< PREVIOUS ] [ 1993 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
The eyes of the world have moved from Somalia and Bosnia to Moscow, where the president and parliament have taken a dynamic approach toward resolving governmental gridlock.
Much the same thing happened in Denver a century ago, with troops from one governmental faction marching down Colfax Avenue to take a government building held by armed supporters of another faction.
Colorado history buffs know the incident as the City
Hall War.
The war started with Davis H. Bloody
Bridles
Waite, a Populist from Aspen who was elected
governor in 1892 during a brief but energetic Western
rebellion against industrial capitalism.
His sanguine nickname came from a speech in the summer
of1893: It is better, infinitely better, that blood
should flow to the horses' bridles rather than our national
liberties should be destroyed
by the money
power.
Something of a moralist, Waite was appalled by the corruption in Denver gambling dens and bordellos operating in open violation of state law. He arranged matters so that the governor, rather than the Denver mayor, would appoint the city police and fire boards.
Then he installed his own people to cleanse the city of vice. Alas, Waite's appointees enjoyed graft as much as their predecessors. Waite tried to remove two of them.
Refusing to leave, they rounded up about 300 policemen and firemen, handed out arms and converted City Hall into a fort bristling with rifles. Waite could not ignore this challenge to his authority.
The governor called out the state militia, which arrived with the Gatling guns and cannons that had been deployed on striking miners before Waite's term.
It seemed indeed that blood would flow to the horses'
bridles.
In the words of Eugene Fowler: Thousands of
citizens gathered in lower Fourteenth Street to attend the
antics.... The citizens never -- to my knowledge -- failed
to risk life or limb in behalf of witnessing a lynching....
After a fray there usually were three lists of casualties:
one for each of the two contending forces, and a third list
-- often the largest one -- that of innocent bystanders
maimed or slain.
Being fearful of possibly injuring those bystanders, Governor Waite backed off In the situation, and a few weeks later, the courts upheld his power to remove his appointees. They left peaceably, perhaps to retire on the graft they had collected during their brief tenures.
Perhaps there's a lesson in that for Boris Yeltsin, but it should be remembered that Waite had a functioning and somewhat respected judicial system at hand, whereas Yeltsin's predicament is different. As to who won in that 1893 war between Colorado and Denver, the governor no longer names or removes Denver officials.
Indeed, the governor works well with the metropolis --
selling a new airport, mediating teacher contract disputes
and promoting a Colorado
Convention Center.
Some might wonder why Denver needs a mayor when there's Roy Romer, but then again, remember that Davis Waite never got reelected.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1993 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >