Showdown

Showdown. . When General Henry McCulloch arrived in Bonham in 1863 to take command of the Northern Sub-District of the Confederate Army, one of his first charges from his superiors was to ferret out the large number of suspected army deserters and possible Union agents who were believed to be present in the Red River Valley. In addition to placing Col. James Bourland in charge of tracking down these suspects, McCulloch also seemingly employed double agents to assist with the arrest program., Two of these agents were a father and son team, L.L. Harris and Cap Harris. The 1860 census shows an L.L. Harris, Shoemaker and a C.R. Harris residing with a Miller family near the community of Orangeville in southwest Fannin county., The Harrises were suspected by an element of Bonham society as being Union spies. In fact, that persona seems to have been fostered at the behest of Gen. McCulloch. In a letter from Col. Bourland to McCulloch, he reported at the enrolling clerk in Wise County had stated that L.L. Harris "was sent here by the Federals as a spy." McCulloch's response was that "I use (Harris) both against Yankees and our disloyal citizens, and of course, if he is useful, he must appear to be a Federal.", In February, 1864, Cap Harris was captured with a group of men from Bonham about a day's ride from Ft. Smith Arkansas. The group, composed of Union sympathizers and Confederate deserters, was trying to reach Union forces. After being imprisoned for about a month, Harris was released and returned to Bonham where the circumstances of his capture were well known. It was widely held that the Harrises were responsible for Dr. Penwell's arrest in his flight to Ft. Smith., The affair came to a climax on this spot nearly 2 years later in a showdown between the Harrises and Daniel W. Byars, a Texas Ranger serving as a CSA Lieutenant. According to eyewitness J.H. McDaniel, he and Byars were walking along the north side of the square in Bonham. As they approached the law office of Col. Samuel A. Roberts, Cap Harris jumped from the doorway and shouted, "goddamn you, draw your pistol" and began firing his own weapons. Byars returned the fire., Another account says that Byars and young Harris had met earlier in the day when Byars swore at Harris and called him a "Fed." Harris went home, told his father what happened, armed himself and returned with his father looking for Byars. After Cap Harris had fired the first shots, his father stepped between him and Byars and entered the law office where he told the men there, "Gentlemen, I am a dead man. God have mercy upon me." He then fell dead from gunshots exchanged between Byars and his son., As Byars returned the fire, Cap Harris was shot once in the abdomen. Some report that he managed to stagger across the street before falling on the steps of the courthouse. He lived until the next day. Father and son were buried in the same grave., The war between the states had ended 8 months before the shooting as Bonham residents were trying to recover from the devastating losses of war. Union government officials filed murder charges but Col. Bourland paid Byars' bail of $1,500 then allowed him to avoid northern justice for the next forty-seven years. In 1911, an attempt was made to bring the case to trial and in February, 1912, after eye-witness testimony, defense attorney J.S. Merrill moved to quash the indictment and the case was officially closed.