6 '"Vr 7/1 STORIES I OF THE SECRET SERVICE BY Capt. Patrick D. Tyrrell r STORY No. a The MISSOURI LAND LEAGUERS Being an Account of the Operations and Conviction of the Band of Land Thieves Operating in Missouri in the Early Seventies. By CAPTAIN PATRICK D. TYRRELL (Copyright, 1905, by Million G. Seheitlin.) Two men sat in the back room of the well-appointed offices of the Real Estate Loan and Trust company, of St. Louis, one night in the fail of 1872. One was young, under 30, slender and somewhat stooped. His eyes were dark and shift ing and he wore a black beard and mus tache. The other was slightly older and bore the appearance of a prosperous business man. Save for them the of fices were deserted, but nevertheless they talked in undertones. "The plan has been tested in all its questionable points and found absolute ly safe." said the younger man, the own er of the offices and at all times the leader in the dialogue. "The only weak point remaining is the limited market we now have in the sale of these lands. This market must be extended, and the east is the place the extension must be made. It is my intention to establish English and European agencies and to place safe agents in some ol the eastern centers of population. The opportunity is the greatest that will ever come to you." There was no dissent from this state ment on the part of the other. His man ner suggesed an evident desire to learn more of (he plan under discussion. The point in the- negotiations between (he two where there might be any danger in freedom of speech had already been passed. There was no exhibition on either side of troublesome qualms over the moral phase of (he business in hand, and (he conversation turned on nothing but the prospects of cSrrying out the scheme with safety and profit. "You must bear in mind," said the master spirit of the conference, "that this is nothing new. A smart chap con ceived the possibilities of the plan when he was with Gen. Price's raiding army in southwest Missouri during the war. This chap was one that happened to be turned loose in the land office at Iron ton and grabbed 300 patents, each to 320 acres of land. He would probably have taken more, but that was all he could -carry. He planted them at the time and resurrected them after the war—in 1868. While he had a general idea of their value he had little ingenuity in realiz ing on them. "Finally he met a friend with a quick er brain, and this friend suggested se curing the services of a notary to take the acknowledgements necessary to se curing land under (he patents. They came to St. Louis and found the man they wanted—a notary who liked his liquor a bit too well to ask too many questions. The deeds based on the pat ents were made and a good business was done in the sale of the lands until the stock of patents ran out. This pair dis continued operations, but they opened a great field. I saw that thousands of Ihese patents were available—never mind how—and am ready to carry on business on a big scale.'' "But how can a deed be made in 1872 or jurian. Robert L. Lindsay, (hp president of thr» Ural Estate I/>an and Trust com pany. of St. Louis, and the leader of the conversation in his private office on the night in question, was a man of in creasing prominence In his state. He was the son of James Lindsay, who had located in St. Louis in 1834. Lindsay Sr. became the editor of the first "free soil" paper published in Mis souri, and was later sent to the legisla ture as a "Benton democrat." During the early days of the war, while Ulysses S. Grant was recruiting the regiment at the head of which ho made his first leaps toward military greatness, he went to Iron county. Mo., in the south east part of the state, and became ac quainted with James Lindsay, making the latter's log house his headquarters in th« county. Because I am held to the dead level of history in these narratives and not per mitted to indulge in the temptations to flights of romance that constantly pre sent themselves, I am here forced to call attention to a trait in the character of Grant that was in a great measure re sponsible for the Missouri land thefts. In his sojournings at the Lindsay home Grant conceived a strong personal liking for his host, and after he was elected president he appointed his friend Lindsay pension agent at St. Louis. To this trust Lindsay proved recreant and was soon found $22,000 short in his accounts. This brought about li is removal from t hat office, but it did not deter Grant from appointing him registrar of the Ironton land office in 1877, just before his second term expired, thereby indicating the bulldog con stancy with which the great military genius clung to bis old friendships whether the objects of them were wor thy or not. Robert L. Lindsay, the son, inherited many of the traits of his father, the keenness of mind, geniality of manner and, unfortunately, the shifty standard of morals. The younger Lindsay was educated in the law and had he centered his energies on the practice of that pro fession along honorable lines he would have attained a place of prominence among lawyers. Instead he turned from the law to real estate, and early in his career began the development of the most gigantic steal of the century. It is around this swindle, with Robert L. Lindsay as the pivotal character, that this bit of history turns. This steal has passed into criminal history under the title of the Missouri ( '' I' t 1 1"(f . 'CI 'MI T I11.