1
Heroes of Old"
THE RANGER FORCE, 19001910
Sitting in a smoky meeting room of the opulent Oriental Hotel, the former Texas Ranger listened as the mayors representative welcomed him and his fellow "Heroes of Old" to the thriving city of Dallas.
Four decades earlier, then only twenty years old, British-born Joseph Greaves Booth had helped protect the state from hostile Indians. Now, in the fall of 1900, Booth served as president of the Texas Rangers Association. Standing to address a hundred other men who had ridden for the Lone Star, the successful traveling salesman from Austinalso a veteran of the Confederate Armys Eighth Texas Cavalry regimentlooked out at an assemblage of graybeards who had spent many a night on the ground with only a sweaty saddle for a pillow. Many of them stove up and hard of hearing, on this day the old Rangers crowded a six-story hotel touted as "the most elegant . . . west of the Mississippi," a half-million-dollar redbrick building at Commerce and Akard streets finished with Italian marble and mahogany and capped with an arabesque dome. If they were of a mind to, men who had washed their dusty faces in creeks muddied by the hooves of thirsty horses could soak their aching bones in a Turkish bath, afterward enjoying a good cigar and a jigger or two of whiskey in one of the Orientals several bars and dining rooms. But their greatest plea sure came in remembering their days as Rangers.
"Comrades, ladies and gentlemen," Booth began, looking toward the official greeter, "in behalf of the Texas Rangers, present and absent, living and dead, I desire to thank you for the welcome accorded us on this occasion. Of the old Texas Rangers but few are left. Time has done for them what the frontier savages failed to do through many years of bloody strife."
Seeing a young man from the Morning News scribbling away in the audience, Booth realized he spoke for posterity. He wanted a later generation to better understand the Rangers and what they did for Texas. His fellow old-timers already knew.
"The old Texas Rangers were not marauders or ruffians," he continued. "They were civilized, and in many cases highly educated, pioneers who were engaged in carving out the magnificent state of which we are all so proud, wresting her princely domain from bloodthirsty savages. Many of them were graduates of the best universities, and in intellect and integrity . . . not inferior to the best men left in the states from whence they came."
The Rangers of Booths youth may not have been ruffians, but their enemies had known them as tenacious fighters. "They were always ready at any hour," Booth went on, "day or night, when warned by a courier to mount and ride to the place of rendezvous, in rain or shine, in the face of the blue norther, or under a blazing sun, and their motto was, ‘No sleep until we catch the rascally redskins. "
When Rangers took up a trail, he said, they armed themselves with "the best weapons the times afforded." For sustenance, they carried a bag of parched meal mixed with brown sugar and spice, strips of jerked meat, and a bottle-gourd of water tied on the horn of their saddle. Once they caught up with Indians, "there was no fighting at long range. Hostilities began whenever the white of the enemys eye could be seen, and much of it was hand to hand."
Booth listed "a few of the historic names of old Texas Rangers," starting with his old lieutenant Ed Burleson Jr. All these years later, Booth lamented, only a few survived.
Then he said something that must have stuck in the craw of many of the former Rangers, not to mention those still in service to the state: "The necessity that gave birth to these heroic bands has disappeared with the men who composed them. The Texas Rangers of today have different duties to perform, which we believe can be more acceptably performed by the peace officers elected by the people."
Booth did allow that "along the upper Rio Grande a special police force may be required to protect the frontier against Mexican outlaws, but not elsewhere in the state."
No matter what seemed heresy to many, the members of the three-year-old associationan organization first envisioned by the late Ranger captain John Salmon "Rip" Fordwent on to reelect Booth as their leader, accept their historians resignation, rename themselves the Texas Rangers Battalion, and set Fort Worth as their next meeting place. Booth adjourned the proceedings and the old Rangers dispersed to mingle in the Orientals lobbies for the rest of the morning, telling stories of "their adventure during their services on the border." That afternoon, they took the streetcars to the State Fair grounds, "saw the sights and attended the races."1
" ‘RANGERS HAVE NO AUTHORITY . . ."
At the beginning of the twentieth century, many other Texans also questioned a continuing need for the Rangers. Even the forces legal standing had come under attack.
The Rangers latest problem centered on one of their ownA. L. (Lou) Saxon, a private in Captain William J. McDonalds company. After arresting some fence cutters during a stockman–farmer feud in Hall County the year before, Saxon had been charged with false imprisonment. Further, local citizens petitioned Governor Joseph D. Sayers to withdraw the Rangers from their county, which he did.
Company B moved from the Panhandle to a trouble spot at Athens in East Texas and then on to Orange, a rough lumber town on the Sabine River in the southeast corner of the state. Local officials, unable to cope with a wave of violence fostered by an ugly combination of partisan politics, labor issues, and racism, had petitioned the state for Rangers. In September 1899, the company made twenty-one arrests in Orange and would have effected one more if an offender had not pulled a knife on Private T. L. Fuller. In self-defense the Ranger shot and killed Oscar Poole, son of the Orange County judge. Fuller faced no charge in connection with the clearly justified homicide, but a grand jury indicted him along with Ranger Saxon for false imprisonment. Saxon had been accused of using the barrel of his six-shooter on the heads of two drunks he took into custody. A local prosecutor based his case on his interpretation that the 1874 statute creating the Frontier Battalion, with which Fuller and Saxon served, only gave officers the power of arrest. Because Fuller and Saxon ranked as privates, the prosecutor contended that the arrests made by the Rangers had been illegal. McDonald and his Rangers moved on to their next assignment, the misdemeanor cases against two of his men languishing on the docket in Orange. But state officials found the argument that Ranger privates could not make lawful arrests troubling.
Responding to a request for a formal opinion on the matter, Attorney General Thomas S. Smith ruled on May 26, 1900, that only the battalions commissioned officers had full police powers: "Non-commissioned officers and privates . . . referred to as ‘Rangers have no authority . . . to execute criminal process or make arrests."2 At the time, the battalion consisted of four companies. Suddenly, only four menthe company captainshad the power to make arrests or serve court papers.
Quickly reacting to the attorney generals letter-of-the-law-versus-spirit-of-the-law opinion, which in effect put the Rangers out of action, Adjutant General Thomas Scurry on June 1 reorganized the Rangers into six companies. Four companies would be made up of a captain, a first lieutenant, a second lieutenant, and three privates. The other two companies would consist of one first lieutenant, one second lieutenant, and two privates. Each company would have to honorably di