Bloody Williamson by Paul M. Angle

Author:Paul M. Angle [Angle, Paul M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8041-5277-8
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Downtown Herrin, Scene of the Klan War

1. CATHOLIC CHURCH

2. CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL

3. PARISH HOUSE

4. SMITH GARAGE

5. LIBERTY HOTEL

6. EUROPEAN HOTEL

7. CITY HALL AND JAIL

8. LY-MAR HOTEL

9. ROME CLUB

10. JEFFERSON HOTEL

11. MASONIC TEMPLE

12. BAPTIST CHURCH

13. HERRIN HOSPITAL

14. CHRISTIAN CHURCH

15. METHODIST CHURCH

Klansmen swore out warrants charging Galligan, Ora Thomas, C. E. Anderson, mayor of Herrin, and several others with the murder of Cagle. When word came that Thomas and Anderson were at the hospital with Layman, Young, followed by several hundred Klansmen, went after them. Finding the door locked, Young shouted a demand for admission. Dr. J. T. Black, the proprietor, refused to admit him. Young’s followers pounded on the door and, when it held fast, fired into the panels.

As Dr. Black ran upstairs the firing became general. Windowpanes, shattered by bullets, crashed to the floor. Patients screamed. Those who could move slipped to the relative safety of the floor; the others were lifted from their beds by the doctor, the nurses, and visitors.

In an adjoining building that served as an annex to the hospital four men ordered the frightened employees, all women, into the basement. One of them said: “We’re going to blow the hospital to hell and kill everybody we can get our hands on.” Another told the women: “We don’t want Layman; we want Ora Thomas.”

The firing continued. Occasionally one of the men inside the building—the little group of those who had brought in John Layman or had come to inquire about him during the evening—risked his life by crawling to a window and firing a clip into the darkness, but that was too hazardous to attempt very often.

About three a.m. the first troops arrived. Twenty men from the Carbondale company under Major Robert W. Davis, with rifles loaded and bayonets fixed, walked into the midst of the attacking mob and ordered its members to disperse. Although they outnumbered the guardsmen twenty-five to one, they slunk away.

When dawn broke, and it became light enough to survey the damage, the floors of the hospital were found to be covered with broken glass, and bullet marks pitted every wall facing an outside window. Miraculously, not a single person, inside the hospital or out of it, had been wounded.§

On Saturday morning Herrin discovered that despite the presence of troops it was in the hands of the Klan. Armed Klansmen, wearing crude stars cut from tin, patrolled the streets and kept crowds from forming, while in the city hall S. Glenn Young, calling himself acting chief of police, heard the reports of men he had sworn in as deputy policemen, directed that arrests be made, and ordered prisoners to jail. A sentry stood at the door of the office he had pre-empted, and no one who could not give the Klan password was admitted.

At Young’s direction Mayor Anderson was arrested, charged with murdering Cagle, and thrown in jail. Galligan, in Carbondale on Saturday morning, was arrested on the same charge and held there until Klansmen from Herrin called for him. In the city

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