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| December 18, 1896 -- More Trouble at Fort Sheridan (JWB Photo) |
On this date,
December 18, in 1896 a manslaughter trial ended in the courtroom of Judge Peter
S. Grosscup. The defendant was a young
Fort Sheridan private, James D. Allen of the Fifteenth Regiment, who was
accused of killing another private on the post, Daniel M. Call, the previous
March.
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| Judge Peter Grosscup |
What makes the
trial especially interesting is that Judge Grosscup was the same jurist who had issued
the injunction against the Pullman strikers two years earlier, allowing 22
railroads to continue operations.
Leading a boycott of those railroads, Eugene V. Debs, the leader of the
American Railway Union was indicted for refusing to end the job action. A team led by Clarence Darrow defended
him. Darrow was in the courtroom as Private
Allen’s attorney on this day in 1896.
Allen had little
chance of winning. At least four witnesses
had seen him shoot Call, and the facts were indisputable. Apparently at breakfast on the morning of
March 20, 1896 a quarrel began between the two men because one had supposedly
taken the other’s seat at the mess table.
The Chicago Tribune reported, “Call, in a joking way, suggested that it
would be a good plan to settle the matter with the boxing gloves.” [Chicago Tribune, March 21, 1896]
Four other privates in Company A accompanied Allen and Call to the company’s barracks where the Allen and Call put on boxing gloves and began sparring.
It seems that Allen was the better athlete of the two. He was an instructor at the garrison’s gym
and “well-formed, and skilled in difficult feats of agility and strength.” One can
imagine that he would be aggrieved, then, when Call appeared to be “having the
best of the sparring match.”
After five minutes
or so of trading punches, Allen sat down for a few minutes and then announced
that he was going for a drink of water.
When he returned, “he opened the door a little way, and, thrusting his
hand holding the revolver through the space . . . shouted to call, 'You’re a
goner.'"
He was right. He shot Call in the abdomen, and the wounded
man was carried out on a stretcher. He subsequently died. In the struggle for the weapon, Allen was
also shot in the upper leg.
An officer on the
post, Captain Brinkerhoff, said, “The man must be crazy. It has been reported to me since the affair
that he has been acting and talking queerly for the last few days and it is a
deed no sane man would have done. The
dispute which started it was trivial, and onlookers thought the boxing match
was merely a friendly contest.”
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| Colonel R. E. A. Crofton (Buffalo Bill Center of the West) |
The shooting was
the culmination of a series of distrurbing events that had taken place under
the command of Colonel R. E. A. Crofton over the preceding three years. Consider the following:
March 25, 1893:
Soldiers at Fort Sheridan are so alarmed at reports of a sea monster in
Lake Michigan off Fort Sheridan that 200 of them sign a resolution to give up
drinking.
November 1, 1893: Lieutenant
J. A. Maney shoots Captain Alfred Hedberg, allegedly as a result of a quarrel
over the dead man’s wife.
February 22, 1894: A
federal grand jury returns a number of indictments against unlicensed liquor
dealers at Fort Sheridan, Highwood, and Highland Park.
July 18, 1894:
Three soldiers are buried at Fort Sheridan after a caisson explosion on
the south side of Chicago.
January 9, 1895:
Three soldiers are hospitalized, two of them with gunshot wounds, and a fourth
in jail after an altercation with Highwood police.
October 3, 1895:
Lieutenant Samuel S. Pague tries to shoot the post commander, Colonel
Crofton, and is taken to the federal insane asylum in Washington, D. C.
November 1, 1895: Six
enlisted men join in a complaint to the Secretary of War regarding enlisted men
being used as body and house servants.
January 25, 1896: The
Tribune reports on various “scandals and quarrels” that have occurred at Fort
Sheridan under the command of Colonel Crofton.
March 20, 1896:
Private Allen shoots Private Call.
January 16, 1897: A
cavalry trooper stabs an infantryman.
January 17, 1897:
There is a “rebellion” at the fort over the quality of the food that is
being served.
When the guilty
verdict was returned at the trial of Private Allen in December of 1896, Allen
said, “I do not know what to say about the verdict. My friends seemed to be satisfied, and I
guess it is all right.”
Things clearly were
not “all right” at Fort Sheridan, and the Allen manslaughter trial appears to
have been the last straw for the War Department. On
February 4, 1897 the Fort Sheridan post commander, Colonel Crofton, was
forcibly removed from the army by orders of President Cleveland and placed on
the retired list.
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1 comment:
Wow what an old west kind of story. Ft Sheridan had some interesting characters!
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