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Crandal Mackey was born in a Confederate field ambulance at the conclusion of the Civil War, and lived long enough to catch the first glimpses of the space race.
In Arlington political legend, however, Mackey will be remembered for leading a series of 1904 raids, shotgun in hand, in an attempt to rid Rosslyn of gambling, prostitution, horse racing and other crimes.
Mackey himself has been gone for nearly 70 years, and the venues of Rosslyn vice that he worked to dismantle disappeared 50 years before he did. But one reminder of those days is back on display once again.
It is Mackey’s personal shotgun, which he used in raids back in the days when, as the county prosecutor, he led a posse of residents intent on rooting out ruffians.
The story is told in the pages of contemporary newspapers now digitized through the Library of Virginia, in remembrances of those who took part, in occasional presentations by those keeping local history alive, in yellowing pages of long-ago election results and in the book “Shotgun Justice,” a 2012 biography of Mackey by local journalist Michael Lee Pope.
With the reopening of the Arlington Historical Society Museum last month following an eight-month renovation, the shotgun again takes pride of place in an exhibition about an era when Arlington was still known as Alexandria County, when politics was a sometimes violent contact sport and when few could have imagined the Rosslyn of the 21st century that would emerge.
Set for Public Display Again
Tuesday, April 15 dawned chilly and wet across the region. While others may have been focused on last-minute tax-return preparation, Bethany Baker zeroed in on getting the Arlington Historical Society Museum ready for its grand reopening.
Baker, the museum director, had less than three weeks as she prepared for May 3 opening festivities. The day would mark the culmination of about eight months of restoration work, bringing the facility fully into the 21st century.
Already on the wall was the shotgun belonging to Crandal Mackey, used in his 1904 raid.
It is, Baker noted, inoperable — the firing pin was removed long ago.
The shotgun will be a focal point of the “Growth & Lawlessness: 1890-1910” exhibition at the museum, located since 1960 in the former Hume School in Arlington Ridge.
Mackey’s shotgun is a relatively recent addition to the collection of several thousand artifacts.
“Records show it was given in May 2021,” Baker told ARLnow. It’s a donation from the Arlington County Sheriff’s Office.
The agency had held the artifact for years, and had resisted efforts by earlier commonwealth’s attorneys to take possession of it, according to Pope’s 2012 book.
“They never would give it to me,” longtime Commonwealth’s Attorney Richard Trodden told Pope.
“It’s ours, and we’re keeping it,” then-Sheriff Beth Arthur said, according to the book.
But times change, and the weapon arrived at the historical society about four years ago.
The museum’s “Growth & Lawlessness” section has been augmented by new holdings and additional interpretive materials. “We redid the whole exhibition,” Baker said.
It tells the story of a rough-and-tumble era, when farmers from the still mostly rural local community would sell their produce in D.C. On the return trip, they were occasionally robbed of their funds by bands of armed brigands. Some suffered even worse fates.
Many portions of the Rosslyn area were fraught with danger. None more so than Jackson City — a community that had begun decades before with much promise.
Named for a president who liked praise
No trace of the Jackson City community of Rosslyn remains today, which means its 200th anniversary will soon come and go with little fanfare.
But the planned community had started with great expectations.
Developers of the tract adjoining the Long Bridge on the Virginia side of the Potomac River in 1836 convinced President Andrew Jackson to lend his name to the new community.
A man who — like a number of his successors — wasn’t averse to being the center of attention, the nation’s seventh president went so far as to travel to the Virginia side, helping to put the cornerstone in place.
The project never quite took off. During the Civil War, the site was used for a federal fort, and then changed hands a number of times.
After the war ended, another group of investors, this time from New Jersey, made a go of the place as a gambling resort, historian Jay Roberts noted.
“Well, calling it a ‘resort’ is giving it too much credit,” he said. “Lawlessness prevailed, leading to the nickname ‘Hell’s Bottom’ and raising the ire of area citizens.”
Before things got better, they would get worse.
Fire stops vice, but not for long
A decade before Crandal Mackey and his posse arrived on the scene, Mother Nature first took aim at Jackson City.
The Arlington Historical Society, which offers a day-by-day compendium of county history, records that on Nov. 30, 1893, the notorious Monte Carlo gambling house at the Virginia end of Long Bridge went up in flames.
Judging from what few historical photographs remain, Jackson City’s casino shared little of the splendor of its Monaco namesake.
It was just one-story, wooden-frame building among the gambling dens, bordellos and saloons. However, its proprietors could hold off the long arm of the law through the judicious use of financial incentives to people in positions of authority.
According to the historical society, gambling only began to take hold in Jackson City after the Civil War, when Congress began to restrict gambling in D.C.
“Washington gamblers set up shop on the Virginia bank of the Potomac River, transforming it from a place with a tavern and a few saloons into a booming shanty town,” the historical society noted. “By the late 1880s, thousands of gamblers streamed into town every day.”
“The area soon earned a reputation for crime where gamblers were often robbed, beaten, and left for dead,” the society said. “Efforts to arrest owners failed to put them in jail long enough to discourage them.”
