The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Follow Me to Hell: McNelly’s Texas Rangers and the Rise of Frontier Justice by Tom Clavin

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

Follow Me to Hell: McNelly's Texas Rangers and the Rise of Frontier Justice by Tom Clavin https://amzn.to/3M2Da9b THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Tom Clavin's Follow Me to Hell is the explosive true story of how legendary Ranger Leander McNelly and his men brought justice to a lawless Texan frontier. In turbulent 1870s Texas, the revered and fearless Ranger Leander McNelly led his men in one dramatic campaign after another, throwing cattle thieves, desperadoes, border ruffians, and other dangerous criminals into jail or, if that's how they wanted it, six feet under. They would stop at nothing in pursuit of justice, even sending 26 Rangers across the border to retrieve stolen cattle―taking on hundreds of Mexican troops with nothing but their Sharps rifles and six-guns. The nation came to call them “McNelly’s Rangers.” Set against the backdrop of 200 years of thrilling Texas Rangers history, this page-turner takes readers into the tough life along the Texas border that was tamed by a courageous, yet doomed, captain and his team of fearless men. It was one hell of a ride!

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The Chris Voss Leadership Podcast is now up at chrisvossinstitute.com. Check that out as well. For the show, your family, friends, and relatives. We have a turning amazing guest and author to the show. Tom Clavin is on the show. Tom, did I get that right? Yes, you did. Thank you.

There I go. There's so much interview you put in the front of the show, something in the brain goes, woo-hoo, right out the show. Tom, did I get that right? Yes, you did. Thank you. There I go. There's so much interview you put in the front of the show. Something in the brain goes right out the door. Everyone knows that. Everyone's seen that movie for 14 years. So Tom Clavin is on the show returning as a wonderful guest. He has written his newest book that just came out April 4th, 2023. Follow me to hell.

McNally's Texas Rangers and the Rise of Frontier Justice. Follow Me to Hell is actually my biography. No, I'm just kidding. So you can order wherever you find books are sold. Tom is on the show with us today. His most recent work is the one I just aforementioned.

He's a best-selling author. He's worked as a newspaper and website editor, magazine writer, TV and radio commentator, and a reporter for the New York Times covering entertainment, sports, and the environment. He's received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, and National Newspaper Association. Four of his books have become New York Times bestsellers, and his other books have received popular and critical acclaim and all that good stuff. Welcome to the show, Tom. How are you? I'm fine. Thank you for having me back.

Thank you for coming back. It's good to see you again. We love our returning guests. I think if they come back often enough, they get one of those SNL robes, but we haven't gotten SNL to ship them to us. So, you know, Saturday Night Live does that robe thing. Anyway, give us your dot coms, Tom, wherever you want people to follow you on the interwebs. Well, I have a very clever address. It's Tom Clavin, T-O-M-C-L-A-V-I-N dot com, TomClavin.com. Has my books, has appearances for a book tour that I just completed. So it's probably obsolete information I should take down as a bit of a biography, as contact information. I really do hear on a daily basis from readers and I reply. So if anybody finds out my email address from my website and contacts me,

they'll get a reply. There you go. And you, you read a lot about, but is it appropriate to call it the wild West? It is the wild West. And it's interesting about the wild West because our, I think our perception from all the TV shows and movies is the Wild West lasted about 100 years.

You think that way, you know, with all those characters and action and events. But for the most part, the Wild West began after the Civil War ended. And by by really the the early 1880s, the Wild West was becoming less wild. I mean, we just had more civilization spreading west. But during that 17- or 18-year period, it was pretty wild, and there were a lot of very colorful characters, and there never seems to be a lack of people to write about. I thought Wild West lasted for only 10 or 20 years in the 60s with John Wayne and, you know, Clint Eastwood.

No, I'm just kidding uh you know he did he did a couple movies about westerns um so tell us about this new story why did you decide to pick the story of the Texas Rangers I was I sort of stumbled upon it which is mostly the way that I find ideas uh I was a few years ago, I was working on my book called Wild Bill about Wild Bill Hickok. And one of the significant, not major characters, but significant characters in the Wild Bill story is a fellow named John Wesley Harden, who is one of the most prolific man killers and gunslingers of the Wild West. And it mentioned, he and Wild Bill have kind of a confrontation, confrontation in Abilene, Kansas.

