[will] live through all time, or die by suicide.”
In the early decades of the nineteenth century, so-called banditti ruled several Illinois counties, in some cases locked in perpetual wars with citizen militias, vigilantes, or self-appointed “regulators,” who took it upon themselves to enforce the law. Property disputes over inadequately surveyed claims often ended in violence or lynchings, or both. The state’s most famous banditti were the Driscolls, a family of notorious horse thieves and murderers who terrorized Ogle County, north of Nauvoo, for most of 1841. The governor urged local citizens to bring the Driscoll gang to heel. However, the regulators’ first captain resigned when his grist mill was burned to the ground, and his horse tortured and killed. The Driscolls shot his successor after Sunday church services, in front of his wife and children. Finally, a posse of three hundred armed citizens showed up at the Driscolls’ farm and arrested the paterfamilias and two of his four outlaw sons. It was far from clear that the old man and the two sons had carried out the Sunday shooting, but the time had long passed for legal niceties. A quick, al fresco trial ensued. The county sheriff requested custody of the accused but was ignored.
One son, Pierce, walked free. Father John and his son William were condemned to hang. “We would rather be shot,” John Driscoll said. Honoring his request, the one-hundred-odd regulators present divided themselves into two massive firing squads. After shooting the father, who proclaimed his innocence, they showed William the body. “Would you like to confess now?” the mob asked. William admitted that he had murdered several men, albeit not the men he had been convicted of killing. He followed his father to the grave. The Driscolls “were fired upon by the whole company present, that there might be none who could be legal witnesses of the bloody deed,” wrote Thomas Ford, who noted that “these terrible measures put an end to the ascendancy of rogues in Ogle county.”
Eventually, the state tried a hundred men for the Driscoll murders. They were all acquitted, thanks to a clever maneuver by their defense attorney. The lawyer ensured that everyone present at the group execution was indicted for the murders. As defendants, they weren’t required to testify against themselves, and the only other eyewitnesses to the killings were dead. In his state history, Ford never mentioned that he was the complaisant judge who presided over the mass acquittal of the vigilantes.
UPON ARRIVING IN NAUVOO, THE MORMONS’ FIRST ORDER OF business was to seek a city charter from the state legislature. Partly, they wanted to protect themselves; the Saints sought to create a legally organized militia, to supplant the Danite guerilla force. To ensure the future of their nascent city-state, the Mormons wanted to legitimize their way of life in Illinois.
The result, approved by acclamation in 1840 by a legislature that included the young Lincoln (his future rival, the brash attorney Stephen Douglas, was already Illinois’s secretary of state), was the Nauvoo Charter, soon to become a controversial document. But it wasn’t controversial at the time. State senator Sidney Little, who represented neighboring McDonough County, duly noted the “extraordinary militia clause,” although he deemed it “harmless.” By the end of 1840, Nauvoo had about 2,400 new residents, and its own mini-constitution that enabled Joseph Smith to regulate Mormon life pretty much as he pleased.
The charter had three primary provisions. First, it created the Nauvoo Legion. Whereas most militias assembled their citizen soldiers from counties, or groups of counties, Nauvoo was the rare town to have its own fighting force. The charter explained that the Legion would operate independently of other militias, which reported to the governor as commander in chief. The Legion was a local police force, “at the disposal of the
In the early decades of the nineteenth century, so-called banditti ruled several Illinois counties, in some cases locked in perpetual wars with citizen militias, vigilantes, or self-appointed “regulators,” who took it upon themselves to enforce the law. Property disputes over inadequately surveyed claims often ended in violence or lynchings, or both. The state’s most famous banditti were the Driscolls, a family of notorious horse thieves and murderers who terrorized Ogle County, north of Nauvoo, for most of 1841. The governor urged local citizens to bring the Driscoll gang to heel. However, the regulators’ first captain resigned when his grist mill was burned to the ground, and his horse tortured and killed. The Driscolls shot his successor after Sunday church services, in front of his wife and children. Finally, a posse of three hundred armed citizens showed up at the Driscolls’ farm and arrested the paterfamilias and two of his four outlaw sons. It was far from clear that the old man and the two sons had carried out the Sunday shooting, but the time had long passed for legal niceties. A quick, al fresco trial ensued. The county sheriff requested custody of the accused but was ignored.
One son, Pierce, walked free. Father John and his son William were condemned to hang. “We would rather be shot,” John Driscoll said. Honoring his request, the one-hundred-odd regulators present divided themselves into two massive firing squads. After shooting the father, who proclaimed his innocence, they showed William the body. “Would you like to confess now?” the mob asked. William admitted that he had murdered several men, albeit not the men he had been convicted of killing. He followed his father to the grave. The Driscolls “were fired upon by the whole company present, that there might be none who could be legal witnesses of the bloody deed,” wrote Thomas Ford, who noted that “these terrible measures put an end to the ascendancy of rogues in Ogle county.”
Eventually, the state tried a hundred men for the Driscoll murders. They were all acquitted, thanks to a clever maneuver by their defense attorney. The lawyer ensured that everyone present at the group execution was indicted for the murders. As defendants, they weren’t required to testify against themselves, and the only other eyewitnesses to the killings were dead. In his state history, Ford never mentioned that he was the complaisant judge who presided over the mass acquittal of the vigilantes.
UPON ARRIVING IN NAUVOO, THE MORMONS’ FIRST ORDER OF business was to seek a city charter from the state legislature. Partly, they wanted to protect themselves; the Saints sought to create a legally organized militia, to supplant the Danite guerilla force. To ensure the future of their nascent city-state, the Mormons wanted to legitimize their way of life in Illinois.
The result, approved by acclamation in 1840 by a legislature that included the young Lincoln (his future rival, the brash attorney Stephen Douglas, was already Illinois’s secretary of state), was the Nauvoo Charter, soon to become a controversial document. But it wasn’t controversial at the time. State senator Sidney Little, who represented neighboring McDonough County, duly noted the “extraordinary militia clause,” although he deemed it “harmless.” By the end of 1840, Nauvoo had about 2,400 new residents, and its own mini-constitution that enabled Joseph Smith to regulate Mormon life pretty much as he pleased.
The charter had three primary provisions. First, it created the Nauvoo Legion. Whereas most militias assembled their citizen soldiers from counties, or groups of counties, Nauvoo was the rare town to have its own fighting force. The charter explained that the Legion would operate independently of other militias, which reported to the governor as commander in chief. The Legion was a local police force, “at the disposal of the
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