of Insurrection. The sheriff and county commissioners were removed from office—a proceeding later approved by the Idaho Supreme Court; and Dr. Hugh France, an employee of the mine-owners, was appointed “agent for the State of Idaho,” a new office. The candidates for county commissioner who had been defeated at the last election were put in office. Finally, Dr. France, assisted by soldiers, arrested some 800 miners and threw them in the “Bull pen.”

… Eight hundred men were taken from the mines in their working-clothes and driven like sheep into a few box cars and an old barn. For 24 hours they remained without food or drink; and for three weeks they were kept in these places, where there was not a bed and not sufficient room for all of them to lie down at the same time. The food was nauseating …. From this inhuman treatment several of the men died, and many contracted diseases which still linger with them…. The authorities were pressed either to prefer charges, try them, and punish them, or to release them. The local officials insisted that as long as martial law prevailed they had no power to act; while the State and Federal authorities insisted they were only to preserve peace and had no power over the men. Thus they held them for months with these evasive excuses….⁴²

Of the hundreds arrested, only fourteen were convicted of any crime, a seventeen year old boy for murder in the second degree, and the others for obstructing the U.S. mails, though the mail train was declared to have been on time the day of the trouble. A justice of the peace named Flannagan, elected by the people, was arrested and held almost five months because he would not surrender his office on demand of the state officers. He was finally released without being charged with a crime. The defense of these acts by the Attorney-General is a remarkable admission

It was almost impossible not to make a mistake in the arrests in the bull-pen. Some persons were arrested by

Page Number: 

240