This year we are adding another match that will be a “rifle” only event. This concept is nothing new. Some of us have experienced these at Devore with the Cajon Cowboys. These were a lot of fun and gave everyone a chance to bring out those guns that you got a chance to shoot once with maybe 5 to 10 rounds at a side event. At Devore, you had the opportunity to shoot all three guns individually at a stage. So if brought all three types, pistol caliber lever/pump, a rifle caliber lever, and a single shot, you got to shoot 3 times at every stage! I was usually beat by the time I finished those matches but it was a hoot.

So this year, a “new” Iron Buffalo Rifle Match will be held at the RR Bar in Lucerne Valley. So, if you like to shoot rifles, here’s your chance. We’re going to try something different this time. You will be shooting rifles in pairs. What you’ll need is your pistol caliber rifle (your usual CAS rifle) and a rifle caliber gun. This pair will constitute a category based on the style of the rifle. The stages will be configured so that you shoot both guns. The plan is for you to shoot 7-10 rounds for the pistol caliber and 5 to 7 for the rifle caliber at each stage. Now if you have a lever gun, single shot in rifle caliber, and/or a Wild Bunch style rifle, you can sign up for 2 or more categories. So when you shoot that additional category, you will again shoot your CAS rifle again with that rifle caliber gun. All of the detail information is posted with the entry info.

Since we are a Black Powder organization, all ammunition will be shot with Black Powder or substitutes except for the Wild Bunch category where both rifles can be shot with smokeless. Now we would like all of you interested to come out and participate in this match so for those of you that are shy about this BP stuff, we welcome you to come and shoot with your “white powder”. You can sign up and shoot as our “guest” and will be scored but out of the running for awards. It’s our offer to you to be involved and maybe learn a few tidbits about shooting with Black Powder from others.

Linea de Fuego (“Line of Fire”)
Date: Sunday, May 17
6 Stages

After Frontier Days No 12 this year I decided to stop there and think about something different. I’ve shot a few Wild Bunch matches and enjoyed them. Being able to use some of these transitional guns in CAS style is great especially with the costuming and leather gear that go with the Colt 1911 era guns. Since I’m a collector and a fanatic about cartridge development and history, an event that crosses the threshold of Black Powder to Bulk Smokeless Powder (transitional 1895) became an idea. So here we are again trying another new thing. Linea de Fuego is a Bill Hahn creation. He started this with the Combat Pistol arena back in the 1980’s. A group is still active down in San Diego and information is on the web. This is mainly a practical pistol/IPSC organization. I decided to take this to another level at RR Bar. On May 17th we will run a continuation of Frontier Days where we include the Wild Bunch category and a few twists to the existing set of categories. This match, Linea de Fuego, will be the era that combines Black Powder and Smokeless powder cartridges. I figured that instead of just a Wild Bunch match; why not include it as a category? A good number of you shoot 2 categories in these matches anyway, so here’s a chance to shoot Black and Smokeless at the same match. So with these disciplines all meshed together, we should have an interesting group of shooters. All of the details will be posted by Jan 31st, 2009.

For both of these matches, I have contracted Karin’s BBQ for the lunches. If you were at Thunder Valley in November 2008, you will remember that great lunch that was served. Well, it’s going to be available again and included with the match fee provided you pre-register within the prescribed date. A small fee will be imposed for late registration. Hope to see you there and for any questions or comments, I can be reached by phone or e-mail. The contact info is on this web site.

Adios for now, 
Red Sun

Horace Greeley (February 3, 1811 – November 29, 1872) was an American editor of a leading newspaper, a founder of the Liberal Republican Party, a reformer, and a politician. His New York Tribune was America's most influential newspaper from the 1840s to the 1870s and "established Greeley's reputation as the greatest editor of his day."Greeley used it to promote the Whig and Republican parties, as well as antislavery and a host of reforms. Crusading against the corruption of Ulysses S. Grant's Republican administration, he was the new Liberal Republican Party's candidate in the 1872 U.S. presidential election. Despite having the additional support of the Democratic Party, he lost in a landslide. Early life Greeley was born on February 3, 1811, in Amherst, New Hampshire, the son of poor farmers Zaccheus and Mary Greeley. He declined a scholarship to Phillips Exeter Academy and left school at the age of 14; he apprenticed as a printer in Poultney, Vermont, at The Northern Star, moving to New York City in 1831. In 1834 he founded the weekly the New Yorker, which consisted mostly of clippings from other magazines. In 1836 Greeley married Mary Cheney Greeley, an intermittent suffragette. Horace Greeley spent as little time as possible with his wife and would sleep in a boarding house when in New York City rather than be with her. Only two of their seven children survived into adulthood. The New York Tribune ----------------------------------------------- Whig In 1838 leading Whig politicians selected him to edit a major national campaign newspaper, the Jeffersonian, which reached 15,000 circulation. Whig leader William Seward found him "rather unmindful of social usages, yet singularly clear, original, and decided, in his political views and theories." In 1840 he edited a major campaign newspaper, the Log Cabin, which reached 90,000 subscribers nationwide, and helped elect William Henry Harrison president on the Whig ticket. In 1841 he merged his papers into the New York Tribune. It soon was a success as the leading Whig paper in the metropolis; its weekly edition reached tens of thousands of subscribers across the country. Greeley was editor of the Tribune for the rest of his life, using it as a platform for advocacy of all his causes. As historian Allan Nevins explains:     The Tribune set a new standard in American journalism by its combination of energy in news gathering with good taste, high moral standards, and intellectual appeal. Police reports, scandals, dubious medical advertisements, and flippant personalities were barred from its pages; the editorials were vigorous but usually temperate; the political news was the most exact in the city; book reviews and book-extracts were numerous; and as an inveterate lecturer Greeley gave generous space to lectures. The paper appealed to substantial and thoughtful people.                             —Nevins, Dictionary of American Biography (1931)

1872 portrait of Greeley by J.E. Baker Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 6th district In office December 4, 1848 – March 3, 1849 Preceded by  David S. Jackson Succeeded by  James Brooks Born  February 3, 1811(1811-02-03) Amherst, New Hampshire, U.S. Died  November 29, 1872 (aged 61) Pleasantville, New York, U.S. Political party  Whig, Democrat, Republican Spouse  Mary Cheney Greeley Profession  Editor, Politician New York Tribune editorial staff. Greeley is third from the left in the front row.

