Transcriber’s Note: Boldface is indicated with =equals signs=; italics
is indicated with _underscores_.
CHARLES W. QUANTRELL
A TRUE HISTORY OF HIS GUERRILLA WARFARE
ON THE MISSOURI AND KANSAS BORDER
DURING THE CIVIL WAR OF
1861 TO 1865
By JOHN P. BURCH
_ILLUSTRATED_
AS TOLD BY
CAPTAIN HARRISON TROW
ONE WHO FOLLOWED QUANTRELL THROUGH
HIS WHOLE COURSE
COPYRIGHT, 1923
BY J. P. BURCH
VEGA TEXAS
[Illustration: CHARLES W. QUANTRELL]
[Illustration: CAPTAIN HARRISON TROW]
CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction 11
The False Jonah 13
Early Life of Quantrell 15
Why the Quantrell Guerrillas Were Organized 23
Quantrell’s First Battle in the Civil War 29
Fight at Charles Younger’s Farm 35
Fight at Independence 37
Second Fight at Independence 39
Flanked Independence 41
Fight at Tate House 43
Fight at Clark’s Home 51
Jayhawkers and Militia Murdered Old Man Blythe’s Son 59
The Low House Fight 63
Quantrell and Todd Go After Ammunition 69
A Challenge 73
The Battle and Capture of Independence 77
Lone Jack Fight 85
The March South in 1862 97
Younger Remains in Missouri Winter of 1862 and 1863 105
The Trip North in 1863 121
Jesse James Joins the Command 131
Lawrence Massacre 141
Order Number 11, August, 1863 155
Fights and Skirmishes, Fall and Winter, 1863–1864 159
Blue Springs Fight, 1863 163
Wellington 165
The Grinter Fight 171
The Centralia Massacre 175
Anderson 187
Press Webb, a Born Scout 193
Little Blue 205
Arrock Fight, Spring of 1864 207
Fire Bottom Prairie Fight, Spring of 1864 209
Death of Todd and Anderson, October, 1864 213
Going South, Fall of 1864 223
The Surrender 229
Death of Quantrell 237
The Youngers and Jameses After the War 253
Do not loan this book out to
neighbors and friends
If You Do You Will Never Get It Back
Keep it in your Library
When You Are Not Reading It
If You Want One Send to
J. P. BURCH, VEGA, TEXAS
And He Will Mail You One At Once
INTRODUCTION
Captain Harrison Trow, who will be eighty years old this coming
October, was with Quantrell during the whole of the conflict from
1861 to 1865, and for the past twenty years I have been at him to
give his consent for me to write a true history of the Quantrell
Band, until at last he has given it.
This narrative was written just as he told it to me, giving
accounts of fights that he participated in, narrow escapes
experienced, dilemmas it seemed almost impossible to get out of,
and also other battles; the life of the James boys and Youngers as
they were with Quantrell during the war, and after the war, when
they became outlaws by publicity of the daily newspapers, being
accused of things which they never did and which were laid at their
feet.
Captain Trow identified Jesse James when the latter was killed at
St. Joseph. He also was the last man to surrender in the State of
Missouri.
JOHN P. BURCH.
THE AUTHOR
Captain Harrison Trow was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October
16, 1843, moved to Illinois in 1848, and thence to Missouri in
1850, and went to Hereford, Texas, in 1901, where he now resides.
At the age of nine years, he, having one of the nicest, neatest and
sweetest stepmothers (as they all are), and things not being as
pleasant at home as they should be (which is often the case where
there is a stepmother), and getting all the peach tree sprouts for
the whole family used on him, he decided the world was too large
for him to take such treatment, and one day he proceeded to give
the stepmother a good flogging, such as he had been getting, and
left for brighter fields.
In a few days he made his way to Independence, Missouri, got into
a game of marbles, playing keeps, in front of a blacksmith shop,
and won seventy-five cents. Then and there Uncle George Hudsbath
rode up and wanted to hire a hand. Young Trow jumped at the job and
talked to Mr. Hudsbath a few minutes and soon was up behind him and
riding away to his new home. Young Trow proved to be the lad Uncle
George was looking for and stayed with him until the war broke out.
The False Jonah
Early in the year of 1861, about in January, Jim Lane sent a false
Jonah down to Missouri to investigate the location of the negroes
and stock, preparing to make a raid within a short time. This Jonah
located first at Judge Gray’s house at Bone Hill, was fed by Judge
Gray’s “niggers” and was secreted in an empty ice house where they
kept ice in the summer time. He would come out in the night time
and plan with the “niggers” for their escape into Kansas with the
horses, buggies and carriages and other valuables belonging to
their master that they could get possession of. But an old negro
woman, old Maria by name, gave the Jonah away.
Chat Rennick, one of the neighbors, and two other men secreted
themselves in the negroes’ cabin so as to hear what he was telling
the negroes. After he had made all his plans for their escape
Chat Rennick came out on him with the other two men and took him
prisoner and started north to the Missouri River. Securing a skiff,
they floated out into the river and when in about the center there
came up a heavy gale, and one of these gentlemen thought it best to
unload part of the cargo, so he was thrown overboard. As for the
negroes, they repented in sack cloth and ashes and all stayed at
home and took care of their master and mistress, as Jonah did in
the olden times. As for the Jonah, I do not know whether the fish
swallowed him or not, but if one did he did not get sick and throw
him up. This took place at my wife’s uncle’s home, Judge James
Gray.
