“The true history of the West will never be told until Wyatt Earp talks. And Wyatt Earp ain’t talking.”

　　– Bat Masterson to Stuart Lake

　　It can be a tragedy when modern filmmakers try to romanticize history. Nevertheless, Wyatt Earp’s story demands romance. While fiction may portray truths about the human condition that history cannot, Earp’s story is an instance of the brutality, beauty, and complexity of history-trumping tragedy. Netflix, usually reckless when handling history, has achieved a commendable feat with its documentary, Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War, but it is not without its flaws.

　　Netflix commits to historical accuracy, but that approach unfortunately shows that a deluge of historical context can drown good storytelling. The good: they invited top-rate Earp historians such as Casey Tefertiller, John Boessenecker, Mark Lee Gardener, and Paul Hutton to moderate the dramatic portrayal with facts. The bad: they invited other historians with no research background on Earp to contextualize the political landscape of the West and its relationship to Washington, DC, New York City, London, and even J. P. Morgan and Wells Fargo. The ugly: they inserted tangents on global politics that are an unnecessary distraction from a great story.

　　While it is clear that widening the context attempts to render Earp’s story epic, Wyatt Earp is already an epic figure, already mythologized, and he doesn’t need global impact to seal his legacy or prove his importance. To become a legend, all Wyatt needed was the American West and the freedom it afforded him.

　　Ed Harris is a masterful narrator for the series. Tim Fellingham (Wyatt) and Ariel Eliaz (Virgil) shine as they portray the Earp brothers. Jack Gordon plays the perfect Ike Clanton and steals the show. Not only is the narration, acting, and casting top-notch, but the portrayal is (generally) true to history.

　　Although Netflix (generally) portrays the truth about the historical figures dramatized in the docuseries, there are some distortions and omissions.

　　Who was the real Wyatt Earp? Wyatt (1848–1929) served the United States as Deputy US Marshal, and he served his local communities as Deputy Sheriff and Deputy Town Marshal. He was born a lowly frontiersman and became celebrated during his life and after he died for his courage. His most iconic moment occurred at the O.K. Corral, in Tombstone, Arizona, on October 26, 1881, where his stand against the Clanton-McLaury gang (the Cowboys) demonstrated his unwavering commitment to defend his family, his friends, order, and justice. Earp’s status as a fearless defender of law and order immortalized him in American history. His legend inspired scores of young men to act in courageous defense of the American principles of law, order, and liberty.

　　Who was the real Virgil Earp and what did he do at the O.K. Corral? Virgil (1843–1905) was Wyatt’s older brother. He served the Union in the American Civil War, despite his father’s vocal support of the Confederacy at the outset of the conflict. He later became deputy US Marshal and Tombstone City Marshal. He was with Wyatt on that fated day at the O.K. Corral to enforce Tombstone Ordinance No. 9: “To Provide against Carrying of Deadly Weapons.” A thirty-second shootout ensued that left Virgil, Morgan Earp, and Doc Holiday maimed, three Cowboys dead, and two Cowboys running in fear.

　　The series skillfully portrays the shootout, yet it does not mention the ordinance and Virgil’s duty to enforce it as US and City Marshal. Nor does the series mention that Wyatt, Morgan Earp, and Doc Holiday were legal deputies. These omissions obscure that the Earps were performing their legal duty when citizens of the town told Virgil that several Cowboys—including Ike Clanton who was on a day-and-night-long drunken bender—were in violation of the ordinance.

　　Law vs. Lies: A Defense of Thomas Fitch

　　The most compelling scenes of the docuseries are not the fight scenes, though, but those that occur in the legal battle following the shootout. Netflix shows that Wyatt can defend himself with arms, but not speech. Likewise, Wyatt’s attorney, Thomas Fitch (played by Matthew Steer), seems incapable of defending him.

　　Netflix portrays Fitch as a bumbling but ambitious fool: “A jack of all trades and master of none.” He was a jack of all trades, but as the adage continues, a jack of all trades is “oftentimes better than a master of one.” The real Fitch was no fool.

　　As David Eisenback says, Fitch was a lawyer with “a number of other enterprises.” Mark Twain, for instance, credited Fitch with giving him his “first really profitable lesson” in storytelling. And before defending the Earps, Fitch was the personal attorney for Brigham Young and general counsel for the Mormon Church, prevailing in People v. Brigham Young. He became a delegate at Utah’s 1872 constitutional convention. He was one of two men chosen as US Senator for the proposed state of Arizona in 1873. By the time he represented the Earps and Holliday, he was known as “The Silver-Tongued Orator of the Pacific Slope.”

　　Despite Netflix’s inaccurate depiction of Fitch’s character and qualifications, it accurately depicts much of the trial. Fitch strategically forced the longest extended preliminary hearing in Arizona history by ensuring that the trial remained a murder trial. Judge Spicer argued that a manslaughter case would immediately go to trial, as Tefertiller explains.

　　Despite the flaws in his moral character, Earp was committed to vanquishing evil in the American West. He understood that doing so was essential to establishing order and a free society.

　　Ike Clanton’s gang, the Cowboys, bribed almost every witness, but Fitch questioned and tangled them in their web of lies. Tombstone’s Sheriff, Johnny Behan lied profusely, as Netflix portrays. He said that the Cowboys had their hands in the air when the first shots rang out. Netflix doesn’t record Behan’s statement that the shot came from a “nickel plated pistol,” the exact description of the weapon owned by Doc Holiday. In the actual hearing, Fitch masterfully demonstrated that three alleged lies could not be simultaneously true: Doc fired first, he was holding a rifle, and the first shot came from the “nickel plated pistol.”

