Phin Clanton

Contributed by Elizabeth Burns, January 2004

Arizona Republican newspaper, February 16, 1898

Phin Clanton, whose name is associated with many of the most stirring events in ARizona, fifteen to twenty years ago when Arizona was wilder than it had ever been before. He was about Tombstone in its silver days when the Earps and Doc Holiday were wading in slaughter pretending to keep the peace. Clanton was one of them and none was more reckless and skillful than he. He could stand in a street melee with a dozen men shooting at him without disturbing either the quickness or accuracy of aim. Those were times when outlawry ahd to be met with outlawry and the one kind was conducted under the cover of the law. The killing of a man in cold blood was not exactly a crime if the victim was given any sort of a chance for his life or if the killing was actuated by revenge. Some of the killers had been peaceable men in other communities and when the storm of lawlessness was over many of them became peacable again. Some of them became robbers and open violiators of more firmly established laws and at first all of them were easily suspicioned of crimes whose commission requied nerve.

Clanton himself was arrested for a desperate offense of some sort, but he always swore he was innocent. Judge W.H. Barnes who defended and acquitted him has always said that he never had any doubt of his innocence. AFter it was all over Clanton said the accusation and prosecution nearly drove him into the camp of the outlaws. He had been on the balance so long that it is a wonder with the incentive of which he complained he did not enroll himself among the desperate criminals.

He is rather glad now that he did not. He has been industrious and fairly prosperous and is the owner of a good herd of cattle in the eastern part of the territory.

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