In the rugged back country of Scott County, Tennessee, along the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River, the federal marshal was not seen as a protector. He was an invader, an outsider enforcing laws the mountain people had never consented to. In the 1890s, this isolated region was fiercely independent, and its inhabitants often took the law into their own hands.
It was here, in 1858, that Robert James Coleman was born in a cabin on the banks of the New River.
Known as “Tennessee Short,” Coleman stood just 5’1” tall and weighed barely 115 pounds. But what he lacked in stature, he made up for in cunning. He could pick any lock, open any safe, and move through the forest—or any room—without making a sound.
For most of his life, he used these talents for honest work, fixing broken locks and machinery for his neighbors. He was scrupulously honest, and his skills remained dormant, waiting for a circumstance that would call them forth.
That circumstance arrived in 1895, in the form of a tragedy. The Coleman family, like most in the region, supplemented their farming income by making whiskey. This practice was as old as the settlement itself, but the federal government had been waging a war against mountain moonshiners for decades.
The conflict was led locally by Marshal Thomas Blackwood, a career lawman who had assembled a team of 22 deputies. They were hard men, recruited from outside the region, who operated with little oversight and a reputation for brutality.
Blackwood decided to make an example of the Coleman family to terrorize the region into compliance. He fabricated a criminal charge against 14-year-old Daniel Coleman, the eldest son of Bob’s brother William, and Bob’s beloved nephew. Daniel was accused of operating a still on federal land, a charge that was entirely invented.
The boy had never been near a still or federal land, but that did not matter. The trial was held in Knoxville, far from the community that knew the accusation was false. The marshals perjured themselves on the stand, presenting fabricated evidence with conviction.
The jury deliberated for less than two hours before returning a guilty verdict.
The sentence was death by hanging, a punishment almost unheard of for such an offense, especially for a child. The appeals process was hopeless; every motion was denied. On a cold October morning, Daniel Coleman was hanged in the yard of the federal prison in Nashville.
Bob had traveled to Nashville to be near his nephew, standing on a rise outside the prison walls. He heard the trap door fall, and he knew Daniel was gone.
The body was released to the family three days later. Bob drove the wagon himself, refusing to let anyone else handle the boy’s remains. After the funeral, gathered in the family cabin with Daniel’s photograph watching from the mantle, Bob made a vow.
He would not kill the marshals, knowing that violence would only bring more violence. Instead, he would attack them through their wealth. He would steal from every marshal who had participated in Daniel’s arrest, trial, or execution.
He would leave them as broken and destitute as they had left his family.
Bob spent six months planning his campaign. He studied each of the 22 marshals, learning where they lived, where they kept their money, and when their homes were empty. He compiled a list of targets, starting with Marshal Blackwood and the deputies who had testified against Daniel, and ending with the guards who had escorted him to the gallows.
The first theft came in April 1896. Deputy Marshal James Wilson, one of the men who had testified, woke to find his strong box empty. Over $200 in gold and currency was gone.
Bob had entered through an open window, picked the lock, and vanished without a trace. The second theft came three weeks later, and the pattern was established. Bob struck once or twice a month, choosing targets based on their involvement in Daniel’s case.
He never took unnecessary risks, and he never left evidence.
The investigation grew more intense as the losses mounted. Blackwood took charge personally, assigning guards to protect the homes of the remaining targets. But Bob adapted.
He gathered intelligence not from traitors within the marshal service, but from the mountain people who had their own grievances against federal authority. Cleaning women, stable hands, and shop clerks reported everything they observed to a network that eventually conveyed the information to Bob.
By the end of 1896, eight of the 22 marshals had been robbed. The financial losses were significant, but the psychological impact was worse. The marshals lived in constant fear, never knowing when they might wake to find their savings gone.
Some resigned their commissions entirely, fleeing Tennessee.
The ninth theft targeted Blackwood’s own residence. Blackwood had surrounded his home with guards and installed locks and alarms he believed were impenetrable. But Bob spent two months studying the security and found a weakness: the chimney.
No one had thought to guard it because no human could possibly fit through it. Except Bob Coleman. He stripped to his underclothes, covered himself in soot, and descended the flue, emerging in Blackwood’s fireplace in the dead of night.
He moved through the house like a shadow, taking over $500 in valuables, including Blackwood’s badge. The theft broke the marshal’s spirit. He became paranoid and erratic, and his superiors in Nashville removed him from his position in June 1897.
The campaign continued. The 10th victim was robbed while deputies watched his front door, unaware that Bob had entered through a cellar window. The 11th was robbed during a 15-minute absence.
The 12th was a federal judge who had denied Daniel’s appeal, a target outside the original list of marshals. Bob traveled to Nashville, studied the judge’s residence for weeks, and took over $1,000 in cash and securities.
By the spring of 1897, 12 men had been robbed, and the morale of the Federal Marshal Service in Tennessee had collapsed. Deputies refused assignments that might make them targets, and recruitment had become nearly impossible. But Bob’s list still had 10 names on it.
The 13th victim was a deputy who had fled to Kentucky, believing that crossing state lines would put him beyond Bob’s reach. Bob tracked him down through a network of contacts throughout the Appalachian region. The deputy’s new home was robbed three months after he arrived.
The 14th and 15th victims lost their savings within a week of each other. The 16th was robbed on Christmas Eve. The 17th was the hangman who had actually executed Daniel.
Bob tracked him for months, and in Nashville, he emptied the hangman’s hotel room while he slept, taking over $400 and the rope he used in his profession. The note Bob left read, “This rope took my nephew. I take everything else.”
The campaign continued through 1898. The 18th, 19th, and 20th victims were each stripped of their wealth. The 21st theft came in September, targeting a marshal who had transferred to Arkansas.
Bob followed him across a thousand miles and took his savings. The man resigned his commission the same day.
The 22nd and final theft came on the third anniversary of Daniel’s execution, in October 1898. The target was the last name on Bob’s list, a retired deputy who had played a minor role in the case. Bob took everything, leaving the man with nothing but the knowledge that he had finally paid for what he had done.
And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the campaign ended. Bob Coleman never committed another theft. He had robbed every marshal who had participated in Daniel’s arrest, trial, or execution.
The money he had accumulated, over $8,000 in cash and valuables, represented not profit, but justice.
The aftermath reshaped federal law enforcement in Tennessee for a generation. The investigation into the thefts exposed the broader patterns of abuse that had characterized federal enforcement in the region. Newspapers published exposés about Blackwood’s methods, about the fabricated charges and perjured testimony.
The practice of using fabricated charges to punish entire families was quietly abandoned, because no one wanted to provoke another Bob Coleman.
Bob Coleman lived another 37 years, dying peacefully in his bed in 1935 at the age of 77. He never married, devoting his life to caring for Daniel’s mother and siblings as he had promised. He used the wealth he had accumulated to help struggling families, contribute to the construction of a new schoolhouse, and support young people who wanted to pursue an education.
He became a respected figure in his community, known for his cleverness and his generosity.
No one outside the immediate family ever knew for certain that he was Tennessee Short, though many suspected. The mountain people had their own code of justice, and by that code, Bob Coleman had done nothing wrong. He had answered an injustice that the official system would not address.
The story of Tennessee Short passed into legend. Songs were written about him, ballads that celebrated his cunning and mourned the death of his nephew. The most famous, “Tennessee Short’s Revenge,” told the entire story in over 20 verses and spread throughout Appalachia.
The story endures because it speaks to something fundamental: the story of familial love, of cleverness and determination, of what happens when systems fail and people find other ways to balance the scales.