Early Life of Quantrell
The early life of Quantrell was obscure and uneventful. He was born
near Hagerstown, Maryland, July 20, 1836, and was reared there
until he was sixteen years of age. He remained always an obedient
and affectionate son. His mother had been left a widow when he was
only a few years old.
For some time preceding 1857, Quantrell’s only brother lived in
Kansas. He wrote to his younger brother, Charles, to come there,
and after his arrival they decided on a trip to California. About
the middle of the summer of 1857 the two started for California
with a freight outfit. Upon reaching Little Cottonwood River,
Kansas, they decided to camp for the night. This they did. All was
going well. After supper twenty-one outlaws, or Redlegs, belonging
to Jim Lane at Lawrence, Kansas, rode up and killed the elder
brother, wounded Charles, and took everything in sight, money,
and even the “nigger” who went with them to do the cooking. They
thought more of the d----d “nigger” than they did of all the rest
of the loot. They left poor Charles there to die and be eaten later
by wolves or some other wild animal that might come that way.
Poor Charles lay there for three days before anyone happened by,
guarding his dead brother, suffering near death from his wounds.
After three days an old Shawnee Indian named Spye Buck came along,
buried the elder brother and took Charles to his home and nursed
him back to life and strength. After six months to a year Charles
Quantrell was able to go at ease, and having a good education for
those days, got a school and taught until he had earned enough
money to pay the old Indian for keeping him while he was sick and
to get him to Lawrence. He reached Lawrence and went to where Jim
Lane was stationed with his company. He wanted to get into the
company that murdered his brother and wounded himself. After a
few days he was taken in and, from outward appearance, he became
a full-fledged Redleg, but in his heart he was doing this only to
seek revenge on those who had killed his brother and wounded him at
Cottonwood, Kansas.
Quantrell, now known as Charles Hart, became intimate with Lane and
ostensibly attached himself to the fortunes of the anti-slavery
party. In order to attain his object and get a step nearer his
goal, it became necessary for him to speak of John Brown. He always
spoke of him to General Lane, who was at that time Colonel Lane,
in command of a regiment at Lawrence, as one for whom he had great
admiration. Quantrell became enrolled in a company that held all
but two of the men who had done the deadly work at Cottonwood,
Kansas. First as a private, then as an orderly and sergeant,
Quantrell soon gained the esteem of his officers and the confidence
of his men.
One day Quantrell and three men were sent down in the neighborhood
of Wyandotte to meet a wagon load of “niggers” coming up to
Missouri under the pilotage of Jack Winn, a somewhat noted horse
thief and abolutionist. One of the three men failed to return with
Quantrell, nor could any account be given of his absence until his
body was found near a creek several days afterwards. In the center
of his forehead was the round, smooth hole of a navy revolver
bullet. Those who looked for Jack Winn’s safe arrival were also
disappointed. People traveling the road passed the corpse almost
daily and the buzzards found it first, and afterwards the curious.
There was the same round hole in the forehead and the same sure
mark of the navy revolver bullet. This thing went on for several
months, scarcely a week passing but that some sentinel was found
dead at his post, some advance picket surprised and shot at his
outpost watch station.
The men began to whisper, one to another, and to cast about for
the cavalry Jonah who was in their midst. One company alone, that
of Captain Pickins, the company to which Quantrell belonged, had
lost thirteen men between October, 1859 and 1860. Other companies
had lost two to three each. A railroad conductor named Rogers
had been shot through the forehead. Quantrell and Pickens became
intimate, as a captain and lieutenant of the same company should,
and confided many things to each other. One night the story of
the Cottonwood River was told and Pickens dwelt with just a
little relish upon it. Three days later Pickens and two of his
most reliable men were found dead on Bull Creek, shot like the
balance, in the middle of the forehead. For a time after Pickens’
death there was a lull in the constant conscription demanded by
the Nemesis. The new lieutenant bought himself a splendid uniform,
owned the best horse in the territory and instead of one navy
revolver, now had two. Organizations of all sorts now sprang up,
Free Soil clubs, Men of Equal Rights, Sons of Liberty, Destroying
Angels, Lane’s Loyal Leaguers, and everyone made haste to get his
name signed to both constitution and by-laws.
Lawrence especially effected the Liberator Club, whose undivided
mission was to found freedom for all the slaves now in Missouri.
Quantrell persevered in his efforts to kill all of the men who
had had a hand in the killing of his brother and the wounding
of himself. With this in view, he induced seven Liberators to
co-operate with him in an attack on Morgan Walker. These seven men
whom Quantrell picked were the last except two of the men he had
sworn vengeance upon when left to die at Cottonwood River, Kansas.
He told them that Morgan Walker had a lot of “niggers,” horses and
cattle and money and that the sole purpose was to rob and kill him.
Quantrell’s only aim was to get these seven men. Morgan Walker was
an old citizen of Jackson County, a venerable pioneer who had
settled there when buffalo grazed on the prairie beyond Westport
and where, in the soft sands beyond the inland streams, there were
wolf and moccasin tracks. This man, Morgan Walker, was the man
Quantrell had proposed to rob. He lived some five or six miles
from Independence and owned about twenty negroes of various ages
and sizes. The probabilities were that a skillfully conducted raid
might leave him without a “nigger.”
