as he was about to start three bounty hunters who had been tracking him attacked; two shot him while the third struck him with an axe. The following day they took his body to Lumberton and collected the bounty, and the Lowry War ended. Contemporary media coverage The Lowry War was frequently reported on by The Robesonian, a Lumberton-based weekly newspaper founded in 1870, and the Wilmington Morning Star, North Carolina's largest paper. The Robesonian's reports were reprinted in other state newspapers before being covered in other publications across the country. The Lowry Gang reportedly paid close attention to how it was portrayed in the media, seeking out editions of papers and expressing knowledge of certain articles. The Robesonian's editor stated that he was once threatened by Lowry about his style of coverage and briefly fled the county. Most of the local coverage was simply listings of reported crimes and gang sightings, often repeating official statements of the authorities. Press coverage of the gang's racial makeup was often confused and contradictory, with papers describing Lowry and his followers variously as negro, mulatto, or "Indian-like". Southern Conservative and Democratic newspapers favored portraying them as dark-skinned as part of a wider effort to blame lawlessness in the South on black freedmen and Republicans. The Raleigh News criticized Harper's Weekly for publishing drawings of the gang that showed them as light-skinned. North Carolina's Democratic and Conservative papers generally used their comment on the Lowry War to attack the state's Republican government for ineffectiveness, and especially in contrast to Republicans' aggressive suppression of the Klan. The Greensboro Patriot derisively suggested that Lowry should be "the next Radical candidate for Gov. of N.C." Republicans' comments in the press, though condemning the gang's activities, usually accused the Conservative papers of exaggerating the violence and significance of the conflict for political gain. The Lowry War garnered national attention after The New York Times began reporting on it in October 1870. By the following year, the Associated Press wire was syndicating stories of the Lowry Gang around the country. The trial of Henderson Oxendine led the New York Herald to dispatch a reporter down to Robeson County to cover the proceedings, and two more were later sent to report on the Lowry Gang. In March 1872 Herald reporter A. Boyd Henderson arrived in Shoe Heel and established contact with some of the gang members. Hoping to portray themselves