PARKER, Isaac (1838-1896). Known as 'Hanging Judge Parker'. Document signed ("Ic Parker"), partly printed and partially accomplished in autograph, Fort Smith, Arkansas, January 3, 1890. 1 page, oblong octavo, docketed on the verso in bright red, which shows through but is away from the hand of Parker who pens "3d" day of "Jan" 18"90". Hanging Judge Parker was the archetypical frontier jurist -- severe, unequivocal, unforgiving and determined to bring the wild country at the edge of Arkansas Territory under semi-civilized rule. There were 200 marshals riding for the fabled judge Parker and it was said in the press, "There was no Sunday west of Saint Louis, and no God west of Fort Smith". The land of the Indian Nations comprised 74,000 square miles of the worst men who ever came west: murderers, thieves, men running liquor to the Indians. Fort Smith was the last outpost of civilization, and Judge Parker the final arbiter of many a man's fate. By the end of his career in 1896 he had hanged some 80 men.