Well mounted and armed, the little detachment left Lawrence
quietly, rode two by two, far apart, until the first rendezvous was
reached, a clump of timber at a ford on Indian Creek. It was the
evening of the second day, and they tarried long enough to rest
their horses and eat a hearty supper.
Before daylight the next morning the entire party were hidden in
some heavy timber about two miles west of Walker’s house. There
these seven men stayed, none of them stirring, except Quantrell.
Several times during the day, however, he went backwards and
forwards, apparently to the fields where the negroes were at work,
and whenever he returned he brought something either for the horses
or the men to eat.
Mr. Walker had two sons, and before it was yet night, these boys
and their father were seen putting into excellent order their
double-barrel shotguns, and a little later three neighbors who
likewise carried double-barrel shotguns rode up to the house.
Quantrell, who brought news of many other things to his comrades,
brought no note of this. If he saw it he made no sign. When
Quantrell arranged his men for the dangerous venture they were to
proceed, first to the house, gain access to it, capture all the
male members of the family and put them under guard, assemble all
the negroes and make them hitch up the horses to the wagons and
then gallop them for Kansas. Fifty yards from the gate the eight
men dismounted and fastened their horses, and the march to the
house began. Quantrell led. He was very cool and seemed to see
everything. The balance of his men had their revolvers in their
hands while he had his in his belt. Quantrell knocked loudly at
the oaken panel of the door. No answer. He knocked again and
stood perceptibly at one side. Suddenly the door flared open and
Quantrell leaped into the hall with a bound like a red deer. A
livid sheet of flame burst out through the darkness where he had
disappeared, followed by another as the second barrels of the guns
were discharged and the tragedy was over. Six fell where they
stood, riddled with buckshot. One staggered to the garden and
died there. The seventh, hard hit and unable to mount his horse,
dragged himself to a patch of timber and waited for the dawn. They
tracked him by the blood upon the leaves and found him early in the
morning. Another volley, and the last Liberator was liberated.
Walker and his two sons, assisted by three of the stalwart and
obliging neighbors, had done a clean night’s work, and a righteous
one. This being the last of the Redlegs, except two, who murdered
Quantrell’s brother and wounded him in Cottonwood, Kansas, in 1857,
he closed his eyes and ears from ever being a scout for old Jim
Lane any more.
In a few days after the ambuscade at Walker’s, Charles W.
Quantrell, instead of Charles Hart, as he was known, then was not
afraid to tell his name on Missouri soil. He wrote to Jim Lane,
telling him what had happened to the scouts sent out by him, and as
the war was on then, Quantrell told Lane in his letter that he was
going to Richmond, Virginia, to get a commission from under Jeff
Davis’ own hand, which he did (as you will read further on in this
narrative), to operate on the border at will. So Quantrell, being
fully equipped with all credentials, notified Jim Lane of Missouri,
telling him he would treat him with the same or better courtesy
than he (Lane) had treated him and his brother at Cottonwood River,
Kansas, in 1857. This made Jim Lane mad, and he began to send his
roving, robbing, and thieving bands into Missouri, and Charles W.
Quantrell, having a band of well organized guerrillas of about
fifty men, began to play on their golden harps. Every time they
came in sight, which was almost every day, they would have a fight
to the finish.
Why the Quantrell Guerrillas Were Organized
It all came about from the Redlegs or Kansas Jayhawkers. For two
years Kansas hated Missouri and at all times during these two years
there were Redlegs from old Jim Lane’s army crossing to Missouri,
stealing everything they could get their hands on, driving stock,
insulting innocent women and children, and hanging and killing old
men; so it is the province of history to deal with results, not to
condemn the phenomena which produce them. Nor has it the right to
decry the instruments Providence always raises up in the midst of
great catastrophes to restore the equilibrium of eternal justice.
Civil War might well have made the Guerrilla, but only the excesses
of civil war could have made him the untamable and unmerciful
creature that history finds him. When he first went into the war he
was somewhat imbued with the old-fashioned belief that soldiering
meant fighting and that fighting meant killing. He had his own
ideas of soldiering, however, and desired nothing so much as to
remain at home and meet its despoilers upon his own premises. Not
naturally cruel, and averse to invading the territory of any other
people, he could not understand the patriotism of those who invaded
his own territory. Patriotism, such as he was required to profess,
could not spring up in the market place at the bidding of Redleg
or Jayhawker. He believed, indeed, that the patriotism of Jim Lane
and Jennison was merely a highway robbery transferred from the
darkness to the dawn, and he believed the truth. Neither did the
Guerrilla become merciless all of a sudden. Pastoral in many cases
by profession, and reared among the bashful and timid surroundings
of agricultural life, he knew nothing of the tiger that was in
him until death had been dashed against his eyes in numberless
and brutal ways, and until the blood of his own kith and kin had
been sprinkled plentifully upon things that his hands touched, and
things that entered into his daily existence. And that fury of
ideas also came to him slowly, which is more implacable than the
fury of men, for men have heart, and opinion has none. It took him
likewise some time to learn that the Jayhawkers’ system of saving
the Union was a system of brutal force, which bewailed not even
that which it crushed; and it belied its doctrine by its tyranny,
stained its arrogated right by its violence, and dishonored its
vaunted struggles by its executions. But blood is as contagious as
air. The fever of civil war has its delirium.