|". K\ KT ■ ' Land League. The 22 men who were convicted for this crime were the pioneers in the science of government land stealing on a wholesale basis. In my dealings with criminals I have always been disposed to throw a heavier mantle of charity around tlie evil-doer who, by birth, environment and lack of opportunity for better things, has fol lowed criminal paths, than around tho well-bred, luxuriously nurtured thief whose wrong-doing is contrary to.and not because of. early training-or neces sity. Such crimes as these gigantic land grabs, therefore, appeal to nie as being of a peculiarly vicious kind, and the prosecution of the culprits I believe to call for efforts of extraordinary earnest- ! ness 011 the part of the government. Land grabbing, as exemplified in the Missouri case, was a composite crime, of which forgery, perjury, larceny, aivson and murder were tho components. In calculable wrong was done to the own ers of millions of acres of land, to say nothing of the moral wrong of the crime itself, by the unsettling of titles to the farms of southeast Missouri. Naturally one of tho richest spots in the country—tho valleys fertile and tho mountains of solid mineral of in estimable value —tho work of tho land grafters of the '7os was a blight on tho land for a generation. If there ever was a spot in nature unfitted for a theater of crime, it is the Arcadia valley in southeast Mis souri. rts soil is rich, its streams clear as crystal, its air ha/.y blue, and j its people peaceful. Yet hero was the scene of a snore of crimes of violence growing out of the one big plot to steal land from the government ami | sell it by irregular titles to people j who could ill afford to lose their sav- ! ings. To this day in Arcadia valley there i is pointed out to the traveler a tree j from whose gaunt limbs 17 men have been hanged between the civil war and tho time I entered the valley in the hunt for land grafters. These tragedies were all the grewwme fruit of the one big crime. The victims were men whose crime was knowing too much about th«s operations of tho land thieves —knowing too much some-1 times bv 'dent and sometimes CAMERON COUNTY PRESS, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1906. through their own misguided efforts. In the land of "moonshine" stiHs knowing too much lias been a capital ofllense punishable by deattli at the hands of self-constituted judges and executiouers. So it was in Arcadia valley and througnout southwest ern Missouri following tiie civil war, the tabooed subject being land frauds instead of the making of white corn whisky. From this readers must not infer that. Robert 1,. Lindsay and the other principal thieves were in a conspiracy to commit murder; but they were in a conspiracy that led to murder as an incident. Young Lindsay was su preme in the district and his word was law, even when it meant the commis sion of crimes of violence to protect the land conspirators in their nefarious plans. A large number of supernumeraries were necessary, men who little by little were dragged into the crime vortex for meager pay, and, once in volved, were driven to desperate crimes to protect themselves. In numerable county officials and other men—prominent within the county lines, but the merest cogs in the big machine of fraud—were drawn into the common cause of land stealing. Such men composed strong secret, oath-bound rings in the counties of Shannon, Dent, Butler, Wayne, Rey nolds, Iron, Carter, Oregon, Madison, Stoddard and Ripley. Do not understand me to say that ail officials in these counties were cor rupt, for some were honest men who dared not move against the thieves. There were enough of the dishonest ones, however, to control largely in public affairs of the district, and to succeed in fostering a general belief that no man's life was safe -?ho be came informer. Thus matters stood in the fall of 1875; Carl Schurz was secretary of the interior and James J. Brooks was chief of the .secret service, Elmer Washburn having been deposed by President Grant because he had been so vigorous toward some of Grant's friends in the whisky ring scandals. I had been chasing the ever-active but elusive counterfeiter through the cen tral west when iny chief called my at tention to a communication from a resident of Missouri to the depart ment of the interior. This letter pointed out the fact that wholesale frauds were being perpetrated in Mis j souri in land matters, and roughly in- I dicated the method by which the j stealing was being done. Secretary ; Schurz had turned the communication i over to Chief Brooks, and it soon j reached me. j The preliminary investigations were made by me in my capacity of secret service operative, and in making them it became necessary to incur what at that time was an unusually heavy item of expense in having ab stracts of title made. At that time the total government appropriation for the secret division was only 160,000 a year, an amount but SIO,OOO greater than was recently allowed for the search for the plate from which a §IOO counterfeit bill was being made. For this reason arrangements were made ostensibly severing my connec tion with the secret and making me a special agent of the interior depart ment for the purpose of the land fraud investigation. It will be necessary for me, at the hazard of lapsing into technicalities, to set forth briefly the law governing tlie acquisition of the class of lands dealt in by the thieves. This par ticular law went into effect in August, 1854, and was generally known as the "graduation act." In Missouri it came to be known as the "bit a?re" act, this title springing from the fact that the price to be pai.l per acre under the act was 12V£ cents, or a "bit," in Mis souri parlance. The act provided that any citizen of the United States over 21 could make application for 320 acres of land in the prescribed dis trict, and mm t actually settle on the land applied for within six months of application. In one year from the end of this six months' period the settler was required to appear at the land office of the