Captain Jack Helm: A Victim of Reconstruction Violence by Chuck Parsons (review)

Of him Bob Dylan would sing, "John Wesley Hardin/Was a friend to the poor/ . . . /But he was never known/To hurt an honest man." Jack Helm, an obscure Texas vigilante boss also called a sheriff, was not "an honest man," declares author Chuck Parsons. John Wesley Hardin and Jack Helm crossed paths briefly during a Reconstruction-era feud—on opposing sides. While Hardin tried to claim credit for the sheriff's downfall, Helm's problematic career did not collapse as Hardin maintained. It was complicated.

For one thing, the United States' occupation of the vanquished Confederate States of America was more problematic than, for example, the rebuilding of Germany and Japan following World War II. Post-Civil War demobilization resulted in a federal army too small to enforce Reconstruction policy. And Texas was an isolated region of defeated and bitter secessionists where lawlessness inflicted by the likes of John Wesley Hardin and Sam Bass necessitated protection by the likes of lawmen just as dangerous (and dubious) as Ben Thompson and Jack Helm. While Marshal Thompson's exploits gained him a sort of celebrity reputation, Sheriff Helm's death in an afternoon shootout with the more infamous Hardin only piques passing curiosity. Helm was, after all, a minor villain.

"Helm," historian Kenneth W. Howell notes in the book's foreword, "is hard to trace" (xviii). Parsons's biography of him, however, does not suffer for lack of trying. The foundation of this study includes many census schedules, newspaper archives, books, and periodicals as well as an impressive trove of additional material. The narrative, however, frequently concedes that a given source is "not the most reliable evidence" (2), "no details have been preserved" (29), "little is known" (69), "records do not reveal" (119), and several other similar admissions. Of the Choate Ranch assault in August 1869 or the suspicious deaths in August 1870 of the Kelly brothers (notorious incidents in the Sutton-Taylor feud), we have Helm's account without substantial corroboration. The demise of prisoners escaping from his custody rarely came under official inquiry, but they usually did provoke rumors characterizing his behavior as a reign of terror, thereby intimidating skeptics of his brand of justice.

Relatively more is known about Helm as a captain of the newly formed Texas State Police because the job required written communication (about which Helm was not always mindful) from him to the governor and the state adjutant general. Helm's few supporters embraced his vigilante enforcement methods, backed by his gang of deputies, the Regulators, for establishing "law and order" in his State Police district. His critics railed against them. Helm's depredations became the stuff of newspaper articles that often lacked detail but included just enough substance to raise suspicion about him and the Regulators.

Helm's name is listed officially on the DeWitt County Lost Lawman Memorial, but what we know of him as sheriff comes, ironically, from Hardin's autobiography, "not always accurate but always biased" (161). Helm left many law enforcement duties to his Regulators and spent part of his time developing two agriculture-related inventions in a borrowed blacksmith shop in Albuquerque, Texas. It was there on Friday afternoon, July 18, 1873, that Hardin and a confederate surprised Helm and murdered him. Dead at thirty-six, Helm would never be enshrined in the pantheon of famous gunslingers. He lies buried beneath a "native red boulder" in a nondescript Wilson County cemetery (187).

Captain Jack Helm is of particular interest to aficionados of American West gunfighters and historians of Texas. While Hardin's exploits garnered wide attention, Helm's reputation (or infamy) remained local. Helm "died relatively young, did not write an autobiography, and apparently no one preserved personal letters or even a single photograph" (xx). Parsons's research has gathered many loose threads to weave as complete a tapestry of a controversial man as we will likely ever have.