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THE CIVIL WAR IN
MONTANA
In
1916, the Daughters of the Army of the Confederacy erected a
beautiful stone fountain in the Women's Park, directly across from
the Civic Center in Helena Montana. This is the furthest north
monument to the Confederate Army. Montana is about as far north as a
state can get; so how did this come to be? The answer might surprise
you.
In 1863, while the Civil War was
raging in the states, on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains in
(what was then) Idaho Territory, gold was discovered in a creek by a
camp in Alder Gulch. It was the largest placer gold deposit ever
discovered; and within a few days, their campsite became Varina,
Idaho Territory, and later, Virginia City, Montana Territory.
While the majority of emigrants coming north from California and
from Salt Lake City were mainly loyal to the Confederacy, nearly all
of them simply wanted to forget what was happening back in the
States. Often on the streets of the towns and in the wagon
trains fights would break out. They were usually concerning
secessionist issues and often were dropped as quickly as they began.
The loyalty of the people in Idaho Territory was definitely Democrat
and secessionist. For the Republican Administration back in
Washington, the preservation of this incredibly strategic gold for the Union
cause was essential. In September of that year
Sidney Edgerton, arrived in Bannock, Idaho. He was the person
Washington sent to insure that the gold of Virginia City would support the cause
of Abraham Lincoln. ( Edgerton was later appointed Governor of the Montana
Territory.)
Most of the
inhabitants were in Virginia City for "six weeks", the mythical time
which it would take them to make their fortune and move on.
Motivated by "gold fever" and survival, they worked harder than one
can imagine, and under the worst of conditions. The work was hard
and often unrewarding, but they managed to accumulate little leather
bags (called "pokes") filled with gold. Whatever they bought,
from food to mining equipment, the merchant took a heavy percentage
of their gold. Then there were the thieves who
managed to steal from the unwary, and the robber and murderer who
would bushwhack the traveler with his "six week's" take. Much of the
miners' gold ended up in the hands of merchants, prostitutes and robbers.
This led to constant resentment and frequent fights, between the
miners and the merchants. The free hand of the merchants
to charge exorbitant prices for food and supplies fueled the
resentment. In 1865 the merchants raised the price of flour from
$27 to $150 per hundred pounds. The constant flow of gold from
the hard working miners to the merchants, the gamblers, the banker,
the barkeep, the killer, the robber and the whore kept alive a
seething level of animosity. The anger and resentment
hovered , just waiting for an act of extreme violence such as a
beating, shooting a Chinaman's back or a lynching, to express itself
with widespread community violence. The
experience of the miners in watching their gold end up in the merchants
coffers seemed to them to mirror what they had previously known. They viewed the
war as being similarly oppressive. The rich Northerner could buy out
of the army; while in the South, farmers who did not own slaves were forced to fight and die
while many wealthy slave owners were exempt and stayed home away
from the battle savagery.
Most of the miners
had had experience with the war and thought it "the rich man's
war and the poor man's fight". The Federals often had to rely upon a
draft. And the draft had an "out" if you had the money. For
$300 a person whose number came up could buy out of serving. Since
$300 was a good laborer's annual salary, a man could support his
family for a year by being drafted It was by this means
that large numbers of relatively wealthy men emigrated to
Virginia City with wagon loads of supplies to sell to the miners at
exorbitant prices. Among the many wealthy men who
emigrated to Bannock with wagons of goods to sell, was a man
called Paris Pfouts. He left his family in
Missouri so that his family would not have
to suffer as a result of his outspoken support of the Confederate
cause. He traveled to Virginia City through Salt Lake City, was
stopped by the Union Army and then permitted to travel on after
signing a statement of loyalty to the Union. He was perceived as a
wealthy man and not a draft dodger. Such men did not have to serve
in the army....after all, even Abraham Lincoln paid a substitute to fight in the army in his place.
Thousand of dollars were printed by both the
Union and the Confederate governments. These pieces of paper had no
backing at all. At the end of the Civil War, the paper money of the
South was notoriously worthless, while the Union greenbacks had lost
little of their face value. The gold from Virginia City, Montana
that persistently flowed into the economy and into the coffers of the
Union government, assured the continued value of the greenbacks and
their acceptance by industrialists in the North and abroad. The flow
of gold mined in
Montana into the economy of the North, and the prevention of that
flow of gold into the economy of the South became of strategic
concern to the President Lincoln and the Union. The gold from Virginia City had a pivotal effect on the
economics of the North and its victory. It has been said that
"Virginia City gold won the Civil War for the North".
