The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 72, July 1968 - April, 1969 Page: 399
498 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Lady Luck and Her Knights of the Royal Flush
Although many members of the bar, justices of the peace, and
judges were not averse to nipping from a bottle and most certainly
enjoyed wagering at cards, one individual distinguished himself at
these recreations. He was Judge Benjamin Johnson of the superior
court of the Territory of Arkansas. One election day in Little Rock in
1829, the judge, wandering through a crowd which was listening to
a political speech, told a citizen, in a rude and imperative manner,
to be silent. The man refused. Several witnesses later testified, "The
Judge being intoxicated, drew his knife and in violent terms abused
and menaced him and ordered him to be silent and threatened him
if he did not, he would kill him-and drew his arm back with his
knife in his hand in a sabbing [sic] attitude." The judge's friends
came and took him away. All this, of course, is not particularly start-
ling to anyone knowing the antics of the frontier bar and bench, but
the story is not quite ended, for one normally does not expect a judge
to fleece another judge. One evening, so the sworn testimony goes,
Judge Johnson called on James Lemon, who, with two other gentle-
men, operated a faro bank in Little Rock. The judge proposed to
bring his colleague, Judge Joseph Seldon, to the faro establishment,
induce him to bet, and to attempt to take his money from him. John-
son, in exchange for his friendly guide service, was to collect one-
fourth of all Seldon lost. Lemon agreed, Johnson steered Seldon to
the game, Seldon lost three hundred dollars, and Johnson received
his one-fourth."
The law, no matter how strict, frequently came out a poor second
when pitted against practice, for Americans were addicted to wagering,
were antagonistic to restrictions on their personal behavior, and were
convinced that it was their inalienable right to go to hell in any way
Governor Wm. S. Fulton of Arkansas: "The practice of gaming is decidedly condemned,
and the insufficiency of laws in restraint of it being taken for granted, 'anti-gaming
societies' are recommended.... " See also John C. Parish, Robert Lucas (Iowa City,
1907), 18o-181, 215. Lucas, governor of the Territory of Iowa in 1838, addressed the
legislature and denounced the two vices of gambling and intemperance in severe terms.
"These two vices," he said, "may be considered the fountains from which almost every
other crime proceeds ..." Ibid., 18o.
16Clarence Edwin Carter (ed.), The Territorial Papers of the United States (24 vols.;
Washington, D. C., 1934-1962), XXI, 623-626. See Mary Wheelhouse Berthel, Horns of
Thunder: The Life and Times of James M. Goodhue Including Selections from His
Writings (St. Paul, 1948), 64, where the outspoken Goodhue, editor of the St. Paul
Minnesota Pioneer, castigates a United States marshal and a territorial judge: "We
never knew an instance of a debt being paid by either of them, unless it be a gambling
debt.. .."299
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 72, July 1968 - April, 1969, periodical, 1969; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117146/m1/353/: accessed May 20, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.