[Note: Larry Rhodes, Arkansas City, gave me a xeroxed copy of this article, which he has in his possession, so that the information contained therein can be distributed to interested individuals in Winfield and other areas of Cowley County. MAW]

Article posed the following question: "Can politics exist without an element of the cloak and dagger? Maybebut it's had a hard time doing it so far!"

Article showed a photograph of two men on the first page: Leo Vincent and Harry Vincent. On the following page more photos were shown: Winfield, Kansas, circa 1890; Edwin P. Greer, Winfield Courier editor; Kansas Governor Lyman Humphrey; and the Capitol building in Topeka, Kansas, circa 1888.

ABOUT 11 o'clock the morning of October 18, 1888, H. M. Upham sat at his desk in the Pacific Express Company's office at Eighth and Walnut in Coffeyville, Kansas. Hearing the side door open, he looked up just as a tall, bearded man entered. Under one arm he carried a box.

Upham got up and went to the counter. "Help you?" he asked.

"Yes," said the bearded man. "When does the train go north?" He set the box down on the counter.

"At 4:30 in the morning. You want to ship that?" Upham pointed to the pine box.

The man nodded. "I want it to go to L. Louden in Winfield, Kansas. How much are the charges?"

"Twenty-five cents," Upham said, lifting the box.

The customer pushed the money across the counter and turned to go. "Just a minute," Upham said. "I have to have your name."

The man turned. "Put P. Jason as the sender."

Upham wrote it down. "Anything breakable?"

"Yes. It contains glass, some medicine, and some bottles. Handle it very carefully." He pointed to the box. "Don't throw it on the dray or leave it at the depot. Look after it yourself."

Upham scribbled the instructions on a shipping tag, then picked up a small hammer and some four-ounce tacks. He stuck them through the tag; then lightly hammered them into the box.

"Careful with it," the bearded man said, watching.

"Don't worry," the express agent grinned good-naturedly. "It's our business to see packages are handled without damage."

"Good," the man said. Then he walked out.

The agent entered the shipment in his forwarding book, filled out a waybill, then locked his desk and safe. He was anxious to get home. An amateur photographer, he had promised his adopted daughter, Mabel, to take her picture when she came home from school at noon.

Upham placed the box on the wagon seat next to him and drove half-a-mile southwest to his frame house at the corner of Spruce and Eleventh Street. The box was placed out of the way in a corner of the small darkroom he had finished building only a few days before. It would be safe there until time to put it on the train. There was nothing unusual in his bringing the box home with him. He often did that to safeguard fragile shipments until train time.

Just before Upham sat down to eat, he got his camera and took a picture of Mabel. "When you come home from school this afternoon, you and your mother can watch me develop the plate," he said. "How will that be?" He smiled as her eyes widened with excitement.

"Oh, I can't hardly wait! I'll come straight home after school," the girl cried.

Upham returned to the office and worked until mid-afternoon, at which time he drove home again. After mixing the photo chemicals, he called his wife away from the sewing machine. It was time for her and Mabel to come into the darkroom to watch.

The mother and daughter crowded into the darkroom, hardly daring to breathe for fear of spoiling the picture.

They heard Upham place the plate into the solution.

"It won't take long now," he said, "but I'll need a little more water." As he squeezed past them, they stepped back toward the corner. At their feet was the pine box.

Upham went to the cistern on the porch and had pumped a pail full of water and started back with it when a thunderous explosion knocked him off his feet. He clawed at his shirt collar as sulphurous smoke began to choke him. Boards and plaster chunks hurled past, and then a timber clouted him and he fell.

Somewhere he heard his wife and daughter scream in terror. Then the screams became low moans.

Dr. J. A. Wood was uptown when he heard of the explosion. He didn't take time to hunt a buggy, but set out in a half-run for the Upham house. When he puffed up, the yard was swarming with people. He elbowed through them and ran to the shattered room.

The mother and girl were found in a widening pool of blood. Their flesh was torn from them in strips; their arms and legs were twisted and broken, the bones protruding.

"Help me get them out of here!" the doctor yelled at the crowd. "Some of you men help me. The rest of you clear to hell out."

Upham was wandering around the yard in a daze. Friends called to him. He seemed not to hear them. Then a neighbor led him by the arm away from the house. As they walked off, several men carried his daughter to the west sitting room of the house. Others picked up his wife and carried her limp body into the parlor.

