[lbo-talk] Barra: The OK Corral, border incursions and posse commitatus

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Thu Oct 26 16:40:50 PDT 2006


[Makes some interesting connections]

[BTW, that reminds me -- in our perennial thread on westerns, the movie Tombstone (1993) is proof that you can make a non-revisionist western in these our times and score at the box office.]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/26/opinion/26barra.html

The New York Times

October 26, 2006

Op-Ed Contributor

Their Political Tombstone

By ALLEN BARRA

South Orange, N.J.

EXACTLY 125 years ago today, about 2:40 p.m., three lawmen -- Marshal

Virgil Earp and his brothers Wyatt and Morgan and their friend Doc

Holliday -- walked down Fremont Street, today Highway 80, in the

silver-mining boom town of Tombstone, Ariz., and into a lot behind the

O.K. Corral to confront four cow-boys (as cattle thieves were then

called), the brothers Ike Clanton and Billy Clanton and Tom McLaury

and Frank McLaury.

What happened next made newspapers across the country. The New York

Times account, except for the misspelling of a few names, mostly got

it right: The marshal ordered them to give up their weapons, when a

fight was begun, about 30 shots being rapidly fired. Both of the

McLowery boys were killed; Bill Clandon was mortally wounded and died

soon after.

The street fight in Tombstone would eventually become known as the

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Though the shooting lasted for perhaps 30

seconds, and the gunfight was far from the bloodiest of hundreds in

cow towns and mining camps on the frontier, it occupies a prime place

in American mythology.

Today, some 3,000 tourists will jam the streets of Tombstone to watch

re-enactments of the event, aiming to come into contact with a piece

of distant American history and encounter a time completely separate

from our own. Whats odd about this, however, is that the social and

political issues that created the context for the gunfight remain

alive, and for the most part unresolved, in the American West today.

For instance, theres the debate over federal versus local law

jurisdiction. Back then, the county sheriff, a Democrat named John

Behan, was at odds with the Republican Earps, who, in addition to

being town policemen were federal officers resented by the small

ranchers who benefited from the cow-boys illegal trafficking. Locals

still debate over who, legally was in charge on the day of the

gunfight Behan, a friend of the cow-boys, couldnt or wouldnt disarm

them; the Earps, no nonsense-lawmen who eschewed political solutions,

saw, in the parlance of the time, no duty to retreat.

Then theres gun control. The Earps didnt debate gun control; they

enforced it, alienating those who considered it their God-given right

to carry guns. A decade ago, Pat Buchanan, with gun belt, made a

campaign stop in front of the O.K. Corral. If he had done that 125

years ago, he might have met the same fate as the cow-boys, at least

two of whom were carrying guns in blatant defiance of town ordinance.

And then there is the question of illegal immigration. In 1881, most

of those who came under this heading were Americans, gangs of cow-boys

crossing the Arizona-Mexico border into Sonora to steal cattle from

the haciendas and killing Mexicans in the process. Cowboy

depredations, as United States government reports referred to the

organized thievery, enraged Mexicans who still had vivid memories of

the time when the Southwest was their country.

The Mexican government protested vehemently, but the Posse Comitatus

Act, passed in 1878, prohibited federal troops from acting in a law

enforcement capacity and threw the border-crossing problem back on the

county sheriffs. Sheriffs like John Behan, in many cases friends of

the cow-boys, had no inclination to stop their activities.

Yes, the personal animosities that brought violence to Tombstone that

day have been obscured or forgotten by time. But to a great extent,

the political factors that fueled it continue to echo as loudly as

will the faux gunshots today fired in the lot behind the O.K. Corral.

Allen Barra, a contributing writer for American Heritage magazine, is

the author of Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends.



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