When the Guerrilla awoke he was a giant! He took in, as it were,
and at a single glance, all the immensity of the struggle. He saw
that he was hunted and proscribed; that he had neither a flag nor a
government; that the rights and the amenities of civilized warfare
were not to be his; that a dog’s death was certain to be his if
he surrendered even in the extremest agony of battle; that the
house which sheltered him had to be burned; the father who succored
him had to be butchered; the mother who prayed for him had to be
insulted; the sister who carried him food had to be imprisoned;
the neighborhood which witnessed his combats had to be laid waste;
the comrade shot down by his side had to be put to death as a wild
beast--and he lifted up the black flag in self-defense and fought
as became a free man and a hero.
Much obloquy has been cast upon the Guerrilla organization because
in its name bad men plundered the helpless, pillaged the friend and
foe alike, assaulted non-combatants and murdered the unresisting
and the innocent. Such devils’ work was not Guerrilla work. It
fitted all too well the hands of those cowards crouching in the
rear of either army and courageous only where women defended
what remained to themselves and their children. Desperate and
remorseless as he undoubtedly was, the Guerrilla saw shining upon
his pathway a luminous patriotism, and he followed it eagerly that
he might kill in the name of God and his country. The nature of his
warfare made him responsible, of course, for many monstrous things
he had no personal share in bringing about. Denied a hearing at
the bar of public opinion, of all the loyal journalists, painted
blacker than ten devils, and given a countenance that was made
to retain some shadow of all the death agonies he had seen, is
it strange in the least that his fiendishness became omnipresent
as well as omnipotent? To justify one crime on the part of a
Federal soldier, five crimes more cruel were laid at the door of
the Guerrilla. His long gallop not only tired, but infuriated his
hunters. That savage standing at bay and dying always as a wolf
dies when barked at by hounds and dudgeoned by countrymen, made his
enemies fear and hate him. Hence, from all their bomb-proofs his
slanderers fired silly lies at long range, and put afloat unnatural
stories that hurt him only as it deepened the savage intensity of
an already savage strife. Save in rare and memorable instances, the
Guerrilla murdered only when fortune in open and honorable battle
gave into his hands some victims who were denied that death in
combat which they afterward found by ditch or lonesome roadside.
Man for man, he put his life fairly on the cast of the war dice,
and died when the need came as the red Indian dies, stoical and
grim as a stone.
As strange as it may seem, the perilous fascination of fighting
under a black flag--where the wounded could have neither surgeon
nor hospital, and where all that remained to the prisoners was
the absolute certainty of speedy death--attracted a number of
young men to the various Guerrilla bands, gently nurtured, born to
higher destinies, capable of sustaining exertion in any scheme or
enterprise, and fit for callings high up in the scale of science
or philosophy. Others came who had deadly wrongs to avenge, and
these gave to all their combats that sanguinary hue which still
remains a part of the Guerrilla’s legacy. Almost from the first
a large majority of Quantrell’s original command had over them
the shadow of some terrible crime. This one recalled a father
murdered, this one a brother waylaid and shot, this one a house
pillaged and burned, this one a relative assassinated, this one a
grievous insult while at peace at home, this one a robbery of all
his earthly possessions, this one the force that compelled him to
witness the brutal treatment of a mother or sister, this one was
driven away from his own like a thief in the night, this one was
threatened with death for opinion’s sake, this one was proscribed
at the instance of some designing neighbor, this one was arrested
wantonly and forced to do the degrading work of a menial; while all
had more or less of wrath laid up against the day when they were to
meet, face to face and hand to hand, those whom they had good cause
to regard as the living embodiment of unnumbered wrongs. Honorable
soldiers in the Confederate army--amenable to every generous
impulse and exact in the performance of every manly duty--deserted
even the ranks which they had adorned and became desperate
Guerillas because the home they had left had been given to the
flames, or a gray-haired father shot upon his own hearthstone.
They wanted to avoid the uncertainty of regular battle and know
by actual results how many died as a propitation or a sacrifice.
Every other passion became subsidiary to that of revenge. They
sought personal encounters that their own handiwork might become
unmistakably manifest. Those who died by other agencies than their
own were not counted in the general summing up of the fight, nor
were the solacements of any victory sweet to them unless they had
the knowledge of being important factors in its achievement.
As this class of Guerrilla increased, the warfare of the border
became necessarily more cruel and unsparing. Where at first
there was only killing in ordinary battle, there came to be no
quarter shown. The wounded of the enemy next felt the might of
this individual vengeance--acting through a community of bitter
memories--and from every stricken field there began, by and by, to
come up the substance of this awful bulletin: Dead, such and such
a number; _wounded, none_. The war had then passed into its fever
heat, and thereafter the gentle and the merciful, equally with the
harsh and the revengeful, spared nothing clad in blue that could be
captured.
