The Arizona War brings up a fundamental question of justice: can a man take the law into his own hands when the police and courts fail to protect him? As far as Wyatt Earp and his friends were concerned, the answer was “yes.” No court would convict the cowboys, who killed and stole with impunity. The Earps and their faction felt they had been hemmed into a corner and had no choice but to fight back.
But how effective was their response? Did the gunfight at the O.K. Corral and the ensuing Vengeance Ride break the power of the cowboys? By mid-1882, rustling and stagecoach robbing were indeed on the wane in southern Arizona, but it is debatable whether the Earps are to thank for this. Increased patrols by the Mexican army and increased vigilance by ranchers on both sides of the border may be the main reason that the rustlers looked for other work. Southern Arizona was also becoming more populated. Law tightened its grip on the land and the rowdy prospectors and cowboys were being outnumbered by an increasing number of shopkeepers and respectable laborers.
President Chester A. Arthur finally responded to the troubles in southeastern Arizona. His move to get the Posse Comitatus Act amended so the Army could go after outlaws got quashed in the Senate, so on May 3, 1882, he used his presidential authority to threaten the region with martial law if the outlaws didn’t disperse and take up legal pursuits. But the worst of the violence had already ended. On May 21, the Tucson Citizen asserted that “Outlaws remain but are quiet and crime which has run riot in Cochise County for two years has made way for peace and quiet.”
There is also the question of how much vengeance the Vendetta Ride actually accomplished. Ike and Fin Clanton were both very much alive. Johnny Ringo may have died at his own hand. Also, there were numerous other lesser cowboys who made it through unscathed. The reasons for this failure seem to have been lack of planning and willpower. The Earps were reacting to events rather than following a coherent strategy. The Earp faction did not plan and fight a war of annihilation against the cowboys. Instead they hit targets of opportunity and then fled the Arizona Territory when the legal situation became too hot for them. It appears that Wyatt and his friends were satisfied with simply getting rid of a few of their enemies in a tit-for-tat killing. Wyatt did not even eliminate all the main suspects in his brother Morgan’s murder. Ike Clanton, the instigator of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral and an obvious suspect in the shooting of Virgil, was allowed to go free.
Why did the Earp faction stop when it did? This is yet another of the enduring mysteries of this strange episode in Wild West history. There are hints of tension within the ranks, as Doc Holliday referred to in his interview in Denver. The group may have fragmented even before it got out of the Arizona Territory, with some of the lesser members heading their own way. The group had strayed far beyond legality by that point and perhaps some members feared that if it continued, the cowboys would put up a united front and start their own Vendetta Ride.
Thus the Vendetta Ride can be considered a failure. Wyatt Earp did not get the revenge he sought and he had to leave the town where he had established himself. The problem of crime along the border resolved itself through socioeconomic development rather than the blazing of six-shooters. Wyatt Earp and the other gunfighters of the Wild West had become throwbacks from an earlier time.
Tombstone’s Boot Hill as it appears today. (David Lee Summers)