The prison letters of John Wesley Hardin
To Jane:
My knowledge of wayward, forward men and women is that they lead wicked, miserable lives and die wretched deaths. The gambler dies a blackleg, the prostitute dies a whore. The thief falls into a thief’s grave, and the sepulcher of the murderer is the assassin’s sepulcher. This is the general rule. Their ways are hard, their days are sombrous and sad, their nights starless and sleepless; their hope for time and eternity has faded away and they await their terrible doom with trembling and fear because their end is dreadful and certain and terrific.…
To John W. Hardin, Jr:
Son, should any lecherous treacherous scoundrel, no matter what garb he wears or what insignia he boasts, assault the character and try to debauch the mind and heart of either your sisters or mother, I say son dont make any threats, just quietly get your gun, a double-barrel. Let it be a good gun: have no other kind. And go gunning for the enemy of mankind, and when you find him just deliberately shoot him to Death as you would a mad dog or wild beast. Then go and surrender to the first sheriff you find….
To his family:
Dear Jane, I have selected several pocket verses from my thesaurus; their sentiments are mine. I hope that each of my dear children will adopt them as theirs and learn each verse by heart—and as am earnest of this, I ask each to inform me of this fact at their earliest opportunity. Assuring you of my unalloyed, unwavering love, and wishing for your prosperity in the fullest sense, I close by sending each of our loving children a kiss and ask you to accept as proxy in my behalf. JWH
MOLLY: “Keep thy passions down however dear; thy swaying pendulum betwixt a smile and a tear.”
JOHN, JOHN W. HARDIN JR: “The trust that’s given, guard; to yourself be just; for live how we may, yet die we must.”
SWEET LITTLE JANE: “Soar not too high to fall, but Stoop to rise; we wasted grow of all we despise.”
His transformation, according to officials at Huntsville, had been truly miraculous. Despite having been a most intractable convict during his first few years in the penitentiary, he had, after thirteen years, become a model prisoner. He was held up to the other inmates as supreme proof and example of what a man might make of himself behind bars if he truly tried. The prison superintendent had informed Wesley that if he persisted in his remarkable reform, he would likely be set free within the next two years.
Wesley was elated by the prospect; but his elation was shadowed by another ominous legal cloud. Namely: he was still under indictment in DeWitt County for having killed a man there twenty years before, a deputy sheriff named Morgan. It was quite possible that he would be granted an early termination of his present sentence only to be put right back in prison upon conviction for the Morgan killing.
His plight was brought to my attention by Billy Teagarden, whose father had been my dear friend for many years. Billy and Wesley had been friends since boyhood and had been corresponding with each other of late, and Billy advised me that Wesley wished to retain me as legal counsel in the matter of the Morgan killing. I had to confess admiration for Wesley Hardin’s astonishing feat of character reformation, and I said I would be pleased to represent him. Shortly thereafter I received a most impressive letter from Wesley himself. That he was no ordinary convict was immediately evident in his intelligent composition and ready grasp of legal principle. Clearly his study of law had taken effect.
I visited him in Huntsville, and we put our heads together and devised a strategy. He agreed that if the DeWitt charge would be reduced to manslaughter, and if the judge would permit his sentence (normally two to five years for manslaughter) to run concurrently with the one he was already serving, then he would plead guilty as charged—even though, as he repeatedly assured me, he was not in the least guilty. “That man Morgan forced my hand, Judge Fly,” Wesley told me. “He gave me no choice but to defend myself, which is something I always could do real well.”
I assured him I was certain the incident transpired exactly as he claimed, but it was possible a jury in Cuero would not share my certainty. It was because of a jury’s unpredictable nature that he was willing to plead guilty to a crime he did not commit—if the conviction would not add to his time in prison. The scales of Lady Justice sometimes take ironic tilts.
I discussed the matter with Bubba Anderson, the state attorney in Cuero, with whom I happened to be friends. Because Bubba had no ax to grind with Wesley—and because he wanted to rid his old caseload of the Morgan killing—and because even a manslaughter conviction of Hardin would look good on his prosecutorial record and improve his chances of achieving the political future he was after—he was willing to accept the plea bargain. Bubba then went to see the judge who would hear the case—and because Bubba and the judge were drinking companions and long-time associates at a poker club, they had no difficulty reaching an accord.
Once everything was in proper legal alignment to assure a favorable dispensation of justice in the matter of the Morgan killing, I delivered the news to Wesley. He was quite gratified, of course, so much so that he arranged for a cousin in Gonzales County to meet in a certain Cuero saloon with a representative of the DeWitt County Council for Law and Order and deliver to him a cash contribution toward the Council’s good works. The Council for Law and Order was an unofficial organization whose small but influential membership was comprised of some of the most important judges in the region, including the judge who was to hear Wesley’s case in Cuero. Another undeniable truth about the scales of Justice is that nothing so emphatically affects their tilt as the impressive heft of gold.
* * *
The trial was held in Cuero on New Year’s Day of 1892, and proceeded exactly as arranged. The whole thing took less than twenty minutes. We entered a plea of guilty and the judge handed down a sentence of two years’ imprisonment to run concurrent with sentence being served.
That trip to Cuero was the first time Wesley had been outside the walls of Huntsville in more than thirteen years. Immediately prior to the trial, his family was permitted to visit him for a few minutes in a courtroom side chamber. I was in the chamber with him, discussing some last-minute points pertaining to the proceedings, when a deputy came in and announced they had arrived.
Suddenly Wes seemed nervous and unsure of himself. It had been a long time since they’d last seen each other. He had shown me photographs of his children which his wife had sent to him over the years—but it is one thing to see children grow up in a sequence of pictures, and quite another to come face-to-face with them after long separation. The only photograph he had of Jane was one which showed the two of them standing arm-in-arm in Jackson Square in New Orleans. She was smiling widely, her hat in her hands, her eyes happy, her light hair lifting in a breeze and shining in the sun. Wesley looked lean and grinned confidently under his cocked hat, his thumbs hooked in his vest.