Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1883-10-18
The Way of the Transgressor is Hard.

The civil war and the rapid develop
ment of the territory now comprised in
the newer of the Western States of the
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 a
con junction of circumstances calculated
to engender and feed that particular
phase of lawlessuess which found its
victims on the highways of Western
travel and in the thronged streets of
towns and villages. 1t is, therefore,
not str nge that the plunderers and
roughriders were for season both
numerous and audacious.. Never was
the prospect to murderers and robbers
more seductive and never was more
ruthless and bloody brood of the enc
mics of society precipitated on any gem
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 age. But period of
twenty years has served to bring them
all to the dust. The James brothers,
one in his grave and the other in q
prison cell, illustrate the fate of those
who have dared to ply their once APP
parently prosperous vacations 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' halter. These
were the princes of their clans with
chances 4 hundred-fold more favorab bic
than others on account of the inability
or iniisposition of hundreds who knew
them as border partisans to draw line
between the point where internecine
strife ended and war on society began.
'Fhe penalty which the justice of man
kind has adiud9ed to be due to those
who take booty at the expense of blood
is death. And death or worse than
death has oyertaken almost the last of
the one-time gay and reckless riders
who turned their hands against society.
Such remnants of the defiant gangs RS
dyed their hands in blood and stepped
their souls in murder rather than re-
turn to ways of peace and honesty now
supplcate 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 propensities
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
fearfully indicated, ''that the way of
the transgressor is hard.,,' The lesson
loses much of its force and value be-
cause the hideous careers and the. par
ticular phase of crime from which it is
drawn may now be regarded ASCOT the
past. st. Louis Republican.