After having shot and killed his brother-in-law, James Dahlman thought it prudent to leave Texas. Traveling with his partner, Bennett Irwin, the pair reached the Newman ranch in western Nebraska in March of 1878. Using the name Jim Murray, Dahlman secured employment as a line rider on the Newman spread where his partner's brother, Billie, was foreman. Having been selected as Texas State riding champion at the age of seventeen, and being an expert with the lariat, Mr. Dahlman was a well qualified cowboy.
Not long after Dahlmans' arrival, western Nebraska was struck by a fierce spring blizzard. The storm drove thousands of Newman cattle into the dreaded Sandhill country, a region then considered dangerous and deadly. Billie Irwin, with Newman's approval, hand selected a team of cowboys, including Dahlman, to scout the Sandhills and recover what cattle they could. Over the next few weeks they discovered not only the lost Newman stock, but hundreds of additional fat, healthy, cattle. Some of the unbranded mavericks were thought to be up to four years old. The cowboy's returned to the ranch headquarters trailing over eight thousand head. Following this experience, rather than trying to keep cattle out the Sandhills, the hills became a place to move cattle into for winter. Today, the Nebraska Sandhills are one of America's most productive range lands.
Dahlmans' killing of his brother-in-law was later ruled self defense and, hearing of this, 'Jim Murray' returned to his rightful name of James C. Dahlman. In 1884 Dahlman married a school teacher named Hattie Abbott and the couple settled in the frontier town of Chadron. It was in Chadron, Dahlman had his first exposure to politics. Over the next twelve years, he would be elected city councilman, Dawes County sheriff, and mayor of Chadron. During his tenure as mayor, he became acquainted with an ambitious young lawyer from Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan. In 1896, Dahlman would deliver the speech at the Democratic national convention, nominating Bryan as a candidate for President of the United States. Bryon and Dahlman remained friends for many years until the issue of prohibition drove them apart.
Jim Dahlmans' life on the frontier led to several other remarkable friendships. W.F. Cody would become a life long friend. His official duties as Dawes County sheriff brought Dahlman into contact with many prominent Native Americans including Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, and Spotted Tail. In the aftermath of the Wounded Knee massacre, Dahlman met a young Lt. John Pershing who also became his life long friend.
Mr. and Mrs. Dahlman left Chadron for Omaha in 1896, where James had accepted a position with the Livestock Exchange. Omaha, in the 1890's, had the well deserved reputation for being a raucous, wide open city, controlled by the political machine of a gambler named Tom Dennison. Dennison's third ward 'sporting district' was notorious, even by the standards of the day. Dennison operated gambling parlors, saloons and brothels. It is believed Dennison had as many as twenty-five hundred prostitutes in his employ. Since virtually all Dennison's activities fell outside the law, his survival depended on the cooperation of politicians and law enforcement. His third ward could be counted on to deliver the votes necessary to either elect or remove any public official.
The Dennison machine faced a formidable test when, in 1906, the reformist candidate Erastus Benson launched an aggressive campaign against the political establishment. Benson had the strong backing of the Omaha religious community and posed the first serious threat to the machine in years. Dennison's principle ally in Omaha politics was Edward Rosewater, publisher of the Omaha Daily Bee. Rosewater, being a man of considerable political ambition in his own right, had formed an unholy alliance with Dennison. Each man used the other to his advantage. Although both Rosewater and Dennison were Republicans they settled on the strategy of running the Democrat Dahlman against Benson. Dahlman won easily. James C. Dahlman, raised on a cattle ranch in DeWitt County Texas, would be mayor of Omaha for twenty of the next twenty-three years.
It was during this period that Dahlmans' friendship with Bryan began to fray. Bryan was a strong proponent of prohibition, while Dahlman turned a blind eye to Dennison's third ward. When 'The Great Commoner' failed to support Dahlman in his bid for governor in 1910, his defeat was assured. James Dahlman had a mixed record as mayor of Omaha. Positive achievements include getting the state legislature to grant Omaha 'strong city' status, thus giving the city vastly more control over its own affairs. Under the leadership of Dahlman, the water and gas works were acquired from private interests and brought under city control, forming Metropolitan Utilities District, which survives to this day.
