Eric Plume’s Reviews > The Story of the Outlaw A Study of the Western Desperado > Status Update

The history of the bloodiest lawlessness of the American past shows continual repetitions. First, liberty is construed to mean license, and license un-rebuked leads on to insolence. Still left un-rebuked, license organizes against the law, taking the form of gangs, factions, bandit clans.

Continued in comments.

This book contains an interview with Pat Garrett. Apparently Garrett (mainly famous as the sheriff who shot Billy the Kid) was still alive when this was written. Kinda cool to read!

Apparently Billy the Kid killed a guy at 12. Specifically, he stabbed a guy with a pocketknife for threatening his mother.

Damn. O.O

The book's narrative devolved into a bunch of territory scuffles. I'm still interested, but not as much as I was.

The frontier antedated anarchy. It broke no social compact, for it had never made one. Its population asked no protection save that afforded under the stern lordship of the six-shooter. The anarchy of the frontier, if we may call it such, was sometimes little more than self-interest against self-interest.

Nice explanation about exactly how "cattle rustling" worked and why otherwise good people fell into it. Very edifying.

Whoa. One Western outlaw apparently resorted to cannibalism. That's some twisted shit right there. O.o

(Also, apologies for the sudden weirdness with "percentage complete" but apparently there's a difference in page-count between my copy and what GR believes is correct. Big surprise there.)

(the Committee of Vigilance) printed a statement covering their actions in detail, showing to any fair-minded man that what they had done was indeed for the good of the whole community, which had been wronged by those whom it had elected to power, those who had set themselves up as masters where they had been chosen as servants.

The entire state, so to speak, was now in the hands of the “Committee of Vigilance,” a body of men, quiet, law-loving, law-enforcing, but of course technically traitors and criminals. The parallel of this situation has never existed elsewhere in American history.

Oh this is FASCINATING. I am officially Sucked In!

Whoa. Apparently there was an outlaw who in the 1830s tried to start a massive slave revolt just to profit off the chaos. And he almost pulled it off.

Why isn't that in the history books??