[citation needed] He was the first man killed in the Lincoln County War, an economic and political conflict that resulted in armed warfare between rival gangs of cowboys and the ranchers, lawmen, and politicians who issued the orders.
Furthermore, Tunstall's father "worked in trade", with business interests in both Canada and in the United Kingdom, and would, for this reason, have been looked down on and excluded from polite society.
[citation needed] John Tunstall was always inclined toward agnosticism and, as he entered manhood, "grew increasingly contemptuous of organized religion" and its "ethical restraints.
[3] According to Robert M. Utley, "Three miserable and penurious years of clerking" for his father's partners in Vancouver produced in Tunstall a "firm conviction" that, "the road to riches ... did not lie in the mercantile world.
"[4] According to Utley, Tunstall, in his "dreams pictured an empire of sheep or cattle pastured on a great landed estate", where his herds multiplied and his bank account similarly swelled with ever more and more money.
In a letter home, Tunstall wrote that although he knew that "a rugged outdoor life" would have its challenges, he predicted, "I shall be far happier than cuffed in white linen & coated in broadcloth, pedalling trifles to women with slim purses & slimmer education & refinement.
"[6] His father, John Partridge Tunstall, was "a shrewd sceptic", who had done very well for his family in the mercantile world and, although he had plenty of capital to invest "did not share his son's explosive enthusiasm for every opportunity that came along.
Prompted, however, by "a dwindling reserve of cash", Tunstall walked to the west on San Francisco Street and instead took lodgings at Herlow's, "a very second class hotel", for a third less the cost.
[8] In Santa Fe, Tunstall met Scottish-Canadian lawyer Alexander McSween, who told him of the potentially big profits to be made in Lincoln County, which was being rapidly settled.
The young Englishman bought a ranch on the Rio Feliz, some 30 miles (48 km) nearly due south of the town of Lincoln, and went into business as a cattleman.
In his letters to his family in London, Tunstall said that he intended to not only unseat Murphy and Dolan, but to become so powerful that half of every dollar made by anyone in Lincoln County would end up in his pocket.
When too many of the residents of Lincoln switched their business to Tunstall's store, Murphy-Dolan began a slide into bankruptcy, and Catron's bottom line was affected.
In the Spring of 1877, Sheriff Brady was beaten up by two bravados, who were believed to be acting on John Tunstall's orders, in the middle of the main street of Lincoln.
A posse deputized by Lincoln Sheriff Brady went to Tunstall's ranch on the Feliz to attach his cattle on a warrant that had been issued against his business partner, McSween.
The historian Robert Utley writes that Tunstall may have surrendered or he may just as easily have drawn his sidearm and tried to defend himself from Deputies Morton, Hill, and Evans.
The newly minted lawmen dubbed themselves The Regulators and went first in search of Deputies Evans, Morton, Hill, and Baker and all the others implicated in Tunstall's death.
A new federal law of 1878, passed by a Democratic majority of Congress and in reaction to the former use of military forces in southern states to suppress violence targeting freedmen during the Reconstruction era, prohibited the Army from intervening in civilian conflicts.
Bonney operated as a bandit in the area with his own gang and survived until July 14, 1881, when he was shot and killed at Fort Sumner by Sheriff Pat Garrett of Lincoln County.
Frederick Nolan collected these letters and published them as The Life and Death of John Henry Tunstall, a basic work in the historiography of the Lincoln County War.