but failed to press the charges. Thus all went free.