Mississippi River Lynching of 1841

In August 1841, a number of suspected counterfeiters were reportedly rounded up along the Mississippi River and drowned by a group of Arkansas vigilantes. The first report of the event places the number killed at twenty-three, while noting that the vigilantes were continuing to target people. Subsequent reports place the number “either drowned or shot” as high as seventy-five.

The first report of this affair appears in the August 15, 841, Times-Picayune of New Orleans, Louisiana, which cites as the source an unnamed person “who arrived in the city yesterday from Arkansas.” According to this person’s account, the violence occurred between August 5 and 10 in both southern Phillips County, some forty miles below Helena (Phillips County), and Coahoma County, Mississippi, “on the opposite side of the river.” There, a large gang of counterfeiters “had their places of rendezvous and the abodes of their families…to the great and continued annoyance of the citizens and the trading flat boat men on the river.” Aside from counterfeiting, this loose syndicate had “of late turned their criminal industry to horse stealing to such an extent as to rouse the citizens of the whole neighborhood.”

In response to this, there was formed “a volunteer company of about 100 well armed men” led, on the Arkansas side, by Captain Barney Bradford, Mr. J. Lunsford, and someone named only Spear, and on the Mississippi side by Squire Forrer and James Howarton. This group “engaged a trading boat at Helena and hid about 50 men in the store room” before traveling to various stops along the river “where they suspected to fall in with the counterfeiters.” When people came aboard, apparently intending to pay for their goods with counterfeit money, they “were thus taken and secured in the boat.” Eventually, the crew had captured twenty-seven men, nine of whom are named in the account given to the Times-Picayune: Hugh Talley, Lewis Hingston, Andrew McLaughlin, Willis Pollock, Hugh Cotton, Elliott and Robert Hunter (the latter of whom was described as having recently arrived from New York), Joe Merritt, and someone named only McCommick (or McCormick).

After having taken so many prisoners, the crew bound nine of them by hands and feet and drowned them in the river near Island No. 69 “in the presence of two men, Harrod and Burgess, who, it appears, officiated, or at least took an active part in the execution of sentence.” Whether the nine killed were the nine specifically named in the report is left unsaid, although a later account published in the September 4, 1841, edition of Niles’ National Register lists those same nine men as being among the victims.

According to the report, the company of vigilantes was increasing in number, with the intention of proceeding to the mouth of the White River “in pursuit of a certain Merian Wright.” The account says of Wright that, when he arrived at the river town of Napoleon (Desha County) at the mouth of the Arkansas River, “he learned that some six or seven dead bodies had been seen floating on the river opposite that place, and also that some of the counterfeiters who escaped had been seen passing down the river with uncommon speed, in order to evade their pursuers.”

A note appended to the Times-Picayune’s account reads, “We have since been informed that twenty-three persons have been drowned.” The account in the Niles’ National Register implies that all twenty-seven men reported to have been initially captured were drowned. In addition, the report cites unnamed St. Louis, Missouri, newspapers that “contain further particulars, giving a still darker hue to this bloody outrage.” According to these sources, the total number drowned or shot ranged from fifty to seventy-five, “after which the executioners proceeded up and down the river, burning the houses lately occupied by the victims of their vengeance, and ordering their families to leave their homes forever.” No account specifies how many of the victims came from Arkansas and how many came from Mississippi.

The report on this “wholesale” lynching published in the Times-Picayune was reprinted across the United States, from South Carolina to Vermont.

At the end of the account, the unknown author for the Times-Picayune asserted that “there is no people on the face of the globe who should pay more sacred respect to the laws than Americans,” due to the fact that the people themselves are responsible for the laws due to America’s democratic system. The editorial portion then concludes: “Entertaining as we do these feelings, it may be well imagined that we disapprove of and repudiate every instance of Lynch law, though we are not prepared to say that a case may not arise where a palliation, if not a justification, for summary punishment might be advanced.”

On October 6, 1841, the Arkansas Gazette reprinted a letter originally published in the Louisville Advertiser of Kentucky, which reported that “the notorious Hiram Dunn” had been captured in the vicinity of Georgetown, Kentucky. Dunn was specifically described as “one of a gang of pirates and counterfeiters which long infested the banks of the Mississippi above Helena,” adding that he had previously been convicted of murder in Arkansas but had escaped prison. At the time of the letter, he was awaiting extradition to Arkansas, where the governor and others had offered a reward of $1,000 for his capture.

For additional information:
“Arkansas.” Niles’ National Register, September 4, 1841, p. 3.

“Wholesale Application of Lynch Law.” Times-Picayune (New Orleans, Louisiana), August 15, 1841, p. 2.

Staff of the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas