The Sutton-Taylor Feud: The Deadliest Blood Feud in Texas

Introduction: The Sutton-Taylor Feud

 introduction The Sutton-Taylor Feud B ill Sutton stepped down from the hack first, and then helped his pregnant wife Laura, holding her arm gently . She was now in her early months, strong, smiling, and confident, but to loving husband Bill she was delicate and fragile, and he was more than ordinarily concerned about her. Good friend Gabe Slaughter, fellow cattleman and friend John N. Keeran, and Ed McDonough also descended from the conveyance , glad to have their feet back on the ground. Then the group walked together up the gangplank. Before them in Lavaca Bay, the steamer Clinton gently rocked in the waters. Bill Sutton had grown weary of always watching his back trail; he was tired of being a target for the Taylors and their friends. Too many men had been shot down or strung up to dangle on a tree limb until death stopped their struggles. Brother Jim Sutton had already left the country, maybe even had already forgotten about the violence of the feud with the Taylors. Bill now wondered why he had not left as well. With Laura four months pregnant, he now had no real reason not to leave. A trip from Indianola to New Orleans, up the river and then another leg across Missouri to Kansas City would be what he needed to get his mind off the feud. As a cattleman, he had already hired good men to drive his herds up the trail overland. He would meet them in Kansas, settle accounts, and possibly consider remaining there away from  The Sutton-Taylor Feud the Texas troubles. Life was good. Laura was radiant, and their first child was less than five months away. Would it be a girl or a boy? But in spite of his careful planning for Laura, his friends, and his herds, there were others who intended to destroy the idyllic dream. Jim Taylor and his friends wanted Bill Sutton dead, and on this day, the eleventh of March 874, at Indianola, Texas, their dream was about to come true. Jim Taylor, with cousin Bill Taylor, now stalked up the same Clinton gangplank and approached the Sutton group. Their pistols were already in their hands, cocked, and ready to fire. Moments later, the smoke had wafted away and the echoes of the gunshots were no longer heard. But Laura Sutton’s screams still rang loudly over the rippling waters of Lavaca Bay. o The double killing of William E. Sutton and Gabriel Webster Slaughter on the deck of the steamer Clinton on March , 874, in front of numerous witnesses including Mrs. Sutton, was the apex of the Sutton-Taylor blood feud. The years of bloodshed beginning in the late 860s reached what now could be the terminating factor: the death of William E. Sutton. He had been the target of several assassination attempts, and with his body growing cold the Taylors believed themselves the victors. Jim Taylor had achieved his goal of slaying the man he held responsible for the death of his father and other kinfolk, and no doubt he felt that blood had answered blood. After all, the family motto of “Who sheds a Taylor’s blood, by a Taylor’s hand must fall” was now satisfied. After Sutton’s killing of Charley Taylor in Bastrop back in 868, and then his killing of Buck Taylor in Clinton that Christmas, avenging their deaths became an imperative to Jim Taylor. In another time and place, attorneys might have settled matters in a court room, but in the tumultuous days of Reconstruction in Texas, the more common means of settling disputes was with a gun. Introduction  The early Taylor killings led to two groups of people, both having sided with the Confederacy, now taking arms against each other, swearing death to the other. Of the multitudinous conflicts in Texas history, the violence acted out between the followers of William E. Sutton and the Taylor faction became the epitome of the blood feud. The troubles began during the tragic period known as Reconstruction. Many small conflicts between neighbors and groups of people, united by ethnic background or race or family ties, began during that nine-year period of civil tumult. In the decades prior to the war the greatest threat had been from the displaced Native Americans who were forced to move farther west, fighting against the white invaders every step of the way. Now after the war...