He was famous for the Battle of Lincoln
It is a fact that he was famous for the Battle of Lincoln. Billy the Kid ultimately established his reputation as a gunslinger in 1878. A frontier conflict broke out at this time between a rancher called John Tunstall and two Irish tycoons named James Dolan and Lawrence Murphy. Tunstall learned of the posse's presence on his estate on February 18, 1878, and rode out to interfere. During the fight, one of the posse members shot Tunstall in the chest, knocking him from his horse. Another posse member snatched Tunstall's gun and shot him in the back of the head. Tunstall's assassination sparked the Lincoln County War, a fight between two factions.
On the night of July 14, McSween and the Regulators, now a party of fifty or sixty men, traveled to Lincoln and set up camp amid numerous structures. McCarty, Florencio Chavez, Jose Chavez y Chavez, Jim French, Harvey Morris, Tom O'Folliard, and Yginio Salazar were among those that visited the McSween home. Another group, led by Marin Chavez and Doc Scurlock, took up position on the top of a saloon. A nearby adobe bunkhouse was defended by Henry Newton Brown, Dick Smith, and George Coe.
On Tuesday, July 16, newly appointed sheriff George Peppin dispatched sharpshooters to the tavern to kill the McSween defenders. When one of the snipers, Charles Crawford, was killed by Fernando Herrera, Peppin's troops retreated. Peppin then requested help from Colonel Nathan Dudley, commandant of nearby Fort Stanton. Dudley refused to interfere in response to Peppin but eventually arrived in Lincoln with troops, tipping the battle in favor of the Murphy-Dolan group.
On Friday, July 19, a gun conflict erupted. McSween's followers gathered inside his home, and when Buck Powell and Deputy Sheriff Jack Long set fire to it, the residents began firing. McCarty and the other men fled the building as all but one of the apartments caught fire. Alexander McSween was shot and killed during the chaos by Robert W. Beckwith, who was subsequently shot and killed by McCarty.
