New Mexico’s Old Times & Old Timers

NEW MEXICO’S OLD TIMES & OLD TIMERS

by Don Bullis, New Mexico Author DonBullis.biz

Frank W. Angel

Famed for his short visit to New Mexico

Some incidents of violence in territorial New Mexico were parochial and the importance of them did not extend beyond jurisdiction in which they occurred. Some, though, had international consequences and that was the case in the murder of John Henry Tunstall on February 18, 1878 in Lincoln County.

Young Tunstall—he was 24 years of age when he was killed—was a British subject who had arrived in New Mexico in 1876. He intended to make his fortune in Lincoln County, with the help of his father’s money. His problem was that he went into competition with the local Murphy-Dolan-Riley mercantile interests, and those gentlemen were associated with the famed Santa Fe Ring, which had considerable influence on the territory’s economy at the time. For some of the shorter-sighted members of Murphy’s group, killing Tunstall seemed the easiest way to eliminate a competitor who had become a thorny, and costly, problem. Big mistake.

The federal government in Washington, D. C. had been hearing bad things about New Mexico for some time. There was a land-ownership dispute going on in Colfax County; Governor Samuel B. Axtell and United States District Attorney Thomas B. Catron were both accused of corruption; and then a British subject was wantonly murdered in Lincoln County!

Sir Edward Thornton, British minister to the United States was distressed. Something had to be done!

President Rutherford B. Hayes undertook to learn the facts of the situation in New Mexico, and he had just the man for the job: a young New York attorney, Frank Warner Angel (1845-1906).* Angel had been a strong Hayes supporter and he’d worked diligently in the presidential campaign of 1876. After Hayes was elected, Angel made it known to the president that he desired appointment to a government post in the West. Officially, both the Department of Justice and the Department of the Interior appointed Angel and designated him as “special agent.” He was instructed to look into all the troubles mentioned above.

Angel arrived in Santa Fe in early May 1878. He conferred with Axtell and Catron, both of whom were reported to have been uncooperative, probably because, as Republicans, they resented being hectored by the minion of a Republican president. Angel was said to have been angry at his treatment when he set out for Lincoln County on the 10th of the same month.

It is important to put Angel’s visit in perspective. When he arrived in Lincoln, Billy the Kid, in the company of several other men, had already killed Buck Morton, Frank Baker, William McCloskey, Sheriff William Brady, Deputy George Hindman, and Andrew “Buckshot” Roberts, all in revenge for Tunstall’s murder. And the climax of the Lincoln County War—the so-called Five Days Battle of July 15-19, 1878—had not yet occurred when Angel left the county.

It should not be supposed that Angel left Lincoln to avoid the conflict. He perceived that his investigative work there was done; that he had all of the information he required from Lincoln County and he needed to visit Colfax County before he headed east.

Angel returned to Washington after spending about four months in New Mexico. He set about writing his reports but by the time he personally briefed President Hayes, Axtell had been suspended as governor and General Lew Wallace had been appointed to that office. Tom Catron had also resigned as United States District Attorney for the territory.

Not everyone was happy with Angel’s work or the changes he seemed to have recommended. The Las Vegas Gazette for September 14, 1878 declaimed thus: “We infer from the action of the president directly after the return of Frank Warren [sic] Angel to the capital that the quarrel between him and Gov. Axtell had more to do with the latter’s removal than any misdemeanors in office. Mr. Angel is a satrap of Carl Schurz [Secretary of the Interior] sent out [with] instructions that if any one presumed to differ with you, ‘refer them to me.’ Angel got mad, went off huffy, reported Axtell, and Schurz at once recommended removal. This remarkable power was vested

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