And then he leaves and goes on to other adventures. And one of the, I was doing some research and one writer had put the beginning of the end for Harden was when he was chased out of Texas by Leanda McNally of the Texas Rangers. So I sort of filed that away because I said, he was a pretty hard case, this guy, John Wesley Harden. What was it about McNally that made him so imposing that he could chase John Wesley Harding out of his native Texas?

And so I sort of filed that away. And then I stumbled across something else, which is that in 2023 this year that we're in, last I looked anyway, is the bicentennial of the Texas Rangers. They were founded in August 1823. And I thought, wow, that's an amazing accomplishment or achievement that you can have a law enforcement organization that's 200 years old, I mean, 100 years older than the FBI.

And I sort of put the two and two together and said, I'd love to write something about the Texas Rangers for the Bicentennial. Well, let me check out this guy, McNally. And the more I found out about him and about his adventures, mostly in the 1870s, the bicentennial, well, let me check out this guy, McNally. And the more I found out about him and about his adventures, mostly in the 1870s, the more I thought this would be a good story because you have this uncommon combination of somebody who really played an important role in the American West or as far West as Texas is. And yet most people don't know about some of his amazing adventures, which is good for a writer because you think,

I can tell a good story and not be telling the same story about the same character. How many books can you write about Billy the Kid, for example? That's true. He has somebody different. Yeah. So tell us about McNally. Who was this guy, and how did he end up forming the Texas Rangers? He was a native of Virginia.

He had suffered from what they called in those days consumption. So at a young age, his family moved to Texas, thought the climate might help him. And so he spent his teenage years in Texas. He was joined the Civil War when he was 17 years old. As soon as it broke out, he served with the Confederate Army. After two years, he was still, I think, I don't even think he was 20 yet. He was a captain of a ranger, a Confederate roaming scouting company, had a very successful Civil War career, meaning that he survived and had a bunch of adventures that are detailed in the book. And then after the Civil War, his main intention was to go back to Washington County, Texas, be a farmer. He got married, had a couple of kids. But the Texas Rangers were being reformed after the Civil War,

and the Texas government was taking the bold step of actually coming up with a budget to pay these people to provide law enforcement. And they reached out to some Civil War veterans and said, we need young captains. And Leander McNally said, sign me up. And for the next several years, he was the leader of a company of Texas Rangers that he wasn't a captain for more than just a few years because his consumption got the better of him. But during that time, they confronted John Wesley Harden. They stopped a war in a county.

I had to feel the McCoy kind of war in one of the counties in Texas. They invaded Mexico and almost started the second Mexican-American War. They just had a lot of adventures, a lot of running around, a lot of border patrol, a lot of fights, a lot of conflicts. And so it sounds like with McNally as the captain and the title comes from something he told his men

when they were about to invade Mexico. He said, I might lead you into hell, but I'll lead you back out again if you follow me. They were fiercely loyal to him. He was very, partly because of his frailty. What it took for him to go on a horse every day and chase bad guys inspired them to say, if he can do it, we can do it. Wow. So were they originally ordained official lawmen or did they start as kind of a local band of guys who were trying to just enforce cattle wrestlers and all sorts of illegal activities?

You know, that's a really good question because what that question covers, just leander mcnelly's company but it covers the entire texas rangers because earlier in their history they were basically you know they weren't sheriffs they weren't marshals they were you know they they they weren't sworn in deputies they were sort of like minute men like in lexington and concord days where oh the british are coming let's get grab you grab gun, grab a powder horn, grab a horse if you have one, whatever you can bring, and meet here, because then we'll band together and we'll react to the crisis. And that was the strangest formula for decades, especially before the Civil War. OK, there's been an invasion.

Mexico's invaded. Let's get together and fight the Mexicans and send them back across the Rio Grande. Or the Comanches have just invaded, crossed over our western border. Let's get a bunch of guys together with their guns and their horses and we'll chase them back across maybe all the way to New Mexico. So that was the way the Texas Rangers operated. And McNally was one of those transformative Ranger captains after the Civil War because, yes, the Texas government was deciding to actually set up a budget to pay Texas Rangers to be law enforcement officers, which had not really been the case before.

And McNally was one of those rare early officers in the Texas Rangers who he treated his company like a law enforcement company. He trained them. He made sure they could shoot well, that they could ride well, that they would listen to orders, that they were training, that they knew how to do scouting. They even did things like planted informants and rival gangs. And so they were kind of like the very first glimmer of what is the modern Texas ranges was really during the McNally years in the early to mid 1870s. Wow.

