Who Was the Real Henry Plummer?
The Vigilantes hanged the Sheriff and his deputies.
More than 130 years later, people still disagree about whether they did the right thing.
By Michael Umphrey
Sheriff Henry Plummer "was probably the greatest organizational genius in the history of American crime until the prohibition era, and it is doubtful if any of the racket kings has topped him. . .His gang--spies, couriers, horse-wranglers, the men who committed the actual stick-ups, the strong-arm men, and his deputies--in his road agent-sheriff days numbered not more than 30. Yet they had killed, by conservative estimates, some 300 gold-laden travelers from Montana camps, and their loot must have been upwards of three or four million dollars by present-day values."That's how writer Virginia Rowe Towle described Henry Plummer. Stories such as this have been repeated so many times that many people assume they are the true history of Henry Plummer. But professional historians know that everything that gets written down isn't always true. People have lots of reasons for writing down what happened, and lots of reasons for putting their own spin upon what happened.
The earliest history we have of the Vigilantes was written by Thomas Dimsdale, editor of Virginia City's newspaper. Dimsdale was more interested in defending the Vigilantes than he was in telling an accurate and unbiased story. His series of articles, later published as a book, The Vigilantes of Montana, set out to prove that the Vigilantes did the right thing and that Henry Plummer was an evil villain. Dimsdale used his newspaper as the official voice of the Vigilante organization that hanged Plummer. Most published histories that came later took Dimsdale's version of Henry Plummer as more or less true.
But more recently, some historians have been questioning that version. They point out that Plummer never got a fair trial--either from the Vigilantes or from historians. He was never allowed to present his side of the case. The historians R. E. Mather and F. E. Boswell describe a very different Henry Plummer:
"Open-minded and gentle mannered, yet flamboyantly courageous, Plummer assumed an important leadership role in civilizing the mining frontier, and his downfall is therefore a true tragedy, in the literary sense of the word, brought on mainly by his being too tolerant for his times, that is, showing a lack of discrimination in the regard he held for others." He came to the Montana gold camps "with intentions of settling down to family life: first buying a home and next making plans to marry."
In looking into the accusations that have been made against Plummer, they claimed to find "inaccuracies and fabrications." They said that Plummer was blamed for every crime that occurred in the eastern districts of Idaho Territory (which later became Montana).
Whatever the truth about what Plummer did or did not do, we know that on January 10, 1864 in Bannack (about 65 miles from Virginia City) fifty to seventy-five men moved through the subzero cold, their boots crunching in the snow, and arrested Sheriff Henry Plummer and two of his deputies, Buck Stinson and Ned Ray.
They marched the men to the gallows that, as sheriff, Henry Plummer himself had built. "You men know us better than this," Plummer said to the crowd around him. In a few minutes the good-looking man, only twenty-seven years old, with many friends in town, stood by as the armed men hanged his two deputies. They ignored his request for a fair trial, his request to see his sister-in-law, his request to put some business affairs in order. Finally, he requested time to pray, but the men would not grant this either.
After the execution, armed guards stood by the gallows for about an hour. The three bodies were left hanging until the next morning.
All historians agree that the mining districts of Montana in the 1860s were dangerous places, with many road agents, robbers, and other rough characters. The promise of easy gold attracts criminals, and the nation itself was a violent place, in the midst of the Civil War. Deserters and fugitives and criminals avoiding justice flocked to the frontier.
And we know that for three years after Plummer was killed, the Vigilantes virtually ruled the mining districts. By the end, some of the leading citizens of Montana including Territorial Governor Thomas Meagher had begun to speak out against their midnight parties.
In March, 1867, the miners issued their own warning that if the Vigilantes hanged any more people, the "law abiding citizens" would retaliate "five for one." Though a few more lynchings occurred, it was clear that the era of the Vigilantes was past.