Photograph of Greeley by Mathew Brady, taken between 1844 and 1860 Horace Greeley

Greeley prided himself in taking radical positions on all sorts of social issues; few readers followed his suggestions. Utopia fascinated him; influenced by Albert Brisbane he promoted Fourierism. His journal had Karl Marx (as well as Friedrich Engels) as European correspondent in the early 1850s (although most of his views sharply contrasted with the ones promoted by marxism). He promoted all sorts of agrarian reforms, including homestead laws. He was elected as a Whig to the Thirtieth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the unseating of David S. Jackson and served from December 4, 1848, to March 3, 1849. Greeley supported liberal policies towards settlers; in a July 13, 1865 editorial, he famously advised "Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country." Some have claimed that the phrase was originally written by John Soule in the Terre Haute Express in 1851, but it is most often attributed to Greeley. Historian Walter A. McDougall quotes Josiah Grinnell, the founder of Iowa's Grinnell College, as saying, "I was the young man to whom Greeley first said it, and I went." A champion of the working man, he attacked monopolies of all sorts and rejected land grants to railroads. Industry would make everyone rich, he insisted, as he promoted high tariffs. He supported vegetarianism, opposed liquor and paid serious attention to any "-ism" anyone proposed. What made the ‘’Tribune’‘ such a success were the extensive news stories, very well written by brilliant reporters, together with feature articles by fine writers. He was an excellent judge of newsworthiness and quality of reporting. His editorials and news reports explaining the policies and candidates of the Whig Party were reprinted and discussed throughout the country. Many small newspapers relied heavily on the reporting and editorials of the Tribune. He served as Congressman for three months, 1848--1849, but failed in numerous other attempts to win elective office. Republican When the new Republican Party was founded in 1854, Greeley made the Tribune its unofficial national organ, and fought slavery extension and the slave power on many pages. On the eve of the Civil War circulation nationwide approached 300,000. In 1860 he supported the ex-Whig Edward Bates of Missouri for the Republican nomination for president, an action that weakened Greeley's old ally Seward.

Although after 1860 he increasingly lost control of the Tribune’s operations, and wrote fewer editorials, in 1864 he expressed defeatism regarding Lincoln’s chances of reelection, an attitude that was echoed across the country when his editorials were reprinted. Oddly he also pursued a peace policy in 1863-64 that involved discussions with Copperheads and opened the possibility of a compromise with the Confederacy. Lincoln was aghast, but outsmarted Greeley by appointing him to a peace commission he knew the Confederates would repudiate.

Reconstruction
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In Reconstruction he took an erratic course, mostly favoring the Radicals and opposing president Andrew Johnson in 1865-66. In 1867, Greeley was one of 21 men who signed a $100,000 bond for the release of former president of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis. The move was controversial, and many Northerners thought Greeley a traitor and canceled subscriptions to the Weekly Tribune by the thousands.

Election of 1872
    Main article: United States presidential election, 1872

After supporting Ulysses Grant in the 1868 election, Greeley broke from Grant and the Radicals. Opposing Grant's re-election bid, he joined the Liberal Republican Party in 1872. To everyone’s astonishment, that new party nominated Greeley as their presidential candidate. Even more surprisingly, he was officially endorsed by the Democrats, whose party he had denounced for decades. As a candidate, Greeley argued that the war was over, the Confederacy was destroyed, and slavery was dead — and that Reconstruction was a success, so it was time to pull Federal troops out of the South and let the people there run their own affairs. A weak campaigner, he was mercilessly ridiculed by the Republicans as a fool, an extremist, a turncoat, and a crazy man who could not be trusted. The most vicious attacks came in cartoons by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly. Greeley ultimately ran far behind Grant, winning only 43% of the vote. This crushing defeat was not Greeley's only misfortune in 1872. Greeley was among several high-profile investors who were defrauded by Philip Arnold in a famous diamond and gemstone hoax. Meanwhile, as Greeley had been pursuing his political career, Whitelaw Reid, owner of the New York Herald, had gained control of the Tribune.

Greeley/Brown campaign poster Greeley helps murder blacks in an 1872 Thomas Nast cartoon

Not long after the election, Greeley's wife died. He descended into madness and died before the electoral votes could be cast. In his final illness, allegedly Greeley spotted Reid and cried out, "You son of a bitch, you stole my newspaper." Greeley died at 6:50 p.m. on Friday, November 29, 1872, in Pleasantville, New York at Dr. George C. S. Choate’s private hospital. Greeley received no electoral votes, with the ones he was to have received being scattered among others. However, three of Georgia's electoral votes were left blank in honor of him. (Other sources report Greeley receiving 3 electoral votes posthumously, with those votes being disallowed by Congress.)

Greeley had requested a simple funeral, but his daughters ignored this request and arranged a grand affair. He is buried in New York's Green-Wood Cemetery.

The Greeley home in Chappaqua, New York, now houses the New Castle Historical Society. The local high school is named for him, and the name of one of the school newspapers pays homage to the 19th-century paper owned by Greeley.