It sounds like, uh, who's the guy who started the FBI? Well, Hoover. And then, uh, who's the guy before that, that, uh, uh, Nels Nelly. Well, there's Elliot N ness elliot ness there was with uh he was with the oh gosh i think he was fbi he was also at one point he was the chief of police of cleveland where some of his adventures took place most people that that wasn't on the tv show cleveland didn't sell ratings yeah i think he didn't he start like uh you know laying a foundation for like i think didn't he start fingerprints and things like that?

So this is, this is kind of interesting. Was one of the, was, was, was one of the problems that Texas couldn't afford or were they able to pay them to do this? And I know Texas is huge in size. So trying to regulate, of course, back then, was it partially Mexico? Well, yeah, until it it was it was spanish uh it was all part of spain's holdings in north america then when mexico won its independence from spain in 1821 it was texas was all part of mexican holdings was stretched from the border of louisiana all the way to california and so uh once texas became its own republic uh which was after 1836 you know

the alamo the battle of san jacinto when they became their own republic uh one of the things that they really plagued them for years they had no money you know i mean texas remains to this day one of those states that's not very fond of taxation so so when i don't know i've seen people's property taxes down there but they they if you if you have a trouble raising money uh then you know you have different agencies and departments that get the short end of the stick and for decades literally decades texas rangers almost had to i mean if you were a texas ranger you were hired as a texas ranger you had to bring part of your contract, so to speak, was you had to bring your own horse and your own gun and your own food.

Wow. All they provided you was ammunition. Did you get free coffee? Free coffee, yeah. Free coffee and beans. Decaf, though. Free coffee and beans. That sounds like a Mel Gibson movie.

Mel Brooks. Mel Brooks, yeah. Thanks for correcting me there. It's Monday. I'm half asleep. So, yeah, it was the beans and farting a bit that they did. Very funny, sitting around the campfire there. So they do this.

You mentioned the tease out that he ran the dude out of Texas. Do you want to tease out any on that? Yeah. One of the adventures that McNally's Rangers had is there was a county, a DeWitt County in Texas, had these two families, the Sutton family and the Taylor family. And they had this long feud that began before and during and then after the Civil War where these family members were constantly battling each other,

fighting, shooting each other. They were dropping like flies on either side. And if they just wanted to kill each other, that was sort of like okay, because eventually they were done left. So a lot of people were killed, some was out of existence. But a lot of people were getting caught in the crossfire. Finally, the Texas government, the governor sendsnelly and his rangers into dewitt county and says you got to calm these people down it really was it made the hatfields of mccoy's

look like a skit out of sesame street yeah these two sutton and taylor families hated the heck out of each other so mcnelly's rangers went in there and they started to basically confront intimidate or in turn shoot members of the families and say, you know, if you can't stop yourselves, we're going to stop you. Wow. An in-law of the Taylor family was John Wesley Harden, and John Wesley Harden was, you know, more of a bad guy than, say, a Billy the Kid or a Jesse James.

I mean, this was somebody who killed because he enjoyed it and because he kept getting away with it. Sounds like a good guy. I know. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. This is pre-tattoos. Yeah.

Or maybe he was branded. I don't know. That was the tattoo in Texas in the 1850s and 60s. Oh, really? Yeah, branded. So, so McNally said, I got it. The way to calm down this whole situation is I've got to track down and arrest or kill John Wesley Harden. Now, Harden was a tough guy. But by this point, McNally had such a reputation as a completely fearless and always coming out on top, whatever conflict he was in.

And Harden said, you know what? I think it's time to leave texas and he literally before mcnelly could catch up with them he left texas went to florida where the texas rangers eventually tracked him down and arrested him and put him in jail for the next one so they had jurisdiction to cross over is well out of the wild west what happened was that uh sort of what happened is is one of mccnally's lieutenants uh tracked uh harden to florida wow and they got and he when when they found out that that uh harden was on his train that was coming into a station i think it was tallahassee or pensacola something like that the the lieutenant knowing he did not have jurisdiction hired a local deputy local florida deputy and said okay we okay, we're both going to go on this train.

