Fugitivism by Bolton S. Charles;

Author:Bolton, S. Charles; [Bolton, S. Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781610756693
Publisher: Chicago Distribution Center (CDC Presses)

What a picture for civilized community? Is there no fault in the police of Arkansas? . . . We are aware of it being a wild uninviting portion of the territory, remote from executive control. But this is not reason why [a posse or vigilante group] should not ferret out and bring to condign punishment those whose hands are raised against the property and lives of every honest man. We even hear of threats made by them to burn our town for the part our citizens took a year ago.20

The criminal activity centered in eastern Arkansas set the stage for A History of the Detection, Conviction, Life and Designs of John A. Murel, the Great Western Land Pirate, which was published in Cincinnati in March 1835 and quickly reprinted in Athens, Tennessee. The title page said the book was written by Augustus Q. Walton, but that was a pseudonym used by Virgil Stewart, who played a leading role in the story that it told. John A.’s last name was actually Murrell not Murel. He was born in Virginia and moved with his parents to Williams County, Tennessee, where he grew up with four sisters and three brothers, of whom all the males became involved in illegal activities including disturbing the peace, stealing horses and slaves, and counterfeiting. In 1823 at the age of seventeen, John was charged with horse stealing. He fled to avoid a trial date, was caught and arrested, broke out of jail, was captured again, tried and convicted in 1826, and served twelve months in prison. A few years later he was living as a landless farmer, along with his wife, at least one child, and other members of the Murrell extended family, near the small town of Denmark, which was just south of Jackson, Tennessee, and about fifty miles east of Randolph.

The Great Western Land Pirate opened in August 1833 when a planter named Long living near the Murrells discovered that three of his slaves were missing. A few days later one of them was captured by Long’s overseer when the fugitive returned to pick up some clothes, and he confessed that along with the other two he had been staying near the Murrell homestead and all of them were being fed by John. Long gathered some men, went to the place, and captured Murrell when he showed up with a basketful of food. Murrell’s story was that he was merely keeping the runaways from leaving until he could inform Long of where they were. Neither Long nor anyone else believed that, but a jury convicted Murrell of harboring rather than stealing because there was no way to prove the more serious charge. When Murrell was unable to pay the fine, however, the judge gave him the unknown-to-law but perhaps appropriate sentence of serving Long without pay for five years. Murrell appealed and was still free nine months later, when on January 18, 1834, John Henning, a Methodist minister, found two of his slaves missing and concluded that Murrell had stolen them, or perhaps arranged for someone else to do it.

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