　　Behan’s lie that the Cowboys were unarmed is key, but Netflix doesn’t explain why. Though Netflix tells the story, they do not discuss law. That omission precludes two important lessons we can learn from the history of the O.K. Corral shootout: the truth that man never wins if he lives by lies, and that the American judicial system is capable of arriving at justice even amidst corruption.

　　Order and Liberty: Defending the Legend of Wyatt Earp

　　The real question becomes: should Virgil have deputized his friends? This was the very complaint that Judge Spicer lodged against Virgil at the close of the trial.

　　The series forces the viewer to question what he thinks he knows about what happened at the O.K. Corral through Ike’s testimony in the third episode, “Trial of the Century.” Despite Gordon’s fantastic portrayal of Clanton, Netflix practically begs the viewer to remain on Wyatt’s side. The series never spells out, however, why the viewer should remain on Wyatt’s side.

　　Here I enter my own defense of Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp. It is true, as Bat Masterson said, that Doc was a man with a “mean disposition and ungovernable temper and under the influence of liquor was a most dangerous man.” It is true that the night before the gunfight Doc had gotten into an argument with Ike and challenged him to a duel (location not determined, but surely outside the city of Tombstone). It is true that the day before the gunfight Wyatt Earp punched Tom McLaury in the head. But it is also true, as Judge Spicer concluded, that although Virgil’s choice to deputize these men was “unwise,” it was not “unlawful.”

　　Was it truly unwise? Despite the historical inaccuracies of the films and comics presenting Wyatt as the archetypal Western hero they get one crucial thing right: the West was a chaotic state of nature where a brutal battle between good and evil existed and liberty stood in the balance. Taming the West required principled men—who stood for honor, order, and justice—to tame the evil that threatened to turn the promise of liberty into licentiousness. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday were deeply flawed men, but they understood evil, vowing to contain it if possible and to destroy it if necessary. The American West needed such men, and the West still needs such men today.

　　The Cowboys were lawless thugs who lived by theft and murder. They stood for mob rule. They plunged the unsettled western territory of Arizona and the city of Tombstone into a state of nature. As Boessenecker tells the audience, “Your odds of getting killed in Arizona territory were about the same as an infantryman in South Vietnam.” The Cowboys wanted to redefine justice as “the will of the stronger.” They used violence and bribery (with money that they stole) to ensure that the law would defend their injustice and villainy, inverting the relationship between law and justice.

　　The Code of the Frontier

　　Wyatt Earp stood for law, order, and liberty, while Ike Clanton and his Cowboys were a force for chaos. But how can Wyatt Earp—a man accused of being a “pimp” in Kansas, arrested by his own brother for “being found in a house of ill-fame,” and who devoted himself to a “vendetta ride” after the murder of his brother—be identified as a man of principle and a force of justice?

　　A book that has been charged with creating the myth of Wyatt Earp, Stuart Lake’s Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, helps explain. In a supposed quote from Earp (I say supposed because the veracity of Lake’s book has been rightfully questioned), Wyatt conveys “what might be called the code of the frontier” as expounded by his father, Nicholas. The code states, “Always give every man the full benefit of every possible doubt. … But, whenever you’re certain that you’re dealing with downright viciousness, the complete disregard for human rights and decency, remember that such lawlessness is the greatest enemy of mankind. Any man who is honestly combating such lawlessness is justified in going to any lengths to which lawlessness forces the fight. When you know you have a fight with viciousness on your hands, hit first, if you can, and when you do hit, hit to kill.” Please note: this is “the code of the frontier,” and the state of nature that was the American West. It aimed at ensuring survival amidst chaos and justice in the face of villainy. It is not necessarily a foundation for moral character.

　　Whether or not this advice was ever spoken by Nicholas Earp, and whether or not this code creates a proper foundation for moral character, is questionable. What is unquestionable, though, is that Wyatt Earp was confronted with, and backed into a corner by, the Cowboys’ viciousness and he followed the advice that Lake attributes to Nicholas Earp. The veracity of Lake’s portrayal of Wyatt becomes irrelevant when you understand that the legend of Wyatt Earp concretized a fundamental truth: courage in the face of known evil is necessary to defend liberty and justice. If such a portrayal is mere myth, so be it. Settling the American West required such myths.

　　Wyatt Earp may have been immoderate in many things, but he was not reckless in the determination to follow the “code of the frontier” and kill the Cowboys who murdered his younger brother right before his eyes. Let us not forget that Wyatt killed Frank Stilwell while his family was attacked on a train conveying Morgan’s body to California to be laid to rest. When Ike saw Wyatt, he ran like a coward, just as he did at the O.K. Corral.

　　The cowardly Cowboys threatened Wyatt’s life and his family’s lives on various occasions. Wyatt Earp knew that he confronted evil, and he vowed to prevail in that confrontation. That is precisely why Americans have rightfully become obsessed with the legend of Wyatt Earp. That is why I defend the legend of Wyatt Earp. Despite the flaws in his moral character, he was committed to vanquishing evil in the American West. He understood that doing so was essential to establishing order and a free society.