

The Johnson County War: 1892 Invasion of Northern Wyoming - dredmorbius
http://www.wyohistory.org/essays/johnson-county-war

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DanielBMarkham
I love studying how large groups of people form and operate, and this was
fascinating.

Especially fascinating to me wasn't the "Invasion", but the political
aftermath.

The Republicans were coming off a successful invasion and conquest of the
rebellious south. They ran the political tables, both locally and nationally.
Since the same party had been in charge over 20 years at this point[1], there
was deep corruption at all levels of government, as indicated in the article.
(Rousing the president in the middle of the night to raise an army to free
criminals that are your friends! Wow!).

So local voters, sick of the shenanigans, kicked the Republicans out. But the
incoming party was terribly inept, perhaps because they'd never been in power.
So they were a disaster. Then the voters -- who obviously understood what a
bunch of bozos they were going to get -- voted the Republicans back in power!

You'd think that this would be an example of democracy gone bad, or how voting
doesn't matter. But it didn't work out that way. Seeing the shift in the
political wind, the Cattlemen's Association decided to let in all the small
fry that they were previously trying to kill. Once the Association represented
all cattlemen, large and small, the source of the conflict went away. No more
armed gangs.

I would have really loved to be in on some of those early Cattlemen
Association meetings where the new guys came onboard. I don't think "awkward"
is a big enough adjective to cover what it must have been like.

[1] I oversimplify the political situation on purpose for sake of discussion.

~~~
spacecowboy_lon
There was a similar smaller scale revolt ( Battle of Athens ) against local
corruption by retuning GI's post ww2.

They broke into the national guard armory and enforced fair elections after a
short firefight.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_%281946%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_%281946%29)

