e to conduct them to Texas should we be defeated,
where they will be free; but we never talk of being defeated. We always
talk of victory and wealth to them. There is no danger in any man, if
you can ever get him once implicated or engaged in a matter. That is the
way we employ our strikers in all things; we have them implicated before
we trust them from our sight.

"This may seem too bold, but that is what I glory in. All the crimes I
have ever committed have been of the most daring; and I have been
successful in all my attempts as yet; and I am confident that I will be
victorious in this matter, as in the robberies which I have in
contemplation; and I will have the pleasure and honor of seeing and
knowing that by my management I have glutted the earth with more human
gore, and destroyed more property, than any other robber who has ever
lived in America, or the known world. I look on the American people as
my common enemy. My clan is strong, brave, and experienced, and rapidly
increasing in strength every day. I should not be surprised if we were
to be two thousand strong by the 25th of December, 1835; and, in
addition to this, I have the advantage of any other leader of banditti
that has ever preceded me, for at least one-half of my Grand Council are
men of high standing, and many of them in honorable and lucrative
offices."

The number of men, more or less prominent, in the different states
included: sixty-one from Tennessee, forty-seven from Mississippi,
forty-six from Arkansas, twenty-five from Kentucky, twenty-seven from
Missouri, twenty-eight from Alabama, thirty-three from Georgia,
thirty-five from South Carolina, thirty-two from North Carolina,
twenty-one from Virginia, twenty-seven from Maryland, sixteen from
Florida, thirty-two from Louisiana. The transient members who made a
habit of traveling from place to place numbered twenty-two; Murrell said
that there was a total list of two thousand men in his band, including
all classes.

To the foregoing sketch of Murrell's life Mr. Alexander Hynds, historian
of Tennessee, adds some facts and comments which will enable the reader
more fully to make his own estimate as to this singular man:

"The central meeting place of Murrell's band was near an enormous
cottonwood tree in Mississippi county, Arkansas. It was standing in
1890, and is perhaps still standing in the wilderness shortly above
Memphis. His widely scattered bands had a system of si