American Endurance by Richard A. Serrano

Author:Richard A. Serrano [Serrano, Richard A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-58834-576-9
Publisher: Smithsonian
Published: 2016-10-04T04:00:00+00:00

More trouble, however, lay ahead, the kind that could land the cowboys in a county jail somewhere between the high grasses of western Nebraska and the tall towers of Chicago. At the state capitol in Lincoln, the stack of letters to Governor Lorenzo Crounse continued to pile up, demanding that he call back the cowboys even after Chadron had defied the critics and launched the race.

The latest demand came from Miriam Baird Buck, an animal rights advocate and influential force in the emerging women’s suffrage movement. From her home office in tiny Bellwood, Nebraska, she had been busy organizing county committees to push for women’s rights and, in a separate effort, to reverse her state’s image as a lawless, boisterous frontier lagging behind the coming modern times.

“Some of the humane ladies of Nebraska have asked me to petition your Excellency, begging that you use your influence to discourage the ‘Cow Boy Race’ which threatens to disgrace our state,” she wrote to Governor Crounse. “I am very glad to do this in behalf of those to whom so much is denied—the poor horses that can neither share the sport (?) nor the prizes.… The poor animals we have always with us, and those in a position to show mercy will I sincerely believe receive the thanks of all enlightened citizens, whatever a few ignorant, misguided boys or men may think. Even they are said to be appreciative of the principles of justice, but doubtless they have so long been familiar with cruelty to the lower order among those of this vocation that their sense of right in such directions is dulled.”

She ended her missive to the governor: “Hoping to learn that this barbarous treatment of man’s noble friend is not to be allowed.”

Governor Crounse did not stop the cowboys.

In Des Moines, Iowa, Governor Horace Boies telegraphed county sheriffs and granted them legal authority to arrest any cowboy overworking his horse. Be on the lookout for anyone violating state law by overriding their animals, he warned. “With this thought in your minds you will be able to judge your duty.”

And on the first day of the great race, the reform governor of Illinois, John Peter Altgeld, was preparing to pardon three surviving anarchists involved in the Haymarket Square dynamite bombing. He also had just condemned the lynching of Samuel J. Bush, a black man accused of assaulting a white woman. Twenty-five vigilantes had hung Bush naked, then dragged him around the courthouse square in Decatur, the first home in Illinois of Abraham Lincoln. Now Altgeld was confronted with the cowboy race, headed directly to his state. Wasting little time, he announced he was siding with the animal rights advocates. He warned that any rough-and-tumble cowboys had better not breach the Mississippi River into Illinois wielding an overlathered whip or a bloodied spur. Fond of horses himself, Altgeld did not want the kind of brutality and embarrassment seen in the European race a year ago.

In a signed and formal statewide directive from his

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