Tracking the Texas Rangers: The Twentieth Century

7. Bonnie and Clyde in Texas: The End of the Texas Outlaw Tradition

120 ★ 7 ★ Bonnie and Clyde in Texas: The End of the Texas Outlaw Tradition Mitchel Roth T he history of the outlaw tradition predates the founding of America and can be traced at least to eleventh-century England . Outlaw legends have appeared in a variety of incarnations throughout American history and it would be impossible to ascribe a particular paradigm to its development. Examples of this tradition can be found in most regions of America. Vermont had Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain boys, New Mexico had Billy the Kid, and California the mystical Joaquin Murrieta and highwayman Jack Powers. By comparison, the Texas outlaw tradition is not only rich but is more complex. Southern, Spanish, and Southwestern influences and traditions have found their way into the various explanations for its persistence into the twentieth century. Legends and historical accounts of Texas outlaws often are imbued with the mythology of the social bandit. Criminal justice historian Frank Prassel described the American outlaw tradition as “essentially democratic,” asserting that “in pure form the legend is born of injustice and reflects a wish for rebellion, yet it often has elements of savagery, suffering, betrayal, and doom.”1 The association of outlaws and Texas as well as the West became an integral facet of the American myth during the mid-nineteenth Bonnie and Clyde in Texas: The End of the Texas Outlaw Tradition ★ 121 century. The phrase “Gone to Texas,” often abbreviated “G.T.T.,” implied that those fleeing the law could find a less-demanding system of criminal justice in Texas. According to the popular historian Ed Bartholomew, “Texas had more of the so-called badmen than all the others put together” in the years following the Civil War.2 The Texas outlaw tradition can be divided into two distinct phases, both responses to changing social, economic, and political conditions in the Lone Star State. After 1865, divisions became apparent within American society as the result of modernization and its resultant upheaval. The first phase coincided with the terrible “1870s” after the Civil War, a period when unreconstructed Texans felt the sting of injustice at the hands of Governor Edmund J. Davis’ State Police and Carpetbagger rule. However, Texas emerged from the Civil War in probably better shape economically than any other Confederate state. Recent scholarship suggests that the injustice of this period has been overstated, which nonetheless did not make it any less real to the defeated populace. Between 1865 and 1890, outlaw gangs took full advantage of the social disorganization and the lack of resources available to support peace officers or to construct jails, leading one visitor to Texas to comment, “If you want distinction in this lawless country, kill somebody .” Outlaws such as William Longley, Sam Bass, and John Wesley Hardin apparently gave little thought to killing or maiming newly freed blacks. According to Western historian Joseph G. Rosa, that while both Hardin and Longley “started down the outlaw trail killing what they classified as belligerent Negroes,” any examination of their careers will demonstrate that “neither man had much respect for anyone—black or white.”3 One biographer of Sam Bass noted, “He manifested a remarkable antipathy for Negroes.”4 Of the first four books written about Sam Bass, all but one were published anonymously. According to Ramon Adams, “Perhaps it was because they were written during the life of Bass and his followers and there was some fear of retaliation , but more likely it was because the writers were too proud to 122 ★ Tracking the Texas Rangers: The Twentieth Century have their names associated with that of an outlaw.” More than a few authors of books on outlaws thus penned their works under a pseudonym , lest their reputation be sullied. Nonetheless, these books were classed among the penny dreadfuls, forbidden to youngsters but still read in secret by young adults.5 As late as 1956, some chroniclers of the Texas outlaw tradition felt stigmatized enough to write under pseudonyms decades after the deaths of their subjects. Stanley Francis Louis ­ Crocciola, for instance, wrote the biography of Robert A. “Clay” ­ Allison under the pen-name of F. Stanley.6 By the twentieth century Texas outlaws were lionized as heroes, their exploits described on a par with the most famous peace officers. It was not uncommon in the years before the civil rights movement to read of the racist deeds of outlaws during the 1870s as if they were...