The Johnson County War
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Authors
Clifford, Mark R.
Issue Date
1990
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
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Abstract
On the 13th of April, 1892, an intervention by the U.S. cavalry was needed to halt large-scale, vigilante hostilities that had erupted in Johnson County. Wyoming. The so-called "Johnson County War" was planned and led by a coalition of Wyoming's biggest cattlemen, and accompanied by a mercenary platoon of gunslingers recruited from Texas. There has even been a great deal of speculation that some, or even all, of the state's most prominent politicians were supportive, or at least knowledgeable, of the plot in advance. This paper will not reopen the investigation of the blow-by-blow events of the fateful week. Rather it is intended to look at the event in a broader context, tracing the development of a crisis situation before it exploded in the infamous "Invasion." I will trace the development of the cattle industry in Wyoming to note the precedents and conditions which were established before the invasion. I will attempt to show that Wyoming, though officially a state after 1890 with firmly established institutions of government and law, was spiritually and demographically still a semi-wild frontier at the time of the Invasion. The Johnson County War was rooted in the state's inability to plan and carry out a system of land and livestock management that was universally accepted and obeyed. The territory in question had already, as of 1890, been fully incorporated as one of the United States of America, and thus should have been fully equipped with a system of judicial and administrative channels for the means for the enforcement of law and order by legal procedures--the peaceful resolution of disputes. However, perceived inequalities of the laws and the gaping holes in its enforcement led to a blatant disregard for legality, as evidenced by an endemic practice of cattle rustling and occasional subsequent outbreaks of vigilante punishment. We will find that at the heart of the conflict was a broad based and deeply felt resentment toward the powerful Wyoming Stock Growers Association. This paper will attempt to explain how the leadership circle of the WSGA also formed a virtual oligarchy in Wyoming's government, and attempted to use that political authority to consolidate Wyoming's cattle industry into their own personal oligopoly. I will attempt to compare and contrast the circumstances in Wyoming to those which were present of the nation at large, and to describe how the Johnson County War was a manifestation of the Gilded Age West. There are some considerable similarities to the class conflicts which were occurring in other parts of the country at the time. But some unique aspects of the Wyoming situation caused different conflicts, or caused similar conflicts to be resolved in a different manner than they were in neighboring states like Montana and Colorado.
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ii, 108 p.
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