Strategically, it
was important to increase the Union minority in the mountain
northwest. The Rebel population far outnumbered those with Union
allegiance in many areas, particularly in Virginia City and Bannock. To protect
the gold, loyal emigrants were needed, as well as loyal authorities
for the territories. A territory, of course, was not in the Union.
It was a Federally owned political unit. It could not secede, but
the population could cause problems. A few Confederate units
aimlessly roamed west of the Mississippi, and others were located in
the southwest; but there were almost no armed forces of either side in
the remote and valuable northern regions. About the only armed units
available were the Confederate interests that secretly diverted Montana gold to the
South and the contingents of fifty or so troops who escorted
Northern emigrants to the gold fields. However, the solid loyalty of
the population to the South was a problem for the North because of
the threat to the Union gold supply. The secessionist population
certainly was a problem for the Union administrators. The population
was predominantly secessionist and very rebellious about it. They
had very little taste for the war "back in the States". But the
war had a definite taste for them. That war and both the Union and
the Confederacy depended to a very large extent upon the gold that
flowed east from Virginia City. The Civil War that was fought in Montana was a
vital part of the whole war effort.
It is well known that a main
reason for the defeat of the Confederacy was its lack of resources.
It certainly had the finest of officers, especially generals. The
blockade of the Confederate States by the Union was partially
effective. The soft slave-based agricultural economy of the South
and the general lack of manufacturing capacity and skill contributed
greatly to the defeat of the South. However, the most powerful force
in the demise of the Confederate military capacity was the lack of
liquid wealth. For both sides the availability of silver and gold
was universally essential for the war economies. Attempts were made
to ship precious metals from Virginia City, Nevada, to the
Confederacy. While, they were usually thwarted, a plan to hold these
resources for the Union cause was essential. This
was a difficult objective, considering the overwhelming dominance of
Confederate sympathizers. The
secessionist majority would often let their anger out. They would
hoist a Rebel flag and dare anyone to interfere. They were angered
by the consistent Union point of view expressed publicly by local newspapers, and
they delighted in their own stories of Union
defeats. Feelings that always ran high erupted in violence.
Added to this was the problem with "law and order".
The United States Congress was concerned with waging the war; and
often neglected to enact laws
for the territories. There were times when there simply was no law
in Idaho and Montana Territories. That means that while the
population might
have moral objections, you were free to
murder, rob or burn another's house down with impunity. And even
when there were laws prohibiting it,
violence and abuse was rampant. Violence was a part of everyday life in Bannock and Virginia
City. Shootings occurred regularly.
A Captain James Liberty Fisk brought
two gold nuggets from Alder Gulch to President Lincoln; and
encouraged him to import emigrants to control the unruly Rebels.
He had been the leader of a troop of Union soldiers who protected a
group of emigrants traveling through Indian territory to the gold fields. The
Congress acted; they set aside a significant sum to protect
emigrants who wished to go from St. Paul to Virginia City. A major
part of the ensuing wagon trains consisted of Republican
professionals and merchants. They were, of course, exempt from conscription
because they had employed substitute or otherwise bought themselves
out of battle. Their arrival in Idaho Territory began to make a
notable difference in the management of the disruptive miners and
rebellious secessionists.
A committee of these men (Paris Pfouts, Nick Wall, Wilbur F.
Sanders, Alvin V. Brookie and John Nye) held a secret meeting and
formed a Vigilance Committee modeled on those formed in
California during the '49 gold rush. All swore to secrecy. After
three or four such meetings the Committee grew to about fifty
members. By ten days the organization had extended to over a
thousand members from an extensive area of the mining country. Paris Pfouts wrote up an oath wherein each man had to swear
to
remain silent on pain of death. He selected an executive Committee
which then conducted investigations of wrong doing. They began to
sentence men to death and then to strangle them. Their first actions
were not entirely popular. Pfouts and other members were
individually threatened. They continued to create enemies for
themselves until the threat of their lynching gave the Vigilantes
the power to simply order their critics out of town.
The composition of the
Vigilance Committee was almost entirely Republican Masons from the
North; and their victims were almost entirely Democrat secessionists who
were non-Masons from the South. Paris Pfouts is a good example of
the "exception". He was an outspoken secessionist and a Democrat,
who became a part of the Union strategy. His belief in his
Executive Committee as honest fellow Masons caused him to condone
any and all of their actions. Thus Paris Pfouts. a secessionist, presided
over one of the Union's most important war efforts- that of
preserving the vital flow of gold for the Union cause. A good
example of what transpired under his leadership involved a Deputy Sheriff, Jack Gallagher.