The conflagration of November 1893 began around 11:30 p.m. With wood as the primary building material, almost the entire row of shady establishments had been destroyed before the flames could be brought under control.
It didn’t take long to rebuild the slapdash facilities. And once again, vice was thriving.
The county sheriff and his personnel began efforts to clean up the situation as early as 1895, but gained little traction at first. Most local residents simply ignored what was happening in Rosslyn, while some were profiting off it through bribes, kickbacks and other services rendered.
Judges, politicians in on the action?
In Alexandria County, as present-day Arlington was then known, “you couldn’t get justice” at the dawn of the 20th century, Crandal Mackey declared in a 1908 speech to an appreciative crowd out in Fairfax County.
The reason? Corrupt judges and corrupt politicians, he said.
Rosslyn’s chaos, he claimed, stood in sharp contrast to the orderliness across the Potomac River.
“We live opposite a city where the criminal laws are strictly enforced,” Mackey said of the District, then under direct rule of Congress.
In the 1908 speech, Mackey singled out the man who perhaps was his nemesis: C.C. Carlin.
Carlin (1866-1938) was a newspaper publisher and something of a political boss in Alexandria County, and while Mackey said “I never had an unkind word with him in my life,” he went on to castigate Carlin as being an obstacle to reform.
What was Rosslyn really like at the turn of the century? In 1964, long after most participants in that era were gone, Frank Ball was around to tell the story.
Ball (1885-1966) long was a civic leader, having served several terms in the Virginia Senate after succeeding Mackey as commonwealth’s attorney.
In his 1964 comments, he remembered turn-of-the-century Rosslyn as home to “speakeasies and gambling places, one or two licensed saloons, and a lot of lewd women.”
The story will return to Ball in due course. But first, more on Mackey’s life and his 12-year reign as commonwealth’s attorney.
Born after one war, serving in another
Crandal Mackey was born on Dec. 15, 1865, in Shreveport, La., the son of a lawyer who served as a military engineer for the Confederacy. The family later moved to South Carolina and, when Crandal Mackey turned 18, to the D.C.
Mackey attended Randolph Macon College and earned a law degree in 1889 from Georgetown University.
Working for both the Department of War and in private practice, Mackey was appointed a captain of the 10th U.S. Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the Spanish-American War before returning to the local area and resuming his law practice.
In 1897, Mackey and his growing family moved to a new home at 1711 22nd Street N. in Arlington. Located on two acres on the palisades above Rosslyn and the Potomac River, it offered panoramic views.
His vista also included Rosslyn and Jackson City. At the dawn of the new century, Mackey decided he would be the one to do something about the situation there.
A very narrow victory
Mackey became commonwealth’s attorney by the slimmest of margins — eking out a two-vote lead, 323 to 321, over Richard Johnston. The third candidate in the race, Walter Varney, received 121 votes.
Assuming office in January 1904, Mackey told county law enforcement to begin removing gambling dens. But they reported to Sheriff William Palmer, not Mackey, and for months there was no action.
Thus came the famous 1904 raid, when Mackey and his shotgun entered into Arlington political lore.
“The posse of six men met on a Sunday in May and boarded the Alexandria and Mount Vernon Railroad,” Pope recounts in “Shotgun Justice.”
“Once the streetcar was in motion, Crandal Mackey dumped several sacks in the aisle, full of axes, guns and sledgehammers — [and] as arranged, the conductor made a special stop. The raid was on,” Pope continued.
The posse’s first stop resulted in disappointment. There were rumors that the sheriff had tipped off owners of the gambling establishment in advance (a rumor he denied).
Moving on to the Jackson City area, Mackey’s posse opted to “give the lawbreakers an idea of what they may expect if they persist,” the Washington Star reported.
The results were hit-or-miss, but the media coverage was immense, and the prosecutor got his point across. Ongoing efforts both in courts and at the venues themselves represented the beginning of the end of Rosslyn’s era of vice.
Pope’s book recounts the battle royale that followed in various courtroom dramas.
“If Mackey has brains, he can do it,” one anonymous source told the Washington Times (no connection to today’s newspaper of the same name).
The source, however, was not so sure how the legal battles would turn out: “The gamblers have money and nerve. [Their] lawyers have employed the brains, and the combination will fight to the last ditch.”
Mackey then turned his attention to those in elected office and law enforcement who had looked the other way, perhaps for cash paid under the table, to allow the vice to flourish.
The full story of this period occupies about 20 pages of Pope’s biography of Mackey, drawing from contemporary reports.
Two more terms before calling it quits
Voters rallied to Mackey’s side in his 1907 re-election bid, although support for him was far from unanimous. He defeated his challenger 506 to 274.
A more heated race in 1911 saw a closer result, with Mackey besting Richard Moncure, 692 to 439. By that time, according to the historical record, many residents of Alexandria County were viewing Mackey as an entrenched politician rather than a shotgun-wielding reformer.
In 1915, Mackey announced a bid for a fourth term, but his actions during that campaign as detailed in “Shotgun Justice” could best be described as erratic. Just a month before Election Day and giving little reason, he dropped out.