Quantrell’s First Battle in the Civil War
Quantrell, together with Captain Blunt, returned from Richmond,
Virginia, in the fall of 1861, with his commission from under the
hand of Jeff Davis, to operate at will along the Kansas border. He
began to organize his band of Guerrillas. His first exploits were
confined to but eight men. These eight men were William Haller,
James and John Little, Edward Koger, Andrew Walker, son of Morgan
Walker, at whose farm Quantrell got rid of the last but two of the
band that murdered his brother at Cottonwood River, Kansas, and
left himself to die; John Hampton James Kelley and Solomon Bashman.
This little band knew nothing whatever of war, and knew only how to
fight and shoot. They lived on the border and had some old scores
to settle with the Jayhawkers.
These eight men, or rather nine--for Quantrell
commanded--encountered their first hereditary enemies, the
Jayhawkers. Lane entered Missouri only on grand occasions; Jennison
only once in a while as on a frolic. One was a collossal thief;
the other a picayune one. Lane dealt in mules by herds, horses
by droves, wagons by parks, negroes by neighborhoods, household
effects by the ton, and miscellaneous plunder by the cityful;
Jennison contented himself with the pocketbooks of his prisoners,
the pin money of the women, and the wearing apparel of the
children. Lane was a real prophet of demagogism, with insanity
latent in his blood; Jennison a _sans coulotte_, who, looking upon
himself as a bastard, sought to become legitimate by becoming
brutal.
It was in the vicinity of Morgan Walker’s that Quantrell, with
his little command, ambushed a portion of Jennison’s regiment and
killed five of his thieves, getting some good horses, saddles and
bridles and revolvers. The next fight occurred upon the premises
of Volney Ryan, a citizen of Jackson County, with a company
of Missouri militia, a company of militia notorious for three
things--robbing hen roosts, stealing horses, and running away from
the enemy. The eight Guerrillas struck them just at daylight,
charged through it, charged back again, and when they returned from
the pursuit they counted fifteen dead, the fruits of a running
battle.
An old man by the name of Searcy, claiming to be a Southern man,
was stealing all over Jackson County and using violence here and
there when he could not succeed through persuasion. Quantrell
swooped down upon him one afternoon, tried him that night and
hanged him the next morning, four Guerrillas dragging on the
rope. Seventy-five head of horses were found in the dead man’s
possession, all belonging to the citizens of the county, and any
number of deeds to small tracts of land, notes and mortgages, and
private accounts. All were returned. The execution acted as a
thunder-storm. It restored the equilibrium of the moral atmosphere.
The border warfare had found a chief.
The eight Guerrillas had now grown to fifty. Among the new recruits
were David Poole, John Jarrette, William Coger, Richard Burns,
George Todd, George Shephers, Coleman Younger, myself and several
others of like enterprise and daring. An organization was at once
effected, and Quantrell was made captain; William Haller, first
lieutenant; William Gregg, second; George Todd, third, and John
Jarrette, orderly sergeant. The eagles were beginning to congregate.
Poole, an unschooled Aristophanes of the Civil War, laughed
at calamity, and mocked when any man’s fear came. But for its
picturesqueness, his speech would have been comedy personified. He
laughed loudest when he was deadliest, and treated fortune with
no more dignity in one extreme than in another. Gregg, a grim
Saul among the Guerrillas, made of the Confederacy a mistress,
and like the Douglass of old, was ever tender and true to her.
Jarrette, the man who never knew fear, added to fearlessness and
immense activity an indomitable will. He was a soldier in the
saddle _par excellence_. John Coger never missed a battle nor a
bullet. Wounded thirteen times, he lived as an exemplification
of what a Guerrilla could endure--the amount of lead he could
comfortably get along with and keep fat. Steadfastness was his
test of merit--comradeship his point of honor. He who had John
Coger at his back had a mountain. Todd was the incarnate devil of
battle. He thought of fighting when awake, dreamed of it at night,
mingled talk of it in laxation, and went hungry many a day and
shelterless many a night that he might find his enemy and have his
fill of fight. Quantrell always had to hold him back, and yet he
was his thunderbolt. He discussed nothing in the shape of orders.
A soldier who discusses is like a hand which would think. He only
charged. Were he attacked in front--a charge; were he attacked
in the rear--a charge; on either flank--a charge. Finally, in a
desperate charge, and doing a hero’s work upon the stricken rear of
the Second Colorado, he was killed. This was George Todd. Shepherd,
a patient, cool, vigilant leader, knew all the roads and streams,
all the fords and passes, all modes of egress and ingress, all safe
and dangerous places, all the treacherous non-combatants, and all
the trustworthy ones--everything indeed that the few needed to know
who were fighting the many. In addition, there were few among the
Guerrillas who were better pistol shots. It used to do Quantrell
good to see him in the skirmish line. Coleman Younger, a boy having
still about his neck the purple marks of a rope made the night when
the Jayhawkers shot down his old father and strung him up to a
blackjack, spoke rarely, and was away a great deal in the woods.
“What was he doing?” his companions began to ask one of another.
He had a mission to perform--he was pistol practicing. Soon he was
perfect, and then he laughed often and talked a good deal. There
had come to him now that intrepid gaiety that plays with death. He
changed devotion to his family into devotion to his country, and he
fought and killed with the conscience of a hero.