He was brought before Pfouts to be
sentenced to death. Pfouts assumed that a trial had been held and
that he was found guilty. In fact, there was not a shred of evidence
against this good man. While he had personally offended a Vigilante,
he was not even on "the list" of people to be hit. Gallagher was
strangled and struggled in agony while Paris Pfouts remained reliably naive.
A strategy utilizing terror was
initiated.. Paris Pfouts had an able strong arm in the person
of X. Beidler. His cruelty could be relied upon to avoid breaking
the necks of the victims so as to insure that the strangulation was
slow and agonizing. He had an ambitious field leader, Sergeant James
Williams, who pursued those whom the Vigilance Committee or he
himself labeled "Villains". To justify their horribly painful lynching, the Vigilance Committee
stated that the problem
the area was having was the result of a "secret society of road
agents". It is now recognized by many authorities, that
Vigilance Committee members spied out gold shipments and then passed the word to the agents
out of town who would rob the stage, wagon or traveler. Since Henry
Plummer had personal conflicts with some of the Vigilantes and was a
Democrat, he was
named the secret leader of the road agents. The Vigilantes represented their
actions as necessary punishment for robbers and murderers bound
into this dangerous secret society. The result was a wave of terror
among all. Everyone feared they might be accused; and it
resulted in a greater support for the Vigilante
activities that followed.
The victims were not always who the
Vigilantes said they were. A variety of individuals were involved in
the Vigilance Committee for several different purposes; and their
motives ranged from personal enmity and vengeance, to political adversity,
racism, elimination of a danger to the community and punishment for
robbery or murder. Some of the victims were political enemies of the "solid
citizens", i.e. the Republican merchants, bankers and lawyers. One was
the wrong victim. Boone Helm, an escaped murderer from the East, one
of the five victims who were strangled in the hangman's building in
January, 1864, cried out, "Hooray for Jeff Davis" and leapt off his
box to his death. That was hardly the exit line of a road agent.
Another victim was a popular rowdy who couldn't behave. The deputy,
Jack Gallagher, was not on the "list" of bad men, and there was
absolutely no evidence against him. However, some, like Helm, were
actually robbers and murderers in other locations. One thing is
clear. There was not an organized secret society of road agents
controlled by the sheriff. That myth was created and, together with
the terror of the secrecy of the Vigilance Committee and the agony
of strangulation, the myth effectively worked to galvanize the
citizens in support of the Vigilante actions.
It was an effective way to fight the Civil War
in Montana Territory. A new
degree of safety prevailed. The secessionist cause was very quiet
and the Territory with its remarkable and vital flow of gold was
secure for Abraham Lincoln. The result was the almost absolute control of the community by the Vigilantes. Only
outsiders beyond their reach,
were able to speak out against the Vigilantes. Yet when the votes
cast in secret in local elections were counted, the Democrats and secessionists
always won.
Although it was Northerners killing Southerners and Republicans
killing Democrats for the most part, the leader of the Vigilante's, Paris Pfouts
,was a southern
Democrat and a secessionist. He was naive and believed
in the veracity of his
fellow Vigilante's. He was deceived and used by them. There was no
trial and no evidence against many of the Vigilantes' victims. Many of the Vigilante actions were worse than
anything the victims were accused of. Over time, the
Vigilantes themselves became worried about what they had done and
how they had done it.
But the secessionists had
their day. The South lost the gold but, in many respects, actually won the war in Montana.
The rebels continued to express that victory for many years, often
at their own great cost. Citizens of Virginia City celebrated the
assassination of President Lincoln. The secessionists had the
vote, while the Republican Party ruled through the appointed
officers of Montana Territory. All over Montana the Rebels
outnumbered and outvoted the Northern Republicans on all kinds of
issues.
Paris Pfouts, mayor
of Virginia City, left town as he came to realize that his fellow
Masons had deceived him in his role as "Chief" of the Vigilantes.
The territorial Governor, Sidney Edgerton, left Montana
Territory in frustration as the secessionists opposed his every
move. Over all, the Rebel opposition in Montana led to the
postponement of statehood for several years. In 1916, the
Daughters of the Army of the Confederacy erected a beautiful stone
fountain in the Women's Park, directly across from the Civic Center
in Helena Montana. This is the furthest north monument to the
Confederate Army. With this, the Civil War in Montana came to an
end.
For a more extensive account of the Civil War in Montana, see the
following web site:
http://www.newpsych.org/virginia/cwmt3.htm
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