Leander H. McNelly
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Leander Harvey McNelly ( March 12, 1844-September 4, 1877) was a Confederate officer and Texas Ranger captain. McNelly is often remembered for leading the "Special Force", a quasi-military branch of the Texas Rangers that operated in southern Texas in 1875-76.
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[edit] Civil War service
McNelly was a native of Virginia, and settled with his family in Texas in 1860. At a very young age he joined the Confederate army and proved himself on several occasions, reaching the rank of Captain of scouts. On one instance, McNelly was dispatched with seventeen men by General Walker to scout the strength of Federal forces. After discovering that the Union force was in excess of 700, McNelly began having his detachment ride in a circle, developing dust that indicated his force was almost equal in size.
[edit] Lawman career
After the war, he married Carey Cheek, of Washington County, Texas, and dedicated himself for a time to farming. From July 1, 1870 to April 22, 1873 he served in the Texas State Police. The Texas State Police were, at that time, described as an ineffective force, that accomplished little in the way of enforcing the law. On August 26th, 1870, McNelly was present with a posse commanded by Captain Jack Helms when posse members killed two men that were in their custody, rustlers Will Kelly and Henry Kelly. McNelly was said to have attempted to stop the killings. A Lieutenant named W.T. Pritchett was well known for ransacking settlers homes, and another member of the force, Mitchell Cotton, killed an unarmed man in Groesbeck, Texas, for apparently no reason at all. [1] It was possibly because of this lawlessness, carried out by the lawmen themselves, that McNelly left the force.
In 1874, the newly elected governor, Richard Coke, took office. One of his first orders of business was to restore stability to an area that had become virtually lawless. He created two branches of the Texas Rangers, a Frontier Battalion under the command of Major John B. Jones, and a designated Special Force, commanded by McNelly. This special group had the specific task of bringing order to the Nueces Strip, a hotbed of cattle thievery and banditry, where the local Mexican leader Juan Cortina was conducting periodic guerrilla operations against the local ranchers. Cortina had been previously defeated by Texas Rangers, largely due to the superb leadership of Ranger Captain John "Rip" Ford, when he led a company of Rangers during an attack by Cortina.
[edit] Subduing bandit gangs, suppressing feuds
McNelly's methods have been questioned throughout the years, and although he recovered much stolen cattle from the Texan Ranches while aggressively dealing with lawlessness on the Mexican border, he also gained a reputation of taking part in many illegal executions and to confessions forced from prisoners by extreme means. McNelly also made himself famous for disobeying direct orders from his superiors on several occasions, and breaking through the Mexican frontier for self-appointed law enforcement purposes. His actions proved to be effective, however, and he was responsible for putting an end to the troubles with Mexican bandits and cattle rustlers along the Rio Grande that were commonplace during the 1850-75 period.
It was in 1875 that McNelly was faced with how to eliminate several Mexican bandit gangs. The first of these was Juan Nepomuceno Cortina, who was a General in the Mexican army during the Mexican-American War. Cortina had for years raided settlements in the Brownsville, Texas area, always retreating back across the Rio Grande River to avoid Texas law enforcement. Cortina was from a wealthy family that owned better than 260,000 acres of land in that area, which had once included the location of the town of Brownsville. Cortina commanded a force of in excess of 2,000 armed Mexican outlaws and gunmen.
Further north up river he was faced with a gang led by Juan Flores Salinas. This gang did not have the manpower of the Cortina's gang, but was nonetheless as ruthless. This gang was headquartered at Camargo, Mexico, directly across the border from the US Cavalry outpost of Ringgold Barracks, near Rio Grande City.
From American outlaws, McNelly's greatest outlaw rival was Texas gunman King Fisher and his band of outlaws. Although notable as rustlers, Fisher's band rarely raided US civilian populations, concentrating more on rustling cattle from their Mexican counterparts across the border. This added to tensions among the Mexican population, and gave an excuse to Mexican bandits for their raids into the United States.
