Time of the Rangers: Texas Rangers: From 1900 to the Present - Softcover

Cox, Mike

Softcover

ISBN 10: 076532525X ISBN 13: 9780765325259

Publisher: Forge Books, 2010

Synopsis

Texas writer-historian Mike Cox explores the origin and rise of the famed Texas Rangers. Starting in 1821 with just a handful of men, the Rangers' first purpose was to keep settlers safe from the feared and gruesome Karankawa Indians, a cannibalistic tribe that wandered the Texas territory. As the influx of settlers grew, the attacks increased, and it became clear that a larger, better trained force was necessary.

Taking readers through the major social and political movements of the Texas territory and into its statehood, Cox shows how the Rangers were a defining force in the stabilization and the creation of Texas. From Stephen Austin in the early days through the Civil War, the first eighty years of the Texas Rangers were nothing less than phenomenal, and the efforts put forth in those days set the foundation for the Texas Rangers who keep Texas safe today.

About this title

About the Author:

MIKE COX, an elected member of the Texas Institute of Letters, began his writing career as a Texas newspaper reporter, then spent fifteen years as spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, which includes the Texas Rangers and later was Communications Manager for the Texas Department of Transportation.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

1

Heroes of Old"

THE RANGER FORCE, 1900—1910

Sitting in a smoky meeting room of the opulent Oriental Hotel, the former Texas Ranger listened as the mayor’s representative welcomed him and his fellow "Heroes of Old" to the thriving city of Dallas.

Four decades earlier, then only twenty years old, British-born Joseph Greaves Booth had helped protect the state from hostile Indians. Now, in the fall of 1900, Booth served as president of the Texas Rangers Association. Standing to address a hundred other men who had ridden for the Lone Star, the successful traveling salesman from Austin—also a veteran of the Confederate Army’s Eighth Texas Cavalry regiment—looked out at an assemblage of graybeards who had spent many a night on the ground with only a sweaty saddle for a pillow. Many of them stove up and hard of hearing, on this day the old Rangers crowded a six-story hotel touted as "the most elegant . . . west of the Mississippi," a half-million-dollar redbrick building at Commerce and Akard streets finished with Italian marble and mahogany and capped with an arabesque dome. If they were of a mind to, men who had washed their dusty faces in creeks muddied by the hooves of thirsty horses could soak their aching bones in a Turkish bath, afterward enjoying a good cigar and a jigger or two of whiskey in one of the Oriental’s several bars and dining rooms. But their greatest plea sure came in remembering their days as Rangers.

"Comrades, ladies and gentlemen," Booth began, looking toward the official greeter, "in behalf of the Texas Rangers, present and absent, living and dead, I desire to thank you for the welcome accorded us on this occasion. Of the old Texas Rangers but few are left. Time has done for them what the frontier savages failed to do through many years of bloody strife."

Seeing a young man from the Morning News scribbling away in the audience, Booth realized he spoke for posterity. He wanted a later generation to better understand the Rangers and what they did for Texas. His fellow old-timers already knew.

"The old Texas Rangers were not marauders or ruffians," he continued. "They were civilized, and in many cases highly educated, pioneers who were engaged in carving out the magnificent state of which we are all so proud, wresting her princely domain from bloodthirsty savages. Many of them were graduates of the best universities, and in intellect and integrity . . . not inferior to the best men left in the states from whence they came."

The Rangers of Booth’s youth may not have been ruffians, but their enemies had known them as tenacious fighters. "They were always ready at any hour," Booth went on, "day or night, when warned by a courier to mount and ride to the place of rendezvous, in rain or shine, in the face of the blue norther, or under a blazing sun, and their motto was, ‘No sleep until we catch the rascally redskins.’ "

When Rangers took up a trail, he said, they armed themselves with "the best weapons the times afforded." For sustenance, they carried a bag of parched meal mixed with brown sugar and spice, strips of jerked meat, and a bottle-gourd of water tied on the horn of their saddle. Once they caught up with Indians, "there was no fighting at long range. Hostilities began whenever the white of the enemy’s eye could be seen, and much of it was hand to hand."

Booth listed "a few of the historic names of old Texas Rangers," starting with his old lieutenant Ed Burleson Jr. All these years later, Booth lamented, only a few survived.

Then he said something that must have stuck in the craw of many of the former Rangers, not to mention those still in service to the state: "The necessity that gave birth to these heroic bands has disappeared with the men who composed them. The Texas Rangers of today have different duties to perform, which we believe can be more acceptably performed by the peace officers elected by the people."

Booth did allow that "along the upper Rio Grande a special police force may be required to protect the frontier against Mexican outlaws, but not elsewhere in the state."

