Word: doniphon
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Realizing that he will be nominated on the grounds that he shot Liberty Valance. Stoddard becomes disgusted and leaves, but Doniphon stops him and reveals that it was he who actually shot Liberty Valance. His own conscience clear, Stoddard goes back into the hall and accepts the nomination; Doniphon goes home alone...
...Doniphon is the archetypal Ford hero, the John Wayne of all Ford's westerns. A man of action and few words (note his instinctive hatred of the rhetoric in the Convention speeches), Doniphon is very much an individual who minds his own business. When Stoddard nominates him as a representative to the Convention, he refuses, saying, "I've got other plans. Personal plans...
...other end of the scale, Ford portrays Liberty Valance as the archetypal villain. The deadliest and most sadistic killer in all Ford's films, Liberty Valance has been filtered through all Ford's other villains, emerging as a composite of the worst features in each. Doniphon and Valance, then, represent the individuals of Ford's West, Doniphon standing for order, Valance for anarchy. When they confront each other in the restaurant, Ford cuts directly back and forth between close shots of the two of them, establishing the direct link between them and the instinctive understanding each...
Stoddard, on the other hand, is of another breed; the movement West, triggered by Greeley, came after the settlers in the wagon trains, and brought with it well-established Eastern customs. To Ford, Stoddard represents blind progress. Stoddard's first confrontation with Doniphon reveals absolutely no understanding between them; they eye each other as if the other were a strange animal...
Though the audience tends to identify with Doniphon's individualism and to feel instinctively a desire to preserve the simplicity of the old West, the social change brought about by the railroad and the need for staehood slowly make the Doniphons and Valances obsolete. By killing Liberty Valance, facilitating Stoddard's rise to political prominence and the progressive modernization of the West, Doniphon destroys himself. Hallie, once Tom's girl, has fallen in love with Stoddard, and in sparing him, Doniphon loses her. He is left without the girl he loves at the dawn of a new era that...