The Tiffin tribune. (Tiffin, Ohio) 1868-1887, 1873-06-05
From the Kansas Magazine for June
BHId McAJJisteF'S Part
nPF,

Brownville, Texas, in 1865, was
what you call "hard town" These
hard towns are Indigenous To Ameri-
can society, and they never grow i'll
any other soil. The circumstances OF
termination may be diverse, accord
ing to the times or the location or the
conspiracy of event but the charac-
teristics of the product are always the
same. For instance, there were
Julesburg, and Cheyenne. and COrinne,
dan Newton and Abilene and Gibson
hard towns, because the Western rail
way as civiliZing agent first acts as a
conduit through which are slOughed
out the barbarities of Christian en-
lightenment. You might say that
those who come along with the Bible
and the yardstick, and the scalpel and
the spelling-bOOk, in the years by and
by, treading as they do upon graves
whose occupants sleep as they fell
with their boots on, live under plan
of social salvation whose crucifiXiOns
have come in the shape of deadly
rencontres, and whose sacrifices, spill
ing hot blood out of maddened bos-
oms, died unwittingly for the ccm-
mon veal in accordance with some
inscrutable purpose that is manifest
only in its results. But BrOwnville
was not railway town. 1t had none
of the features of that ilk. The only
highway of commerce that touched
its precincts was the sluggish Rio
Grande, 4 river whose water ever had
on its surface dry, hot, parched look,
and toiled along painfully to the sea,
as though it hesitated between going
back up stream to be rolled by the
hOofs of the KiOwa cayuses, and 60
ing on down into the Gulf to be har-
rowed up by the keels of revenue cut
ters and TampicO contrabandista
schOOners. 1t was not built of canvas
and pine boards either, with that bare,
cOmfortless, and ephemeral look there
always is about the railway towns.
In this respect it bore no resemblance
to the "hard towns" of the Upper
Platte or the Arkansas or the Smoky
Hill, the Union Pacific or the Atchi-
son, Topeka and Santa Fe. 1t was an
old town. But it could not be called
dilapidated, because that word implies
an anterior newnesS which no one
would suspect Brownville of having
ever possessed. There was nothing
to avert the impression that this town
was built old in the first place. One
imagined, as he picked his way along
the streets, that the great, refuse
crammed mud-holeS had been care
fully digged and arranged there that
the bricks in the sidewalks had been
broken or set up on end purpOsely and
with an aesthetic view to the prOduc-
- aF off
glass and sash-bars had been studious-
ly broken in the windows, and the
moss tastefully arranged upon the
cOrnices by some consummate genius
in engineering ohd architecture whose
touch was counterfeit of Times.
BrOwnville had a history; not so
much its own as it was a reflection
from Palo Alto and Resaca, Point Is
abel and Buena Vista, and may be it
had borrowed something from that
luster whereof San Jacinto and Goliad
had enough and to spare. In 1865 it
had again become the focus of atten-
ton. The nation drawing a long
breath after AppOmattox and Ben
tonville and Shreveport, had cast an
eye wherein was no beaming of kind
illness toward the bediZened platOoDS
of the French Foreign Legion that
carried the eagles of MaXimilian's eX-
Otic empire, and seemed to menace
the reintegrated republic.with shad-
Ow of disaster.
1t was not easy to imagine what
danger there was to be apprehended
by the dwellers in Maine and Oregon
from the half a dozen CScddrOIlS of
uniformed eX-cOnvicts who represent
ed the diadem of the Austrian and the
corOnet OF his CarlOtta in MatamOras
in 1865. But the government at
Washington saw in these feZ-capped
brutes who spent their days in desul-
tory drilling or in lazy loafing about
the plaza and under the palms, and
their lights in the soft delirium of the
fandango and love-mahing in bad
Spanish to black-eyed Mestizas, a
menace TO the integrity OF republic
against which Lees irOn-sided yeter-
ans had shattered themselves to pieces
in vain. So, when the sunlight of
that peaceful spring-time had sprOut-
ed daisies again on the sod of Antic-
tam, and called out the modest clover
from its red-sOaked bed in the Gettys-
burg hill-sides, what still remained of
war had drifted off to Brownville.
And when its condition during the
summer of 90 is described as the fag-
end of q fratricidal war-the stage
lumber-rOOm after q fOur-act tragedy
that had continent for its scenery
a general idea is conveyed. What its
population was at that date would not
be easy TO say specifically. Its COM
pOnent elements would equally defy
accurate enumeration. II there was
a cut-throat or hOrse-thief or an In
dian-fighter or a smuggler or a bandit
or a gambler or sporting woman,
black, white, red, brown, or tawny, in
the whole Southwest who did not Wis
il Brownville during that Summer, it
was because he or she was locked up
somewhere else and could not get
away. Ii was the Universal Ulcer
the Cancer of Creation. Its nOisOme
streets were thronged with the motif
est and indescri bableSt crowd that was
ever collected on the face of the earth
cattle ranchers and freighters from
the back country and from CamargO :
Mexican guerrillas from Chihuahua
and French deserCers from Monterey
cotton spectators and cOntrabandis-
tas; negro soldiers of the United
States army, and hOrse-thieves from
both sides OF the river miners from
Sonora and scouts and Indian-fight-
ers from Eagle Pass and Los PecOs
gamblers, outlaws, greasers, prOsti-
tutes-these were the subdivisions oi
the census Ot BrOwnville in 1865
There was something in the atmos-
phere of the place and its surround
ings, something about its location
and the ease wherewith the law-ii
/ there had been any-could be eluded
/ that it bred devilment and desperate.
ness as q morass breeds miasm, or q
garbage-heap fever. So, under the
summer sun of the topics, and famed