The Sun. — 1869-01-04 (London, England)

CHAS. ANDERSON. They had escaped to Canada after a desperate attempt to rob an express car, when many of their confederates were captured, the train taking them to prison being stopped by an armed band (this Vigilance Committee), and the desperadoes hung to the nearest trees. The Canadian authorities surrendered FRANK RENO and ANDERSON, under the promise of protection from this violence and a fair trial, which was the more earnestly pressed in view of these illegal executions by which so many of the gang had already suffered. They were conveyed to New Albany and lodged in the prison wherein SIMON and WILLIAM RENO were then confined awaiting trial. The connection of the United States with the affair then ceased, the State becoming responsible ; and it is an error to suppose that the Washington Government could have given any absolute pledge of security further than in lodging the accused in the strongest of the State gaols. Throughout Indiana remnants still exist of an organization which styled itself the Regulators, once numbering 700 or 800, but now reduced to little over a third of that strength, though their activity may be gathered from the fact that within the last two years they have hanged some thirty supposed criminals. These Regulators derived their origin from the old Border state of society from which Indiana has so quickly changed that a complex social community has overtaken the rough and ready justice of backwood and wild prairie life. 'When recording the surrender, in view of these facts, we expressed an opinion that the fate of these men was sealed. Seymour is a small railway town about 50 miles north of Louisville, where the railroad to Indianapolis intersects the Ohio and Mississippi line. For more than fifteen years this village has been the head-quarters of a company of desperadoes, of whom the RENOS, an English family of a mother and five sons, were the chiefs. At first the robberies were for the most part confined to cattle and sheep, but by degrees the scope increased, and the neighbourhood was kept in a state of terror, and blackmailed with impunity. Houses and citizens were robbed ; stores were rifled, and cattle lifted by droves ; prosecutors were murdered, and witnesses kidnapped and deported. Two of the RENos secured positions as travelling agents for Express Companies, which made them familiar with the manner of transporting and delivering valuables, and this knowledge enabled them to effect some extensive seizures. A train was surrounded at Seymour by an armed party in disguise ; the locomotive and express cars were detached and taken two miles along the track, where the safe of the United States Express Company was broken open and $90,000 abstracted. FRANK RENO, the company's agent, was there found, to divert suspicion, tied to a chair and gagged. Not long after, in a similar way, the robbery of $170,000 was effected, which directed general attention to Seymour and the organization by which that neighbourhood was kept in a state of subjugation. Arrests were made, but the confederates, emboldened by impunity, openly announced that if one was injured the town would be destroyed. It was then that the Vigilance Committee seized six of the criminals, including two of the RENOS, and hanged them in the woods; and on the capture of some of the robbers, who were caught in their own trap while endeavouring for the third time to rifle the safes of an Express Company, executed them, The rest of the band were warned