With the Border Ruffians

"R.H. Williams, a proslavery English adventurer who had joined the KGC...claimed...its real object was to bring about Secession." - Knights of the Golden Circle: Secret Empire (2013)
"R. H. Williams...spent sixteen years out West as lieutenant in the Kansas Rangers and afterwards captain in the Texas Rangers." -The Sphere (1908)
"Ranger R.H. Williams...wrote...frontier Rangers...could not effectively protect the lives of ranchers and their property from the ubiquitous Indians." - The Texas Rangers: Wearing the Cinco Peso (2008)
"R.H. Williams and other local KGCs...gathered in San Antonio's Alamo...to join the expedition...for an invasion of New Mexico." - A Secret Society History of the Civil War (2011)
"R.H. Williams, an immigrant from England, provided another view of ethnic Mexicans in his reminiscences." - Why Texans Fought in the Civil War (2012)

What would compel a recent English immigrant to join pro-slavery "Border Ruffians" in Kansas, and later the Knights of the Golden Circle and Texas Rangers?

In 1919 while back in the relative calm of his native England, Robert Hamilton Williams (born 1831) would publish an account of his wild times as border ruffian, Knight of the Golden Circle, vigilante, cattleman, and Texas Ranger in his narrative "With the Border Ruffians; Memories of the Far West."

Landing in Virginia in 1852, Williams started two years later for Leavenworth Kansas with his three slaves Ann, Shad and Pete.

Being a slave owner and consequently "sound on the goose question," he was made a lieutenant in Atchison's "Kansas Rangers," and took an active part in searching passing steamers for Free Soilers going to Kansas and in the attack on Lawrence.

Williams' intriguing narrative includes his experiences as a saloonkeeper, gambler, vigilante, Knight of the Golden Circle, Captain of the Texas Rangers, cattleman and Indian fighter.

Later Williams would note that he had chosen the wrong side of the conflict over slavery. In his conclusion, Williams writes:

"It was in July 1868 that I finally returned home ; and now, looking back through the mists of 36 years on the scenes I have attempted to depict, they seem almost like the phantoms of a dream. But they were real enough in the enacting, and, as I sit by my fireside and recall the memories of the past, I am filled with thankfulness that I am alive to tell the tale, which may be of interest to those who come after me ; since in these latter days the world's boundaries have grown narrow, life is more or less stereotyped, and the dramas I witnessed in Virginia, Kansas, and Texas can never be re-enacted."

Dettagli