Fight at Charles Younger’s Farm
The new organization was about to be baptized. Burris, raiding
generally along the Missouri border, had a detachment foraging
in the neighborhood of Charles Younger’s farm. This Charles
Younger was an uncle of Coleman, and he lived within three miles
of Independence, Missouri, the county seat of Jackson County.
The militia detachment numbered eighty-four and the Guerrillas
thirty-two. At sunset Quantrell struck their camp. Forewarned of
his coming, they were already in line. One volley settled them.
Five fell at the first fire and seven more were killed in the
chase. The shelter of Independence alone, where the balance of
the regiment was as a breakwater saved the detachment from utter
extinction. On this day--the 10th of November, 1861--Cole Younger
killed a militiaman seventy-one measured yards. The pistol practice
was bearing fruit.
Independence was essentially a city of fruits and flowers. About
every house there was a _parterre_ and contiguous to every
_parterre_ there was an orchard. Built where the woods and the
prairies met, when it was most desirable there was sunlight, and
when it was most needed there was shade. The war found it rich,
prosperous and contented, and it left it as an orange that had
been devoured. Lane hated it because it was a hive of secession,
and Jennison preyed upon it because Guerrilla bees flew in and
out. On one side the devil, on the other the deep sea. Patriotism,
that it might not be tempted, ran the risk very often of being
drowned. Something also of Spanish intercourse and connection
belonged to it. Its square was a plaza; its streets centered there;
its courthouse was a citadel. Truer people never occupied a town;
braver fathers never sent their sons to war; grander matrons never
prayed to God for right, and purer women never waited through it
all--the siege, the sack, the pillage and the battle--for the light
to break in the East at last, the end to come in fate’s own good
and appointed time.
Fight at Independence
Quantrell had great admiration for Independence; his men adored it.
Burris’ regiment was still there--fortified in the courthouse--and
one day in February, 1862, the Guerrillas charged the town. It was
a desperate assault. Quantrell and Poole dashed down one street.
Cole Younger and Todd down another, Gregg and Shepherd down a
third, Haller, Coger, Burns, Walker and others down the balance of
the approaches to the square. Behind heavy brick walls the militia,
of course, fought and fought, besides, at a great advantage. Save
seven surprised in the first moments of the rapid onset and shot
down, none others were killed, and Quantrell was forced to retire
from the town, taking some necessary ordnance, quartermaster and
commissary supplies from the stores under the very guns of the
courthouse. None of his men were killed, though as many as eleven
were wounded. This was the initiation of Independence into the
mysteries as well as the miseries of border warfare, and thereafter
and without a month of cessation, it was to get darker and darker
for the beautiful town.
Swinging back past Independence from the east the day after it had
been charged, Quantrell moved up in the neighborhood of Westport
and put scouts upon the roads leading to Kansas City. Two officers
belonging to Jennison’s regiment were picked up--a lieutenant,
who was young, and a captain, who was of middle age. They had only
time to pray. Quantrell always gave time for this, and had always
performed to the letter the last commissions left by those who
were doomed. The lieutenant did not want to pray. “It could do no
good,” he said. “God knew about as much concerning the disposition
it was intended to be made of his soul as he could suggest to
him.” The captain took a quarter of an hour to make his peace.
Both were shot. Men commonly die at God’s appointed time, beset
by Guerrillas, suddenly and unawares. Another of the horrible
surprises of Civil War.
At first, and because of Quantrell’s presence, Kansas City swarmed
like an ant hill during a rainstorm; afterwards, and when the dead
officers were carried in, like a firebrand had been cast thereon.
Second Fight at Independence
While at the house of Charles Cowherd, a courier came up with the
information that Independence, which had not been garrisoned for
some little time, was again in possession of a company of militia.
Another attack was resolved upon. On the night of February 20,
1862, Quantrell marched to the vicinity of the town and waited
there for daylight. The first few faint streaks in the East
constituted the signal. There was a dash altogether down South
Main Street, a storm of cheers and bullets, a roar of iron feet on
the rocks of the roadway, and the surprise was left to work itself
out. It did, and reversely. Instead of the one company reported in
possession of the town, four were found, numbering three hundred
men. They manned the courthouse in a moment, made of its doors an
eruption and of its windows a tempest, killed a noble Guerrilla,
young George, shot Quantrell’s horse from under him, held their own
everywhere and held the fort. As before, all who were killed among
the Federals, and they lost seventeen, were those killed in the
first few moments of the charge. Those who hurried alive into the
courthouse were safe. Young George, dead in his first battle, had
all the promise of a bright career. None rode further nor faster in
the charge, and when he fell he fell so close to the fence about
the fortified building that it was with difficulty his comrades
took his body out from under a point blank fire and bore it off in
safety.
It was a part of Quantrell’s tactics to disband every now and
then. “Scattered soldiers,” he argued, “make a scattered trail.
The regiment that has but one man to hunt can never find him.” The
men needed heavier clothing and better horses, and the winter,
more than ordinarily severe, was beginning to tell. A heavy
Federal force was also concentrating in Kansas City, ostensibly to
do service along the Missouri River, but really to drive out of
Jackson County a Guerrilla band that under no circumstances at that
time could possibly have numbered over fifty. Quantrell, therefore,
for an accumulation of reasons, ordered a brief disbandment. It
had hardly been accomplished before Independence swapped a witch
for a devil. Burris evacuated the town; Jennison occupied it. In
his regiment were trappers who trapped for dry goods; fishermen
who fished for groceries. At night passers-by were robbed of their
pocketbooks; in the morning, market women of their meat baskets.
