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chapter fifteen Quick Hanging Sparks Criticism and Praise it didn’t take long for the editorial writers across the South to weigh in on the hanging of Jim Buchanan. The day after Buchanan’s death, Bill Haltom of the Sentinel praised the quick dispensing of “justice”: Yesterday was a great day in the annals of Nacogdoches and is an example to all the South. We tried, convicted, sentenced and executed a negro murderer and rape fiend in the space of about six hours [actually it was just over three hours], and the law was scrupulously obeyed from start to finish. No people ever had stronger provocation to sweep the law aside and deal summary justice by the most savage methods to a fiend in human shape, but the laws of Texas were respected and obeyed, and that nigger is just as dead as though he had been burnt at the stake by a lawless mob. It was a great day for Nacogdoches, for justice and for law.1 Meanwhile, Judge Tom C. Davis felt compelled to defend his actions in allowing Buchanan to waive his rights and be executed a few hours after being sentenced. He submitted a statement to Henry Fuller, the Houston Daily Post correspondent: I had a private talk with the defendant. He told me he had killed the Hicks family and how he had done it. He stated further that he ought to be hanged and knew he would be hanged, and that he wanted to be hanged at once. I told him that he had the right to postpone the trial of the case for two days and to have a venire summoned from which to select the jury. He stated that he did not wish any delay; that he wanted to be tried at once and waived all these matters. I then had a jury placed in the box and asked him if the jury was satisfactory to him. He stated that it was. The indictment was then read and he pleaded guilty.2 130 } Aftermath Davis described the testimony of the two witnesses, confirmed that he left the courtroom for a while, and upon returning, “was told by someone that the negro did not desire a stay of his execution for thirty days, but that it was his wish to be executed at once.” Davis said that he called Buchanan before the bar and asked him if that was true, and Buchanan said it was, and “I so ordered under article 22, criminal procedure.”3 The elderly judge was a bit disingenuous in his explanation. He didn’t mention that it was a certainty that Buchanan would have been seized and burned at the stake if he didn’t agree to be hanged at once; that the soldiers appeared unwilling to risk their lives to delay the inevitable; and that the “someone” who told him Buchanan wanted to be hanged at once was Sheriff Spradley, who had summoned Davis from his lunch (with Fuller) to tell him the town was about to erupt in a riot. Davis clearly had misgivings about Buchanan’s quick hanging. He wrote Governor Sayers on October 23, six days after the execution, to explain his role. Davis truly intended to have Buchanan returned to Rusk after sentencing, saying that he told the Cherokee County sheriff to find Major Raines, the troop commander, and “have him take charge of the prisoner at once.” Davis said that after leaving the courthouse, he heard that the train had been taken away, and that “some parties had taken all the dynamite which could be found in town with a mind to blowing up the railway. People were flocking to the town by this time from all the surrounding country and by their acts it was evident they intended to take the defendant from the soldiers.”4 Davis, it should be noted, only reluctantly made the decision to allow Buchanan to be hanged immediately: I am now and was at the time fully aware that it was a most dangerous precedent to allow the execution in the manner in which I did, but to have failed to allow it would have at once precipitated trouble between the troops and the citizens. . . . I alone was responsible for the order putting the boys composing the troops in this dangerous attitude, and I took the responsibility of throwing around the execution all the semblance of legality that I could. I regret the occurrence as much...

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