Here's the guy we're going to arrest. I can't arrest him. You can arrest him. But once you arrest him, I can become sort of like the transportation manager. You can give me a voucher for train fare that will return Harden to where he's wanted in Texas. And that's basically how it worked out. The early days of extradition. There was a brief shootout. Harden

was arrested and then he was turned over to the Texas Ranger. His name, I think, was Armstrong, if I remember correctly. Armstrong cuffed him, put him on a train, took him back to Texas where he stood trial. There you go. Did he get to stop by Disney while he was there? No, I'm just kidding. You know, you really

got to hate a guy to go all the way to Florida and fight alligators and flies and everything else that's down there, humidity. You really got to hate a guy to go there. No, but that's good. These are the early standards of building this. Why do you find and why do you think your audience, and hopefully we pick up some new people for your audience, why do you think people find an affinity for this era of time and these historical? Well, I think part of it is demographics in that if you have a demographic like mine, I'm of a generation that's, say, 50 or 55 and older, where when you were a kid,

it was commonplace on television to find Westerns. You could still find the occasional Western double feature at the local theater. They were still making Westerns, even though the era of people like James Stewart and John Wayne were declining, you know, in the late 60s, certainly into the 70s. So a lot of those cowboys, so-called cowboy stars were retiring or dying off, Glenn Ford, some of these others. And then, so I think

that there's an affinity for Western, American West stories, because it sort of like makes you connect a bit to your childhood, where it was not uncommon to turn on the television, and you found Rawhide and Bonanza and have gun will travel the big valley and stories and stories like that i think another part of it is that there's also a generation or two which knows that the so-called wild west existed but doesn't know really that much about it i mean they recognize a name like wild bill hickok or jesse james um and uh and bat masterson and wyattp, of course. But they might be curious, well, what do these guys really do

that makes them memorable, that made them these iconic characters that we still have name recognition in 2023? So I think there's an audience out there for that. And then I think there's an audience that, since this is not my first book, I've written a bunch of books, after a while, you either catch an audience and they want to follow you and they want to read your next book, or you've turned to do something else like you're in sanitation or you're a short order cook because you couldn't make it as a writer, which has got to be very frustrating.

Thankfully, since I can't cook, I've managed to continue as a writer. There you go. Well, that's good. That's good. Well, I think a lot of I've managed to continue as a writer. There you go. Well, that's good. That's good. Well, I think a lot of people are going to love this. We've had a number of authors that have written about Texas on the story, about all sorts of different stories about Texas. And, man, they love to light up the YouTube video comments.

I don't know what it is. Especially anybody who talks about some of the checkered history of Texas, maybe some of the issues of racism. Boy, they really go after those videos. So I know that it's popular to talk about Texas. There's a lot of people. I mean, what is Texas, the second or third most popular state, or is that New York? I know there's a lot of people in Texas. Let's put it that way.

And they're very adamant about their independence and stuff. So this is a good story. And the foundings of the thing. I suppose, you know, they tease in the book that it's a courageous yet doomed captain and his team of fearless men. Do you want to tease anything out about that? Or should we force people to write the book

to find out what happens? Well, you know before leander mcnelly had consumption and uh you know there was no cure certainly not in the 1870s for consumption the best hope was that you could find a somewhat healthy climate uh and texas offered that to some extent i mean certainly better than connect or Virginia, where McNally was originally from. But it was only a matter of time. And also in McNally's case, he was not one to sit around in his rocking chair, take care of himself.

He was out there having these adventures. He was chasing bad guys with his company of men. They were camping out every night in all kinds of weather. I mean, yes, in Texas you're not going to get that too much in the way of snow storms or ice storms but still you can have some some degrees of weather change and if you're camping out it's a rainy night it's a rainy night you're camping out you're cold and you've got consumption so um that's why uh mcnelly you could be in a way could be considered doomed because uh he he knew he wasn't going to have a long lifespan to begin with, and he didn't do much to help himself along to have a long lifespan. And I think, you know,

to explain part of that, I think it was because he knew that he had a disease that was ultimately going to be fatal. And his thinking was, if I'm going to die and going to die young, relatively young, I'd rather do it while I'm on a horse chasing a bad guy than do it lying in bed. So I think, you know, that's one of the reasons for his fearlessness is that

he literally did not fear death because it wasn't a good role to the option. There you go. Well, you know, it's better to go out with a bang than to, what is that old line? Do not go gently into that good night. It's a Neil Young line.

Better the burnout than it is the rust. Yeah. Or was it the who? I hope I die young before I get old. I hope you die before I get old, yeah. Which is funny because I think Roger Daltrey is like 80 or something now. So he didn't listen to himself. Yeah, well, he tried. Bonham got

there. And so did Keith Moon. That was dark and too soon. But anyway, they were both wonderful drummers. Anyway, so this has been really insightful. I think people will love it. And as you mentioned, it's a bicentennial. I mean, this is the founding of 200 years of organization that does law enforcement and a great job of it and all that good stuff.