The most dramatic event to occur during Dahlmans' tenure as mayor was the Easter Sunday tornado of 1913. Over one hundred people perished in the storm and property damage ran into the millions. Dahlman was roundly criticized for his actions which included refusing all federal aid as well as private donations which poured in from around the country. Dahlmans' response to the tornado, in combination with the reformist movement sweeping the country, led to his being defeated for reelection in 1919. This set the stage for the most dramatic event of all during the Dahlman years. Jim Dahlman may have been out of office but, he was still very much a part of the story.
The reformist Republican, Edward Parsons Smith succeeded Dahlman, promising to clean up the city. Mayor Smith had Tom Dennison squarely in his sights. Finding themselves on the defensive, Dennison and Rosewater fought back. In the years following World War I, large numbers of African Americans began settling in Omaha. The meat packing industry employed hundreds of black men as strike breakers. The Omaha meat packing industry, in the early part of the twentieth century, was as brutal an industrial setting as ever existed in the United States. This was the situation Dennison, operating through Rosewater's Daily Bee, chose to exploit. Every local racial incident, as well as those all across the country, were sensationalized in the Bee. Other Omaha papers paid little, or no, attention to these stories. A grand jury would later rule that elements of the Dennison organization staged many of the 'assaults' featured in the Daily Bee. The drum beat of inflammatory rhetoric that continued in the Bee all through the summer of 1919, came to a horrific conclusion in September, when a young black man named Willie Brown was accused of assaulting a white girl.
About 2:00 p.m. on the afternoon of September 28th, a crowd began gathering in South Omaha. It is believed this crowd may have exceeded fifteen thousand at its peak. As the afternoon wore on, fueled by alcohol, hate and the Bee, the mob began surging toward downtown, demanding Willie Brown be turned over. City Hall was surrounded and set ablaze by a brick throwing mob. At one point mayor Smith, having been accused of shooting and killing one of the rioters, was himself seized by the mob. Only the heroism of city's detective burea kept the mayor from being lynched. Edward Brown was evacuated to Ford hospital where he hovered between life and death for several days before beginning a slow recovery. Willie Brown was less fortunate. It remains unclear exactly how Brown fell into the hands of the mob. Some witnesses said that other black prisoners pushed Brown from the roof, where they had been evacuated to escape the flames. In any event, Willie Brown was shot, hung, and his body burned by the mob. Although martial law was never officially declared, it was only through the intervention of federal troops, summoned from nearby Forts Omaha and Crook, that order was restored. Major General Leonard Wood, commander of the central military district, arrived in Omaha the following day and, effectively, took control of the city.
There was no solid evidence that an assault ever occurred, and no evidence linking Willie Brown to the crime. Willie Brown was laid to rest in Omaha's Potters Field. No member of the Dennison organization was ever charged with a crime although some were known to have fled the city. One witness to the carnage at city hall was fourteen year old Henry Fonda. Fonda and his father watched the riot and lynching unfold from an upper story window of the elder Fonda's printing plant. The events of September 28th 1919 would haunt the great actor for the rest of his life. Tom Dennison would go on to partner with Al Capone in Chicago and Tom Pendergast in Kansas City to control the Midwest liquor trade during prohibition. Dennison died in an automobile crash in California at the age of seventy-five. Edward Smith never recovered, emotionally or politically, from the lingering effects of the race riot. In 1921 James Dahlman was again elected mayor of Omaha, a position he would hold until his death in 1930.
It is tempting to dismiss Dahlman as having been merely a tool, an unwitting individual, used by political forces that did not have the public good in mind. There is no evidence, however, that James Dahlman ever benefited financially from his association with Dennison and Rosewater. Jim Dahlman died a poor man. So poor, in fact, his wife could scarcely afford to bury him. When they became aware of the Dahlman family's financial state, fifteen Omaha funeral directors donated their services. More than seventy-five thousand people filed past his coffin as it lay in state in the rebuilt city hall. It was said at the time that no man ever had more genuine friends than Jim Dahlman. His, was a truly extraordinary life.
An epilog to the Dahlman story concerns his grandsons, John and James Collett. Both brothers graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. After John Collett was killed in the early days of WWII, the U.S. Navy commissioned the destroyer, USS Collett, in his honor. The first commanding officer of the USS Collett was James Dahlman Collett. Grandpa Jim would have been very proud indeed.
Photo source: Douglas County Historical Society
By Patrick Simons. "Photographer and free lance philisopher."