"What happened?" someone asked Upham.

His eyes vacant, he stared. "I dunno," he said. "I dunno."

He looked toward the house. "Are they dead?"

No one answered.

The morning following the explosion, Ed. P. Greer, a prominent Republican publisher of The Courier in Winfield, some ninety miles west of Coffeyville, walked up the street. He turned into the Farmers Bank. R. R. Frye came in behind him.

"Ed, did you hear of the explosion in Coffeyville?" he called.

Ed whirled around, surprise on his face. "No," he said. "No, I didn't."

A conductor on an early train had brought the news to Winfield and Greer listened interestedly as Frye related what he knew about it. Then the newspaperman turned abruptly and walked out of the bank. He returned to his office and closed the door behind him.

Ed Greer didn't know what to make of it, and it caused him much concern. He was involved deeply in trying to get a Republican ticket elected in the upcoming election. Only recently he had made a number of trips to Topeka and around the state. He had some inside knowledge of what was going on, things the average Kansas farmer didn't know about.

He drummed his pencil on his desk, frowning. The Coffeyville explosion could have dangerous consequences, especially to the hopes of Lyman U. Humphrey, who sought the governor's chair.

A short time before, on October 4, Greer had published an exposé on a rival newspaper in Winfield, The American Non-Conformist. Published by two brothers, Henry and Leo Vincent, it was the principal voice for the Union Labor Party in that section of the state. In part through the efforts of the Vincents, the Union Labor Party had a strong ticket. Many believed that the party could upset the strong Republican organization.

In Topeka, Greer had met secretly with high Republican leaders. Much of the material for his exposé had been followed by a second one, published on October 18, the day of the explosion in Coffeyville.

Politically, the year 1888 was unusual in Kansas. Republicans were generally swept into office without much effort. This year, however, they were opposed not only by Democrats, but by two other parties, the Union Labor Party and the United Labor Party.

The national ticket seemed destined to go Republican. But on state, congressional, and local levels, considerable doubt arose. The Union Labor Party was waging a vigorous campaign. Upsets were possible. In Winfield the Vincent brothers' editorials for the Union Labor Party candidates were hard-hitting and persuasive.

The powerful Republicans at first sought to pass off the Non-Conformist as a radical sheet. Ignore it, and it'll go away, they hoped. But it didn't. Its voice grew louder.

Led by Greer, Republicans began branding the Vincents as anarchists. They would overthrow the government, Greer claimed. He often pointed out that they were dangerous to the community and to all law-abiding citizens.

At the Union Labor Party's state convention in Wichita, there were rumors of a secret organization within the party, one which controlled and dictated its policies. Greer learned of the so-called organization when George W. Poorman, a printer on the Non-Conformist, got into an argument with the Vincents and went to the Courier publisher, volunteering to dig up information on the secret group. Greer encouraged him.

Poorman claimed to have infiltrated the group in South Haven, Kansas. He rushed back to Greer and turned over a copy of the secret handbook of the body called the Vidette. Using it for background, Greer came out with the first exposé, charging the Vincents with being the Vidette's leaders. The group was accused of taking blood oaths, of being revolutionary, treasonable, and using secret codes and signs. Poorman wisely left Winfield immediately.

Greer was summoned to Topeka for more ammunition on the Vincents and the Union Labor Party, reportedly furnished by the Republican State Central Committee. Material for a second exposé was sent to other newspapers in the state so that all could come out with the blockbuster at the same time. Election time was drawing near.

Soon it was known in Winfield that a dynamite bomb had been the cause of the Coffeyville explosion. And its political overtones were quite apparent; there were too many coincidences about it. First, it occurred the day of Greer's second exposé of the Vincents. Secondly, the box which exploded had been destined for Winfield. The man it was addressed to, L. Louden, did not exist in Winfield. Then who was to pick up the box when it arrived?

Republicans charged that the Vincents had shipped the box. They planned to blow up the Courier building while no one was around, making it appear that the Vincents were as violent and dangerous as they had been painted.

Meantime, over in the Hackney Building, two blocks from the Courier, the Vincents were dipping their quills into the inkpots and vigorously attacking Greer and his party. Backing the brothers was another Winfield paper, The Telegram, a Democrat paper.

All Winfield newspapers sent copies of their stories to other papers, in and out of state. National interest began to stir.

