| 350 | HISTORY OF IOWA |
they would aid each other in case violence was threatened. This band also knew that they would not be supported by the better class of those who had acted with them in driving good citizens from their homes; so after conference they decided to give McCollough further time and rode away. This was the last organized effort to intimidate good citizens.
While the terrible tragedies enacted by the Regulators must be condemned, the effect was to terrify lawbreakers in that part of the State so effectually as to banish the gangs of horse thieves and counterfeiters who had long defied the law and carried on their criminal traffic with impunity. While all efforts to secure the arrest, trial and punishment of persons engaged in lynching were unsuccessful, the Regulators realized the fact that their defiance of law would no longer be tolerated, and no further attempts were made by them to usurp the duties of courts and legal officers and we hear no more of their meetings.
