Fort Smith Double Execution of April 23, 1886

Two men were hanged at Fort Smith (Sebastian County) on April 23, 1886, after being convicted in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas of committing murders in the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).

James Wasson and Johnny McLaughlin went to a home near Harney in the Chickasaw Nation in November 1881 looking for a man named Henry Martin and were told that he had gone to a nearby store. The two drunken men then rode toward the store, and shortly afterward gunshots were heard. When a group of men went to see what had happened, they found Martin shot to death. Though Wasson and McLaughlin were immediate suspects, they remained free for four years, in part because of Wasson’s reputation as a desperado.

On July 28, 1884, Wasson was part of a posse led by Almerine Watkins that was searching for some horse thieves. After finding the horses, the posse members drank whiskey in celebration, and Wasson and Watkins got into an argument in which the latter was shot dead. Watkins’s widow offered a $1,000 reward for Wasson’s capture, and a Native American police officer apprehended him on September 28, 1884. Initially jailed in Dallas, Texas, Wasson was taken to Fort Smith on December 2, 1884, where he was indicted in the murders of Martin and Watkins.

Mrs. Watkins hired several prominent Arkansas lawyers to assist in Wasson’s prosecution, and they determined that the case was stronger in Martin’s murder. Though he claimed he killed Watkins in self-defense and that McLaughlin had killed Martin, he was convicted of murder on July 30, 1885. (McLaughlin was also tried in Martin’s death. After two trials ended in hung juries, he would be acquitted in a third trial in November 1886.)

Joseph Jackson, a Black man living in the Indian Territory, was, according to newspaper accounts, notorious for abusing his wife. After becoming enamored of another woman, Jackson shot his wife with a double-barreled shotgun as she washed dishes in their house. Claiming his wife was sick and needed help, he hired another woman to do housework and feigned shock when they discovered his wife’s corpse. Indicted for murder on July 8, 1884, he was convicted after a seven-day trial in September 1885.

On January 30, 1886, Judge Isaac Parker sentenced Wasson, Jackson, and six other men to be hanged on April 23, 1886. President Grover Cleveland commuted six of the sentences to life in prison. Though the other two anticipated commutation, even refusing to meet with spiritual advisors, the president declined to intervene. Their lawyers telegraphed Congressman John Rogers seeking last-minute intervention, and their hangings were delayed until 2:00 p.m. to allow him to respond, but he never did.

With the last hope gone, on April 23, 1886, the condemned men dressed in the new clothes in which they would be buried and bade farewell to their fellow inmates. After asking a deputy if he was indeed doomed, Jackson went to his bed and retrieved a piece of a sawblade, trying unsuccessfully to cut his own throat. The two were then escorted to the gallows “through a line of several hundred spectators.” Once on the scaffold, Wasson requested the services of a minister, who conducted a brief ceremony.

Jackson and Wasson spoke from the scaffold, offering no information on their crimes, though Wasson continued claiming his innocence in Martin’s death and predicted that McLaughlin would be cleared. Then, “the drop was sprung at 3:46 p.m., and both men died without a struggle.” They were buried in Fort Smith’s Oak Cemetery.

For additional information:
Akins, Jerry. Hangin’ Times in Fort Smith: A History of Executions in Judge Parker’s Court. Little Rock: Butler Center Books, 2012.

“A Day for Hangings.” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 24, 1886, p. 5.

“Fort Smith.” Fort Worth Daily Gazette, July 31, 1885, p. 4.

“The Gallows.” Austin American-Statesmen, April 24, 1886, p. 1.

“Gallows Work.” Arkansas Gazette, April 24, 1886, p. 1.

Riley, Michael Owen. “Capital Punishment in Oklahoma: 1835–1966,” PhD dissertation, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, August 2012, online at https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/518/ (accessed March 19, 2026).

“Six Murderers.” Arkansas Gazette, January 31, 1886, p. 1.

Mark K. Christ
Little Rock, Arkansas