The smoke had hardly cleared at the Upham home before lawmen were seeking clues to the explosion. One of the first on the scene was Montgomery County Deputy Sheriff N. M. Clifford of Coffeyville, but the house was virtually surrounded when he arrived. "There was much screaming and pushing and shoving," he recalled later. "I called in the city marshal and ordered him to keep everybody off the porch and from looking through the windows. There was perhaps a crowd of 150 there then."

From Upham the deputy got a description of the man who had left the package at the express office. The city marshal was told "to look the crowd over for a man about 45 years of age, wearing a black slouch hat, full black beard of about four week's growth, black suit of clothes, well worn."

Then the deputy hurried off to check every hotel, boarding house, and restaurant in town to see if such a man had been there. At the Southern Hotel he got a lead. Two men had registered, one of whom matched the description given by Upham.

"But they have already gone," the landlord said. "I think they headed towards Valeda."

Working fast, the deputy had a box made up like the one that had exploded. He had it shipped to "L. Louden" in Winfield. Then, wiring the sheriff in Winfield to expect him the next morning, he took the first train out. There was a chance someone would claim the box when it reached Winfield. He wanted to be there.

Valeda was little more than a settlement some thirteen miles east of Coffeyville. The night of the explosion, I. M. Waldrop, agent for the Missouri Pacific Railroad and Pacific Express Company, had just pushed himself away from the supper table. It was getting dark when he started back to his office at the depot. Shortly after he arrived, two men came into the waiting room. They asked about a ticket to Chetopa, Kansas, and wanted to know what connections they could make from there.

As the 10:36 p.m. train chugged out, Waldrop stood outside the little depot shaking his head in disbelief. The conductor had just told him about the explosion. He had met Upham a number of times and he was still shocked when he walked back in his office. All at once he cried out, "My God! Those men at the station!" He heard the train whistle far off. He wondered if they were on it.

Deputy Clifford arrived in Winfield about 10 o'clock the next morning. At the sheriff's office he was disappointed to find that no leads had turned up, and he set out on his own to see what he could learn.

At the express office he told the agent about the decoy package which was to arrive. Then he had the agent slip a six-shooter under the counter within easy reach. "If anyone claims that box, pull the gun on him and place him under arrest," the deputy said. "Then send for an officer."

At that moment a man loaded with packages entered. Deputy Clifford saw his fake box among them. He went outside and waited, but no one came for it.

Clifford walked uptown. Soon he was hearing a lot about the trouble between Greer and the Vincents. Everyone in Winfield was talking about it, connecting it with the dynamiters. The deputy returned to Coffeyville.

Detectives of all types turned out to break the case. Pinkerton men showed up in Coffeyville and Winfield in assorted disguises. They had no better luck than the others. Weeks passed without any arrests.

Dr. Wood did his utmost to save the victims' lives. He even moved into the Upham house in order to care for them around the clock. Gradually, they improved. After many weeks, the doctor smiled and told them, "You're going to be all right now."

They remembered little of the explosionjust that they had stood near a box. That suddenly it had "hissed."

In the meantime, the election had passed. The new governor of Kansas was Lyman U. Humphrey, a Republican.

Upham had grown up in and around Boston, Massachusetts. The December after the explosion, he left for the East. He went to work in Maine, expecting to send for his family when they were well. The express company had paid him $700 prior to his leaving Coffeyvilleenough to create some gossip. Perhaps Upham himself had set off the bomb, intending to kill his wife for property she owned. But detectives found nothing to back up the rumors. They called them "disgusting."

Of course, Republican party members were eager to forget the explosion. But over in neighboring Labette County, I. D. Highleyman of Chetopa was still hard at work on the case. By the middle of November, the detective thought he had enough evidence to bring charges.

He went to Independence, the seat of Montgomery County, sixteen miles north of Coffeyville. The county attorney there, Samuel C. Elliott, listened impatiently as Highleyman attempted to get him to file charges against Poorman and C. A. Henrie, the latter a Topeka man.

The detective claimed it was they who had fled to Valeda the day of the blast. Furthermore, he had heard that Governor Humphrey planned to appoint Henrie, who was not even a Republican, to a clerkship in the state labor department. This would be his payoff for taking the box of dynamite to the express station, Highleyman said.