His first order of business was to quell the Sutton-Taylor feud in DeWitt County. Captain Jack Helms, under whom McNelly had served with the State Police, had been previously allied with Bill Sutton of the Sutton clan, a known cattle thief. Helms had been shot and killed in July, 1873, in Albuqurque, Texas, by known gunman John Wesley Hardin, a cousin to the Taylor clan. The two men killed by the State Police, Will and Henry Kelly, had been cousins to the Taylor's. By the end of 1874, McNelly and his Special Force of Ranger's had all but ended the bloody feud, which claimed the lives of more than 150 people by its end, many of those killed by the Rangers.
McNelly now moved south to end the bandit gangs that had ran unchecked over that area for several years. Within one years time, McNelly had completed destroyed both the bandit bands of Cortina and Salinas during repeated actions where McNelly disobeyed orders and took his force across the border into Mexico. King Fisher's gang dispersed and Fisher went into retirement as a rancher, following a Ranger raid on his ranch during which McNelly arrested Fisher, and the two came to an agreement that his over-border raids would cease. Fisher later became the Sheriff of Uvalde County.
[edit] Palo Alto
The first major gunfight between the Rangers, and the Bandits occured in June of 1875. McNelly’s Rangers surprised a group of sixteen Mexican cattle thieves---and one white man---driving about 300 head of cattle toward the Rio Grande, toward Juan Cortina, and toward the steamer for Cuba. They were Cortina’s hand-picked men, who had boasted they could cope with any Rangers or vigilantes. Captain McNelly issued his orders. "Don’t shoot to the left or the right. Shoot straight ahead. And don’t shoot till you’ve got your target good in your sights. Don’t walk up on a wounded man. Pay no attention to a white flag. That’s a mean trick bandits use on green hands. Don’t touch a dead man, except to identify him."
Spying the Rangers, the Mexicans took flight, driving the herd before them at a frenzied pace, until they reached a little island in the middle of the salt marsh. The Mexicans then turned and waited for the Rangers, who were right on their heels, to cross the shallow, muddy lagoon. But McNelly anticipated the ambush and stopped to issue his pep talk, "Boys, across this resaca are some outlaws that claim they’re bigger than the law---bigger than Washington law, bigger than Texas law. This won’t be a standoff or a dogfall. We’ll either win completely, or we’ll lose completely."
The battle, which has since been called the "Red Raid" or the "Second Battle of the Palo Alto," waged nearly all day in a succession of single hand-fights which left dead Mexicans and horses covering a swath through the prairie about two miles wide and six miles long. All the Mexican drovers were killed, including the gringo, Jack Ellis, who had beaten and mistreated the shopkeeper’s wife at Nuecestown. Two hundred and sixty-five head of stolen stock were rounded up and eventually returned to their rightful owners in the neighborhood of the King Ranch country. Nine of the fourteen saddles recovered turned out to be the Dick Heyes saddles stolen in the raid on Nuecestown three months earlier.
One Ranger, eighteen-year-old L. Berry Smith, who wanted to be in on the action, also died in the fighting. He was the son of camp cook D. R. Smith and the youngest Ranger ever to die in the line of duty. Smith was apparently too inexperienced to fully appreciate McNelly’s terse orders because he got too close to a wounded Mexican bandit, and the bandit killed the boy before Smith even knew what was happening. Berry Smith was buried in the northwest corner of the Brownsville cemetery on June 16 with full military honors. The funeral was recorded as one of the finest the city had ever seen.
[edit] The Las Cuevas War
Leander McNelly's most infamous exploit, was his invasion of LasCuevas, Mexico to get back stolen cattle. McNelly and his Rangers entered Mexico 20 November 1875. Under cover of brush and scrub oak, they made their way on foot to General Juan Salinas’ stronghold at the Rincon de Cucharras outpost of the Las Cuevas ranch, which in plain English translates to "the spoon corner." The ensuing shoot-out pitted Rangers against an estimated four hundred of the bandit king’s men. Totally outnumbered and fearing the mounted bandits would surround his men, McNelly ordered his men to pull back to the river to make a stand. At the river, about half the 24th Infantry and the 8th Cavalry under Lieutenant Colonel James F. Randlett had lined up on the Texas side. In the melee that followed, with the aid of the Army firing their Gatling gun on the bandits, General Juan Salinas, Alcalde of Camargo, and eighty of his banditos died on the riverbank.