district and make affidavit that he had settled on the land and had improved and cultivated it according to description filed with the registrar at the same time. To the fact of settlement and improve ment. there had to be two witnesses, neighbors, who were required to swear to the facts as sot forth by the appli cant. When tiie original application was made it was customary forward it to Washington, where a patent was ; made out and sent back to the land of fice of the district, where it was held until the applicant appeared with proofs of settlement and improve ment. The graduation act was the out growth of a peculiar physical condi- ; tion. All early settlements of new territory are made along its princi- \ pal waterways. In Missouri the first settlements were made along the Mis sissippi river in Cape Girardeau, New Madrid and Ste. Genevieve counties, the land titles in this district going back to the original Spanish grants. The United States surveys of the ter ritory lying west of this were made in 1820-21, but the lands back from the river had not proved tempting to the pioneer. For a quarter of a cen tury they lay in their virgin condi tion. Congress at that time reflected thQ ; general desire for rapid settlement, i and as an inducement the "bit acre" act was passed. As far back as the j passage of this act there were men who saw the possibilities for land grafting under it. Greer W. Davis, a prominent resident of Missouri, signed thousands of applications con trary to law before the war, and his operations, with those of many others, covered vast areas—so vast, in fact, I that a large part of several counties j was covered. The patents correspond- 1 ing to these applications were sent on from Washington to the land of- j lice then located at Jackson. In 18GI the land office was moved to Ironton, and with it thousands of patents is sued on fraudulent applications. Then came the civil war. In addi- , tion to the fraudulent applications thousands of others had bceu made by bona-fide settlers. Large numbers of these applicants went to the war and either were killed or settled elsewhere I when peace was declared. Their pat- j ents were still pigeonholed in the ironton land office. It is undoubtedly ' true that some of these patents had j been stolen by Gen. Price's raiders j about the time of the battle of Pilot j Knob, but thousands of them remained unclaimed in the office. Such were the j physical and legal conditions in which the greatest conspiracy of the genera- | tion had its roots. I lii the early part of 1880 I registered ; at the primitive tavern at Ironton as i .lames Hal!, of Chicago. Inquiry be ] fore my arrival had convinced me that | there was one man in the district I whom I could trust implicitly, and he I was Bernard Zwart, United States | commissioner for the district, and as j "square-toed" a government official as | it ever has been my good fortune to meet. To him I revealed my true identity; to others I was the repre sentative of a Chicago land syndi ! cate. "You have a prodigious task before I you," was Zwart's introductory re -1 mark. "Not only that, but you are dealing with a clique of men who are deep in the mire of fraud and who will not submit tamely to being hauled into the daylight by the government." I realized this fully. I asked Zwart for such information as he could give. "I first became convinced that whole sale fraud was being committed," he replied, "when, sever.il years ago. Rob ert Lindsay offered to sell me all the patents to 320 acres each I wanted at ten dollars apiece. 1 bought none of them, but have kept half an eye on matters since. Recently Mrs. Sals bury, of Ironton, told me that she had been hired by Robert Lindsay in the writing of deeds in his office in that city. As nearly as I can learn, Lind ' say has six or seven clerks employed ' in making out deeds in his Ironton of fice. and I am convinced that these deeds are not straight." A survey of th-j situation showed me that when Grant in 1869 appointed James Lindsay pension ag°nt. at St.. Louis he made Carroll R. Peck chief , clerk. The relationship between Lind say and Peck was unusual in that Lindsay's second wife was Peck's sis ter, and Peck's wife was Lindsay's daughter, Peck, therefore, being James Lindsay's brother-in-law and son-in law, and Robert Lindsay's brother-in law. [To lie Continued.l INTRODUCING THE SPEAKER Chairman Who Knew Just How to Do It Without Saying' Too Much. How seldom does a speaker get a chairman who lias the wisdom to make the right introductory speech, but here is a model. The chairman, in intro ducing the speaker, said: "Ladies and gentlemen, I have the honor to introduce to you this evening the gentleman who is going to deliver an address to us. He goes to the same church as I do. As a pure citizen I respect him! as a personal friend ot years I have the warmest regard for him; as a neighbor whose vegetable garden adjoins mine—why—why, 1 watch him. lie is a square, true man in honest politics, and I must say he occupies rather a lonesome position. ] So broad, so bountiful in his character that he has never turned a tramp emp ty-handed from his door, but always him a letter of Introduction to me. Pure, honest, incorruptible, that is the speaker of the evening. Such a man in politics is like a bottle of perfumery in a glue factory—it may moderate the stench, but it doesn't destroy it. I ; haven't said any more of him than I should say of myself. Ladies and gon- ' tlemen, our friend will now proceed to j talk to us." Doubtful. "Is he a poet?" "W-e-11, he writes magazine verse." j —Houston Post. Tumors Conquered Without Unqualified Success of Lydia E. PinKham's Vegetable Compound in Cases of Mrs. Fox and Miss Adams. 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