No matter what seemed heresy to many, the members of the three-year-old association—an organization first envisioned by the late Ranger captain John Salmon "Rip" Ford—went on to reelect Booth as their leader, accept their historian’s resignation, rename themselves the Texas Rangers’ Battalion, and set Fort Worth as their next meeting place. Booth adjourned the proceedings and the old Rangers dispersed to mingle in the Oriental’s lobbies for the rest of the morning, telling stories of "their adventure during their services on the border." That afternoon, they took the streetcars to the State Fair grounds, "saw the sights and attended the races."1

" ‘RANGERS’ HAVE NO AUTHORITY . . ."

At the beginning of the twentieth century, many other Texans also questioned a continuing need for the Rangers. Even the force’s legal standing had come under attack.

The Rangers’ latest problem centered on one of their own—A. L. (Lou) Saxon, a private in Captain William J. McDonald’s company. After arresting some fence cutters during a stockman–farmer feud in Hall County the year before, Saxon had been charged with false imprisonment. Further, local citizens petitioned Governor Joseph D. Sayers to withdraw the Rangers from their county, which he did.

Company B moved from the Panhandle to a trouble spot at Athens in East Texas and then on to Orange, a rough lumber town on the Sabine River in the southeast corner of the state. Local officials, unable to cope with a wave of violence fostered by an ugly combination of partisan politics, labor issues, and racism, had petitioned the state for Rangers. In September 1899, the company made twenty-one arrests in Orange and would have effected one more if an offender had not pulled a knife on Private T. L. Fuller. In self-defense the Ranger shot and killed Oscar Poole, son of the Orange County judge. Fuller faced no charge in connection with the clearly justified homicide, but a grand jury indicted him along with Ranger Saxon for false imprisonment. Saxon had been accused of using the barrel of his six-shooter on the heads of two drunks he took into custody. A local prosecutor based his case on his interpretation that the 1874 statute creating the Frontier Battalion, with which Fuller and Saxon served, only gave officers the power of arrest. Because Fuller and Saxon ranked as privates, the prosecutor contended that the arrests made by the Rangers had been illegal. McDonald and his Rangers moved on to their next assignment, the misdemeanor cases against two of his men languishing on the docket in Orange. But state officials found the argument that Ranger privates could not make lawful arrests troubling.

Responding to a request for a formal opinion on the matter, Attorney General Thomas S. Smith ruled on May 26, 1900, that only the battalion’s commissioned officers had full police powers: "Non-commissioned officers and privates . . . referred to as ‘Rangers’ have no authority . . . to execute criminal process or make arrests."2 At the time, the battalion consisted of four companies. Suddenly, only four men—the company captains—had the power to make arrests or serve court papers.

Quickly reacting to the attorney general’s letter-of-the-law-versus-spirit-of-the-law opinion, which in effect put the Rangers out of action, Adjutant General Thomas Scurry on June 1 reorganized the Rangers into six companies. Four companies would be made up of a captain, a first lieutenant, a second lieutenant, and three privates. The other two companies would consist of one first lieutenant, one second lieutenant, and two privates. Each company would have to honorably discharge one private. Arrests had to be made by a commissioned officer, but privates could assist.

In addition, Scurry issued honorable discharges to all special Rangers, ordering them to return their warrants of authority to his office. "The governor is much pleased with the efficient service heretofore rendered by the special rangers, and regrets the necessity of this order," he said.3 Within a month, Texas had a hundred fewer men it could call on for law enforcement assistance.

In an attempt to further improve the force’s image, Scurry also stressed the importance of good conduct on the part of Rangers:

Company commanders will instruct their men to keep within the bounds of discretion and the law under all circumstances, and should there be any men now in the service who make unreasonable display of authority or use abusive language to or unnecessarily harsh treatment of those with whom they come in contact in the line of duty, or who are not courageous, discreet, honest or of temperate habits, they will be promptly discharged.

Next, with a stroke of Scurry’s pen, six privates appeared on the muster rolls as first lieutenants, with five men upgraded to second lieutenants. The promotions came with one catch: The first lieutenants had to sign an agreement that they were willing to be paid the same as sergeants, $50 a month, and the second lieutenants had to settle for $30 a month, the pay they had drawn as privates. One of the men honored with a new title but no raise was Second Lieutenant (nee Private) Fuller.4

Annoying as the Rangers found the circumstances behind the reorganization, the Adjutant General’s Department and the rest of the state’s government soon faced a much greater problem. On September 8, a powerful hurricane swept over Galveston, the state’s largest city. The resulting tidal surge claimed as many as eight thousand lives, the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history. Scurry sent most of the state’s militia to the devastated island city, but with the Rangers so thinly stretched he assigned only two men to prevent looting.5

Captain McDonald, Lieutenant Fuller, and Private Saxon returned to Orange on Oc...

About this edition

• Publisher: Forge Books
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 076532525X
• ISBN 13: 9780765325259
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 512