I don't want to distract from my above query, but I have to toss this out too--the "Centralia Massacre" legislation enacted March 3, 1875 was ramrodded through Congress by southwest Missouri's Radical Republican Representative Isaac C. Parker. His last day in Congress?--March 3, 1875.

And when I ran across that name it grabbed my attention so I looked into him.

Fifteen days after Parker's last day in Congress and his swan song of granting pensions for Centralia Massacre victims, President Ulysses Grant nominated Parker to the Federal bench for the Western District of Arkansas, where we have since all come to know him and love him as the "Hanging Judge" who John Wayne and then Jeff Bridges sparred with, and about, in True Grit ("I mean to kill you in one minute, Ned. Or see you hanged in Fort Smith at Judge Parker's convenience. Which'll it be?"), and was the model for the judge Clint Eastwood had the love/hate relationship with in Hang 'Em High ("Why? Because of you, Cooper. Because of that beautiful, that magnificent journey you took to bring three killers to justice. Because if the law didn't hang them, the next posse that goes out will say, 'Hang 'em and hang 'em high....'").