Neither wiser, perhaps, nor better than the Egyptians, the patient
and all-suffering citizens had got rid of the lean kine in order to
make room for the lice.
Flanked Independence
At the appointed time, and at the place of David George, the
assembling was as it should be. Quantrell meant to attack Jennison
in Independence and destroy him if possible, and so moved in that
direction as far as Little Blue Church. Here he met Allen Parmer,
a regular red Indian of a scout, who never forgot to count a
column or know the line of march of an enemy, and Parmer reported
that instead of three hundred Jayhawkers being in Independence
there were six hundred. Too many for thirty-two men to grapple,
and fortified at that, they all said. It would be murder in the
first degree and unnecessary murder in addition. Quantrell,
foregoing with a struggle the chance to get at his old acquaintance
of Kansas, flanked Independence and stopped for a night at the
residence of Zan Harris, a true Southern man and a keen observer of
passing events. Early the next morning he crossed the Big Blue at
the bridge on the main road to Kansas City, surprised and shot down
a detachment of thirteen Federals watching it, burned the structure
to the water, and marched rapidly on in a southwest direction,
leaving Westport to the right. At noon the command was at the
residence of Alexander Majors.
Fight at Tate House
After the meal at Major’s Quantrell resumed his march, sending
Haller and Todd ahead with an advance guard and bringing up the
rear himself with the main body of twenty-two men. Night overtook
him at the Tate House, three miles east of Little Santa Fe, a small
town in Jackson County, close to the Kansas line, and he camped
there. Haller and Todd were still further along, no communication
being established between these two parts of a common whole. The
day had been cold and the darkness bitter. That weariness that
comes with a hard ride, a rousing fire, and a hearty supper, fell
early upon the Guerrillas. One sentinel at the gate kept drowsy
watch, and the night began to deepen. In various attitudes and in
various places, twenty-one of the twenty-two men were sound asleep,
the twenty-second keeping watch and ward at the gate in freezing
weather.
It was just twelve o’clock and the fire in the capacious fireplace
was burning low. Suddenly a shout was heard. The well known
challenge of “Who are you?” arose on the night air, followed by a
pistol shot, and then a volley. Quantrell, sleeping always like a
cat, shook himself loose from his blankets and stood erect in the
glare of the firelight. Three hundred Federals, following all day
on his trail, had marked him take cover at night and went to bag
him, boots and breeches. They had hitched their horses back in
the brush and stole upon the dwelling afoot. So noiseless had been
their advance, and so close were they upon the sentinel before they
were discovered, that he had only time to cry out, fire, and rush
for the timber. He could not get back to his comrades, for some
Federals were between him and the door. As he ran he received a
volley, but in the darkness he escaped.
The house was surrounded. To the men withinside this meant, unless
they could get out, death by fire and sword. Quantrell was trapped,
he who had been accorded the fox’s cunning and the panther’s
activity. He glided to the window and looked out cautiously. The
cold stars above shone, and the blue figures under them and on
every hand seemed colossal. The fist of a heavy man struck the door
hard, and a deep voice commanded, “Make a light.” There had been
no firing as yet, save the shot of the sentinel and its answering
volley. Quantrell went quietly to all who were still asleep and
bade them get up and get ready. It was the moment when death had
to be looked in the face. Not a word was spoken. The heavy fist
was still hammering at the door. Quantrell crept to it on tip-toe,
listened a second at the sounds outside and fired. “Oh,” and a
stalwart Federal fell prone across the porch, dying. “You asked for
a light and you got it, d----n you,” Quantrell ejaculated, cooler
than his pistol barrel. Afterwards there was no more bravado.
“Bar the doors and barricade the windows,” he shouted; “quick,
men!” Beds were freely used and applicable furniture. Little and
Shepherd stood by one door; Jarrette, Younger, Toler and Hoy
barricaded the other and made the windows bullet-proof. Outside
the Federal fusilade was incessant. Mistaking Tate’s house for
a frame house, when it was built of brick, the commander of the
enemy could be heard encouraging his men to shoot low and riddle
the building. Presently there was a lull, neither party firing
for the space of several minutes, and Quantrell spoke to his
people: “Boys, we are in a tight place. We can’t stay here, and I
do not mean to surrender. All who want to follow me out can say
so. I will do the best I can for them.” Four concluded to appeal
to the Federals for protection; seventeen to follow Quantrell to
the death. He called a parley, and informed the Federal commander
that four of his followers wanted to surrender. “Let them come
out,” was the order. Out they went, and the fight began again. Too
eager to see what manner of men their prisoners were, the Federals
holding the west side of the house huddled about them eagerly. Ten
Guerrillas from the upper story fired at the crowd and brought
down six. A roar followed this, and a rush back again to cover at
the double quick. It was hot work now. Quantrell, supported by
James Little, Cole Younger, Hoy and Stephen Shores held the upper
story, while Jarrette, Toler, George Shepherd and others held
the lower. Every shot told. The proprietor of the house, Major
Tate, was a Southern hero, gray-headed, but Roman. He went about
laughing. “Help me get my family out, boys,” he said, “and I will
help you hold the house. It’s about as good a time for me to die,
I reckon, as any other, if so be that God wills it. But the old
woman is only a woman.” Another parley. Would the Federal officer
let the women and children out? Yes, gladly, and the old man,
too. There was eagerness for this, and much of veritable cunning.
