22. The Old West Was a Magnet for the Restless, the Troubled, and the Violent
Frank Hamer began his career in the dying days of classical Old West lawmen. Earlier, throughout the nineteenth century, the United States had relentlessly pushed its frontier westward in pursuit of what came to be termed the young republic’s Manifest Destiny. Settlers steadily populated vast swathes with a relentless stream of new arrivals who upped stakes and abandoned their homes out East – or across the oceans – in pursuit of dreams of greener pastures and a fresh start in the American West.
Unsettled frontiers tend to attract a disproportionate number of single young men, eager for adventure and new horizons, rowdy, rambunctious, and restless. In the absence of the social restraints that are typically imposed by families and neighbors in more established communities, such men frequently turn lawless. That was what happened in the Old West, where it often took many years between the initial settlement of new communities, and their settling down into the rut and norms of established civil society. In such a fluid and volatile environment, it took decades to establish effective law and order and finally tame the West.