So give us your dot coms, Tom, so we can find you on the interwebs, please. It is Tom Clavin, T-O-M-C-L-A-V as in Victor, I-N,.com. And I'll find some other books there too, because some people might or might not be familiar with the previous books like Dodge City and Tombstone and Wild Bill. And nothing has to be read in order, but I think people enjoy the books. I think another thing about it that you asked before

about an affinity for it is this book also, I try and inject some kind of humor also. I mean, nobody should read my book thinking that it's humorless and they got to take things terribly seriously there's some serious stuff in there but you know i just i just was doing a book i'm working on now there's there's a piece in there about a outlaw who was killed in 18 like 1890 and he wasn't buried until the mid to late 1970s and what happened well his body was used as a carnival show attraction for decades and then it was they lost in some kind of warehouse for another few more decades and it was found by a crew a production crew for the tv show million dollar man with me in the 1970s when they were unpacking some crates in this warehouse.

And so the TV crew found this mummified body. So they eventually buried this guy in 1977. An outlaw had been killed in the 1890s. Now that's funny. Yeah, it is an interesting story. I think I know who you're talking about. They took the head around

the carnival show, didn't they? Was that the guy? I think this particular guy, they took the whole body. Oh, did they? They dressed him up as an outlaw, even though he was going to take the durian over time. There you go. And then your Blood and Treasure book that we had you on prior, so we'll give a plug to that show, is an editor's pick on Amazon. So congratulations for that. Thank you.

Yeah, that book, we were very, Bob Drury and I were very pleasantly surprised because we, I mean, we knew he had an iconic character in Daniel Boone who had a lot of adventures in the 1800s, 1790s, 1780s. But that helped. But we also didn't know, is there still an audience for that? And when the book came out, it immediately went to the New York Times bestseller sellers and stayed there for a few weeks it's been selling great paperback i hear like i say i hear from readers almost every day and still i hear a lot of people about blood and treasure it's just a fun book to read there you go uh and a lot of great books do you have how many books you have total well i claim 18 i don't i don't count them and i worry especially if they're more than 18 that i don't count them because every so often you have somebody give you that backhand compliments, the prolific Tom Craven.

And you know what they're really saying is? Is it? If this guy writes this many books, they can't be that good. Oh, wow. Wow. I never thought that was possible. Jack Benny stopped at 39. He never turned older than 39.

I've never written more than 18 books. We have people on the show that have written 60. No, I think we have somebody who's done 150. They can't be that good. Well, they're all novels. Oh, okay. That's different. Yeah.

And, you know, once you kind of have the blueprint, I mean, they're all good, evidently, and they have a popular following. But, you know, they've been writing all their life. They're all like us. And you've written a lot of great books the the outlaws about the dalton gang i'll give you plugs here tombstone uh wild bill dodge city these are all movie things uh one thing that was interesting here the last man out uh the true story of america's uh heroic final hours of vietnam wow there you go there's efforts to develop that into a a limited what they call a limited series because uh the the production company is looking at uh they originally had with the national geographic channel now i think it's someplace else

because 1975 excuse me like 2025 april, which is now less than two years away, is the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Wow. And, you know, our book, Last Man Out, which I did with Bob Drury, is about when everybody abandoned the city on April 30th, 1975. We left 11 Marines on the roof of the American embassy. And that morning, as the sun rises, they're peering down from the roof as 150,000 North Vietnamese troops are entering Saigon. And so the book is about,

do they get out of there? How many get out of there? What happens? How do they get themselves out of there? And a lot of these guys, some of these guys are, I don't want to give too much away, but some of these guys are still alive.

And the powers that be thought that that would make for a really exciting and gripping limited series to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. So we'll see what happens. Yeah, that will definitely be interesting. What a harrowing story. I can't imagine being, you know, we just kind of saw some of that in Afghanistan. I think we have somebody writing a book on that that's been on the show. Well, thank you very much, Tom, for coming on the show. It was great to see you again.

Wonderful to have you. Please come back. And you gave us your.com, so we got that out of the way. Thanks, Mon, for tuning in. Order up the book wherever fine books are sold. Stay away from those alleyway bookstores because they're dangerous. You could get mugged. Follow me to hell.

McNelly's, Texas Rangers Rangers and the Rise of Frontier Justice. Available where fine books are sold. Damn, I'm going to have to find a new title for my memoir. Thanks for tuning in to my audience. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss, youtube.com, 4chesschrisvoss and LinkedIn, 4chesschrisvoss,

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