Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1883-10-27
The Way Of the Transgressor is Hard

The civil war and the rapid Develop
ment of the territory now comprised I'M
the newer of the Western States of tho
Union bred the material and Afforded
the opportunity for that class of GRIM,
inals known as highwaymen. Never
before, perhaps, in the history of mod!
ern civilization has there been such al
conjunction of circumstances calculated
to engender and feed that PARTICULAR
phase of lawlessness which found its|
victims on the highways of Western;
travel and in the thronged streets on
towns and villages. 1t is, therefore,
not str nge that the plunderers andI
roughriders were for q season both
numerous and audacious. Never was|
the prospect to murderers and robbersI
more seductive and never was o more
ruthless and bloody brood of the enc
mics of society precipitated on any gen.,
Grafton. For twenty years these agents.
of the road levied their heartless tribute.
In all the qualities of unshrinking,
physical courage, relentless greed,
cruel brutality, brought to the greatest
perfection in the school of danger, the
highwaymen of the Southwest in the
past twenty years have never been
equaled in any 20 But a period of
twenty years has served to bring them
all to the dust. The James brothers,
one in his grave and the other in a
prison cell, illustrate the tate of those
who have dared to ply the, r once ap-
parently prosperous vocations of rob-
berry and murder. The doom of the
younger, who fell by the hand of an as
sassin trained by himself, was horrible,
but was to any dispassionate Judgment
less to be dreaded than that of his elder
now struggling to escape ignominious
death by the hangman' 8 halter. These
were the princes of their clans with
chances a hundred-fold more favorable
than others on account of the inability
or indisposition of hundreds who knew
them as border partisans to draw a line
between the point where internecine
strife ended and war on society began.
The penalty which the justice of man.
kind has adjudged to be due to those
who take booty at the expense of blood
is death. And death or worse than,
death has overtaken almost the last of,
the one-time gay and reckless riders
who turned their hands against society,"
Such remnants Of the defiant gangs as,
dyed their hands in blood and stepped
their souls in murder rather than re-
turn to ways of peace and honesty now
supplicate for the privilege to be al;
lowed to earn their bread by the labor
they lately despi ed. In the prime of
manhood they find themselves broken
in health. poor in purse, their lives
hanging by threads so slender that a
breath might land them in felons':
graves. Such is the lesson of an era of
lawlessness which afforded more oppor-
tunities to those whose evil propensitiesi
led them into its sinister paths than
were ever elsewhere opened up before
weak and wicked men. The truth Of
those terrible words was never more.
feariully vindicated, .'that the way of!
the transgressor is hard.". The lesson
loses much of it's force and value be-
cause the hideous careers and the par
ticular phase of crime from which it is
drawn may now be regarded as of the
past.-St. Louis Republican.