The county attorney coughed and suddenly arose from his chair, reaching for his hat. He had an engagement and had to leave, he said. Highleyman was flabbergasted. Especially when the shocked Elliott snapped that he was satisfied that no crime had been committed. "Forget it," he the same as told Highleyman.

Plainly the county attorney wanted to hear no more about the explosion. Besides, his term was running out. And wherever lawmen showed up, they met with similar rebuffs. It appeared that their investigation would never get past the county politicians.

Despairing, most interested parties gave up. Not the Vincents, however. In the Non-Conformist they kept demanding the facts behind the Coffeyville outrage. The state legislature was even called upon to investigate it, but refused.

Months passed. Then, gradually, the public picked up the cry of the Vincents. A day came when the state's lawmakers had to do something. During the 1891 legislative session, a joint committee was selected to get at the bottom of the explosion, once and for all.

On Friday, February 13, 1891, the committee members filed into Senate Committee Room No. 5 in Topeka and opened its hearing. Spectators flocked to the sessions, and it was moved to more spacious rooms. Day in and day out the hearing went on. Nearly 100 witnesses, everyone the committee could find who knew anything about the matter, were summoned to testify under oath.

During this legislative session, the Alliance Party was in control. It was, in general, a reformation of the Union Labor Party, the same the Republicans claimed was controlled by the Videttes.

The hearing finally centered its probe on two probable causes of the explosion: (1.) It was the work of the National Order of Videttes. The Vincents had plotted to blow up the Courier plant; (2.) It was a Republican conspiracy directed by the Republican State Central Committee and Republican leaders.

Attempts to show that Upham plotted to murder his wife soon were dropped. An attempt to show that chemicals in his darkroom had blown up also met with failure. On May 9 the gavel sounded in the hearing room. The investigation was finished.

Across the state, citizens anxiously awaited the verdict of the committee. At long last the guilty would be punishedbut they were wrong.

The three Republican members, C. H. Kimball, J. G. Mohler, and C. N. Bishoff, denied vehemently that Republicans had been connected even remotely with the explosion. It was concluded that Henrie was not the man seen in Valeda, that he had no connection with the explosion whatever. That Governor Humphrey had appointed him to a job in the bureau of labor was admitted; but it was not a payoff. The report had only one recommendationone which was to draw laughs from many lawmen when they heard it. The recommendation was that in the future law enforcement agents handle such cases, not the state legislature! And they bemoaned the fact that $12,000 had been spent on the hearing.

Alliance Party committee members, Ezra Cary, M. Senn, G. W. Crumley, and T. M. Templeton, saw it differently.

Upham, leaving Coffeyville after the explosion, "leaves the impression on our minds that there was an influence brought to bear on him, which in the first place would prevent him from testifying, when the Vincents made their efforts to prosecute the guilty parties. . . ."

Of Henrie's unexpected political appointment, they noted that no labor organization had sought his appointment to the labor commission. Furthermore, he was not even a Republican; yet a Republican governor had gotten him the job, though many qualified Republicans wanted and actively sought the job.

"It is impossible to think of any explanation of C. A. Henrie's appointment, except that he knew about the damnable plot of preparing and sending the box, and that for the purpose of keeping him silent, the position was given him. The refusal of the legislature of 1889 to investigate the explosion seems to us a confirmation [that the Republican party was connected with the Coffeyville explosion]."

It continued, "There was a conspiracy on the part of someone to do certain things for the purpose of breaking the ranks of the Union Labor Party and adding strength to the Republican Party in the political campaign of 1888."

As for Henrie, "he had some connection with the preparation of, and delivered said box at Coffeyville, to be shipped by express to Winfield to be exploded . . . and under the excitement following the explosion, a raid would probably be made on the office of The Non-Conformist."

It called Henrie's appointment "a reward for the part performed by him, and to prevent him from revealing what he knows of the affair which would implicate other parties."

Senator Edward Carroll, the lone Democrat on the committee, found it difficult to believe Henrie's appointment was an honest one but called the whole affair a political quarrel. Officially, the explosion at Coffeyville was a closed matter.

It was summer. Kansas sodbusters hitched up their mules to the plows and went back to the fields. No one would ever be punished for the Coffeyville outrageexcept, of course, those innocent of the crime (whoever they were). For innocence is no match for suspicion and innuendo, if the guilty party is never disclosed.