The family occupied an ell of the mansion with which there was no
communication from the main building where Quantrell and his men
were, save by way of a door which opened upon a porch, and this
porch was under the concentrating fire of the assailants. After
the family moved out the attacking party would throw skirmishers
in and then--the torch. Quantrell understood it in a moment and
spoke up to the father of the family: “Go out, Major. It is
your duty to be with your wife and children.” The old man went,
protesting. Perhaps for forty years the blood had not coursed so
rapidly and so pleasantly through his veins. Giving ample time
for the family to get safely beyond the range of the fire of the
besieged, Quantrell went back to his post and looked out. He saw
two Federals standing together beyond revolver range. “Is there
a shotgun here?” he asked. Cole Younger brought him one loaded
with buckshot. Thrusting half his body out the nearest window, and
receiving as many volleys as there were sentinels, he fired the
two barrels of his gun so near together that they sounded as one
barrel. Both Federals fell, one dead, the other mortally wounded.
Following this daring and conspicuous feat there went up a yell so
piercing and exultant that even the horses, hitched in the timber
fifty yards away, reared in their fright and snorted in terror.
Black columns of smoke blew past the windows where the Guerrillas
were, and a bright red flame leaped up towards the sky on the wings
of the wind. The ell of the house had been fired and was burning
fiercely. Quantrell’s face--just a little paler than usual--had a
set look that was not good to see. The tiger was at bay. Many of
the men’s revolvers were empty, and in order to gain time to reload
them, another parley was held. The talk was of surrender. The
Federal commander demanded immediate submission, and Shepherd, with
a voice heard above the rage and the roar of the flames, pleaded
for twenty minutes. No. Ten? No. Five? No. Then the commander cried
out in a voice not a whit inferior to Shepherd’s in compass: “You
have one minute. If, at its expiration, you have not surrendered,
not a single man among you shall escape alive.” “Thank you,” said
Cole Younger, _soto voce_, “catching comes before hanging.” “Count
sixty, then, and be d----d to you”! Shepherd shouted as a parting
volley, and then a strange silence fell upon all these desperate
men face to face with imminent death. When every man was ready,
Quantrell said briefly, “Shot guns to the front.” Six loaded
heavily with buck shot, were borne there, and he put himself at the
head of the six men who carried them. Behind these those having
only revolvers. In single file, the charging column was formed in
the main room of the building. The glare of the burning ell lit it
up as though the sun was shining there. Some tightened their pistol
belts. One fell upon his knees and prayed. Nobody scoffed at him,
for God was in that room. He is everywhere when heroes confess.
There were seventeen about to receive the fire of three hundred.
Ready! Quantrell flung the door wide open and leaped out. The
shotgun men--Jarrette, Younger, Shepherd, Toler, Little and Hoy,
were hard behind him. Right and left from the thin short column a
fierce fire beat into the very faces of the Federals, who recoiled
in some confusion, shooting, however, from every side. There was a
yell and a grand rush, and when the end had come and all the fixed
realities figured up, the enemy had eighteen killed, twenty-nine
badly wounded; and five prisoners, and the captured horses of
the Guerrillas. Not a man of Quantrell’s band was touched, as it
broke through the cordon on the south of the house and gained the
sheltering timber beyond. Hoy, as he rushed out the third from
Quantrell and fired both barrels of his gun, was so near to a
stalwart Federal that he knocked him over the head with a musket
and rendered him senseless. To capture him afterwards was like
capturing a dead man. But little pursuit was attempted. Quantrell
halted at the timber, built a fire, reloaded every gun and pistol,
and took a philosophical view of the situation. Enemies were all
about him. He had lost five men--four of whom, however, he was
glad to get rid of--and the balance were afoot. Patience! He had
just escaped from an environment sterner than any yet spread for
him, and fortune was not apt to offset one splendid action by
another exactly opposite. Choosing, therefore, a rendezvous upon
the head waters of the Little Blue, another historic stream of
Jackson County, he reached the residence of David Wilson late
the next morning, after a forced march of great exhaustion. The
balance of the night, however, had still to be one of surprises
and counter-surprises, not alone to the Federals, but to the other
portion of Quantrell’s command under Haller and Todd.
Encamped four miles south of Tate House, the battle there had
roused them instantly. Getting to saddle quickly, they were
galloping back to the help of their comrades when a Federal force,
one hundred strong, met them full in the road. Some minutes of
savage fighting ensued, but Haller could not hold his own with
thirteen men, and he retreated, firing, to the brush.
Afterwards everything was made plain. The four men who surrendered
so abjectly at the Tate house imagined that it would bring help to
their condition if they told all they knew, and they told without
solicitation the story of Haller’s advance and the whereabouts of
his camp. A hundred men were instantly dispatched to surprise it
or storm it, but the firing had roused the isolated Guerrillas,
and they got out in safety after a rattling fight of some twenty
minutes.
Fight at Clark’s Home