Of the three candidates left in the race, Frank Ball won the job and would serve until 1924, when he was elected to the Virginia Senate.
Ball served in the legislature until 1932, and for more than three decades after that was something of an political elder statesman. He also was a proponent for the county-manager form of government, adopted in Arlington in the early 1930s.
Politically forgotten, but still around
Mixed emotions greeted Mackey’s departure from office at the end of 1915.
A newspaper article from his last week in office noted that he had received “several handsome presents” that included a fountain pen from the county’s Bar Association and a “lap robe” from county elected officials.
Overall, his departure from office gave rise to a rosier view of Mackey than often had been the case during his 12 years in the post of prosecutor. Editorials and other remembrances tended to focus on the positive.
Mackey returned to the private practice of law, but he would pop up, sometimes unexpectedly, in news coverage for decades to come.
In 1930, Mackey ran in the Democratic primary for the 8th District U.S. House of Representatives seat being vacated by the retiring R. Walton Moore.
His main focus in the election was vigorous enforcement of Prohibition laws.
Also in the race were E.H. DeJarnette, who also was seeking to retain a ban on liquor sales, as well as Judge Howard Smith and a name that continues to pop up in Mackey’s story: State Sen. Frank Ball.
Virginia had been legally “dry” since 1916, four years before a constitutional amendment banned most liquor sales nationally. By 1930, however, Prohibition was largely seen as a failed experiment.
“At present, the contest looks to be one between Smith and Ball. It is expected that Mackey and DeJarnette will have a hard time arousing the people on the Prohibition issue, although Mr. Mackey is a forceful speaker,” noted a Baltimore Sun article reprinted in the Culpeper Exponent.
That analysis played out in the summertime primary, with Smith topping Ball and both Mackey and DeJarnette far back.
Howard Smith would remain in office until 1966, when he was defeated in the Democratic primary by left-leaning challenger George Rawlings. Rawlings then fell in the general election to Republican William Scott.
Smith (1883-1976) is best known for his staunch opposition to civil-rights legislation and communism, as well as for the power he wielded in the 1950s and 190s as chair of the House Rules Committee.
In 1936, Mackey again turned up in political coverage. The Commonwealth Monitor newspaper reported that, on Oct. 24, he was a centerpiece attraction as Republicans held a rally in support of presidential candidate Alf Landon at Washington-Lee High School.
“I am still a Democrat and am proud of it,” Mackey told the audience. “I did not leave my party — [Franklin] Roosevelt and his Brain Trusters and Frankensteins have forced the party to leave me.”
“The present administration is going very rapidly socialistic,” the one-time commonwealth’s attorney said.
The effort proved unsuccessful — Roosevelt won Virginia and all but two other states (Maine and Vermont). With nearly 61% of the popular vote, FDR achieved the biggest presidential-election rout since 1820.
Star-crossed family life
A search of newspaper archives held by the Library of Virginia not only uncovers information about Mackey’s political and professional careers, but wild stories about his often eventful family life.
A number of incidents from newspaper holdings of the Library of Virginia provide the details.
In May 1911, Mackey’s wife was in their home when she was attacked by robbers, suffering severe bruises.
According to front-page coverage in the Richmond News Leader, the suspects were a band of “marauders” who had targeted the homes of “11 of the most wealthy and prominent citizens” of Alexandria City and County.
Several days later, the same newspaper reported that Crandal Mackey had found a potential suspect — described as a D.C. man “of repulsive features” — hiding in the woods near the home, and that he took him to jail. What happened to the suspect remains lost to time.
In August 1912, the Alexandria Gazette reported that the car driven by Crandal Mackey and carrying his wife and their two daughters plunged down a 25-foot embankment known as “Dead Man’s Hollow” after Mackey was blinded by the lights of an oncoming vehicle that was “tearing over the top of the hill.”
The Mackey car turned two complete somersaults and landed atop the prosecutor and his two daughters. Mrs. Mackey’s quick thinking ensured that leaking fuel did not erupt into a fire while they were pinned.
Daughters Alice and Virginia escaped with relatively minor injuries, but Crandal Mackey received a “painfully injured” shoulder, the Gazette reported.
An unknown assailant shot Mackey’s son, Crandal Jr., in Rosslyn in August 1914, according to coverage in the Manassas Journal.
At the time, Mackey had recently been confirmed by the U.S. Senate as postmaster of Rosslyn.
The younger Mackey was taken by his father to Georgetown University Hospital. The news report said physicians were optimistic for a full recovery, unless blood poisoning set in.
A last vestige disappears in 2014
Crandal Mackey died in 1957 at age 91, his wife Mary later that year at age 87. They are buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
To honor his legacy, a county park at 19th Street N. and N. Moore Street in Rosslyn was named in Mackey’s honor.
Ironically, however, it was the very cleanup of the area he had begun more than a century before that sealed the park’s fate in 2014. It was redeveloped out of existence as part of the Central Place project, a gleaming set of trophy buildings as far removed from Mackey’s Rosslyn as one can imagine.
Thanks to the Library of Virginia and Charlie Clark Center for Local History for assistance in coverage.