The fracas wasn’t over. It was a Mexican standoff with the bandits retreating to regroup after their leader’s death, and McNelly refusing to back down from his demands on the return of the stolen cattle. Later that afternoon, Major A. J. Alexander from Ringgold Barracks arrived with a missive from Colonel Potter at Fort Brown, located on the Rio Grande at Brownville:
"Advise Captain McNelly to return at once to this side of the river. Inform him that you are directed not to support him in any way while he remains on Mexican territory. If McNelly is attacked by Mexican forces on Mexican soil, do not render him any assistance. Let me know if McNelly acts on this advice." McNelly carefully read the telegram and then issued four terse words. "The answer is no."
At sundown, another message arrived: "Major Alexander, commanding: Secretary of War [William W.] Belknap orders you to demand McNelly return at once to Texas. Do not support him in any manner. Inform the Secretary if McNelly acts on these orders and returns to Texas. Signed, Colonel Potter." In less than a minute, Captain McNelly penned his now famous reply: "Near Las Cuevas, Mexico, Nov. 20 1875. I shall remain in Mexico with my rangers and cross back at my discretion. Give my compliments to the Secretary of War and tell him and his United States soldiers to go to hell. Signed, Lee H. McNelly, commanding."
After a rested night’s sleep, Captain McNelly moved his men directly opposite Camargo on the Texas side of the river. It was now Sunday, and the stolen cattle had been moved and penned in a corral, but still on the Mexican side of the border and under guard by plenty of armed horsemen riding herd. Diego Garcia, a Camargo official next in charge to the dead Alcalde, promised to move the cattle across by three o’clock in the afternoon.
McNelly, however, was too smart to trust the Mexicans. He smelled a trap, and in figuring out how to handle it, he pulled his men to Rio Grande City, where they leisurely relaxed while he made his plans. At three o’clock, he made his move.
He returned to the ferry landing, took twelve or thirteen Rangers, not including himself (the accounts differ), and crossed the river in a rowboat in another invasion of Mexico. He also took along five horses. The "Death Squad," as they have come to be known, were composed of Captain McNelly, Lieutenant Thomas Robinson, Sergeant George A. Hall, Sergeant John Barclay Armstrong, Sergeant R. P. Orrell, Corporal William L. Rudd, and Rangers Robert H. Pitts, William Crump Callicott, Thomas McGovern, Horace G. Mabin, Thomas Sullivan acting as interpreter, George Durham, and Jesus Sandoval, also an interpreter. James R. Wofford is listed in one account as also being along. It is known for certain that the five mounted men were Robinson, Sandoval, Hall, Armstrong, and Orrell.
The "Death Squad" marched up the riverbank to the customs house, demanded the cattle, and when the Mexican Captain stalled by politely saying they didn’t do business on Sunday, the "Squad" promptly took the Mexican Captain prisoner. McNelly then hauled the prisoner to the Texas side and told the captured Mexican leader to get the cattle started within the hour or he would die.
Instead of 250 head returning to Texas, more than 400 were crossed back. Nearly every brand in the Nueces Strip was in the herd, from the King Ranch’s "Running W" up near Corpus Christi to Hale and Parker’s "Half-moon" brand over near Brownsville. Later, at the spot where Juan Salinas died, Mexico erected a stone marker:
To citizen
JUAN FLORES SALINAS
Who fighting
Died for his country
November 19
1875
[edit] Death
McNelly suffered from tuberculosis, and retired in 1876 due to a deteriorating health. He died on September 4 of the following year in Burton, Texas, survived by his wife, Carey Cheek McNelly, and two children.
[edit] Films
The film Texas Rangers (2001) portrays the exploits of McNelly, who is played by actor Dylan McDermott.
[edit] Trivia
In World War II the United States liberty ship SS L. H. McNelly was named in his honor.
