Hellraisers Journal: Editorial from The Rocky Mountain News: “Adjutant General Sherman Bell should be relieved and removed from command of the troops at Cripple Creek.”-Dangerous and Unfit

From The Rocky Mountain News of September 14, 1903:

Editorial Page:

BELL SHOULD BE REMOVED

ADJUTANT GENERAL SHERMAN BELL should be relieved and removed from command of the troops at Cripple Creek. His mental characteristics are such as to make him an unsafe and even dangerous person to hold that position. This has been shown by his conduct since he went to the district in his disregard of the law and the most ordinary rights of citizens.

The troops have been used to make domiciliary visits, to enter peaceable meetings by force of arms and to make arrests without warrant or indictment and without giving information to the persons arrested or to the public of the reasons of the arrests. Some even are being held forcibly in durance without charge of any kind against them.

Granting that the governor was sincere in the belief that the troops were necessary in the district, his first great mistake was to consent that the cost of sending them should be paid by one of the parties to the controversy. The officer in command looks upon himself and his troops as in a sense the employees of that party, and it is not to be doubted that the mine owners have driven Bell to do illegal acts which have marked his sway. He and they protest that there is no martial law; while martial law prevails in fact almost to the last extreme. When men are arrested and place in confinement without charges against them, solely by the order of the general commanding, it is martial law.

The troops of the state when called out on such occasion, should act solely as assistants to the civil authorities in preserving the peace. The officer in command has no right whatever to undertake to set aside civil authority and make his own whims the sole law.

The officer in command in Cripple Creek should be calm, self-controlled and responsible, and as Bell is not qualified in any of those particulars, the governor should repair, so far as possible, the harm already done by removing him at once. A man of demonstrated unfitness should not occupy a place of such great trust at a time when so much is involved as is the case in the Cripple Creek district at the present time.

[Emphasis added.]

 

Quote Mother Jones, Powers of Privilege ed, Ab Chp III
https://www.iww.org/history/library/MotherJones/autobiography/3

The Cripple Creek Strike, 1903-1904
-by Emma F. Langdon
Victor, CO, 1904
p117-121 
https://archive.org/details/cripplecreekstri00lang/mode/1up?view=theater
https://archive.org/details/cripplecreekstri00lang/page/117/mode/1up?view=theater

Denver Post of Sept 15, 1903
“Does Gov. Peabody Really Know What He Is Doing?”
https://www.genealogybank.com/doc/newspapers/image/v2%3A12C7581AC4BD0728%40GB3NEWS-13370770B03074D0%402416373-1336107D0A592B80%403-1336107D0A592B80%40?h=1&fname=&mname=&lname=&rgfromDate=09/01/1903&rgtoDate=09/30/1903&formDate=&formDateFlex=exact&dateType=range&kwinc=Does%20Gov.%20Peabody%20Really%20Know%20What%20He%20Is%20Doing&kwexc=&sid=adksojxtdonzvuozeycgkuvsqiotajzy_wma-gateway005_1696008128286

 

The Rocky Mountain News of September 16, 1903

https://www.genealogybank.com/doc/newspapers/image/v2%3A12C601A5C4B97518%40GB3NEWS-146D8C78C65D70B8%402416374-146BD49FE79CD2C8%403-146BD49FE79CD2C8%40?h=4&fname=&mname=&lname=&kwinc=LIABLE%20IN%20DAMAGES%20peabody&kwexc=&sort=old&rgfromDate=09/01/1903&rgtoDate=09/30/1903&formDate=&formDateFlex=exact&dateType=range&processingtime=&addedFrom=&addedTo=&sid=xdjddghdvslmhmvjqnsimeteyfubrngk_wma-gateway010_1696009507507