this head or that head felt the trip-hammer, all the heads kept
wagging and dodging. Burris got out of Cass County; Jennison
hurried into Kansas; the Guerrillas kept a sort of open house;
and the recruits--drove after drove and mostly unarmed--hastened
southward. Then the Federal wave, which had at first receded beyond
all former boundaries, flowed back again and inundated Western
Missouri. Quantrell’s nominal battalion, yielding to the exodus,
left him only the old guard as a rallying point. It was necessary
again to reorganize.
After the Guerrillas had reorganized they stripped themselves for
steady fighting. Federal troops were everywhere, infantry at the
posts, cavalry on the war paths. The somber defiance mingled with
despair did not come until 1864; in 1862 the Guerrillas laughed as
they fought. And they fought by streams and bridges, where roads
crossed and forked and where trees or hollows were. They fought
from houses and hay stacks; on foot and on horseback; at night
when the weird laughter of owls could be heard in the thickets; in
daylight, when the birds sang as they found sweet rest. The black
flag was being woven, but it had not yet been unfurled.
Breaking suddenly out of Jackson County, Quantrell raided
Shawneetown, Kansas, and captured its garrison of fifty militia.
Then at Olathe, Kansas, the next day, the right hand did what the
left one finished so well at Shawneetown; seventy-five Federals
surrendered there. Each garrison was patrolled and set free save
seven from Shawneetown; these were Jennison’s Jayhawkers and they
had to die. A military execution is where one man kills another;
it is horrible. In battle, one does not see death. He is there,
surely--he is in that battery’s smoke, on the crest of that hill
fringed with the fringe of pallid faces, under the hoofs of the
horses, yonder where the blue or the gray line creeps onward
trailing ominous guns--but his cold, calm eyes look at no single
victim.
The seven men rode into Missouri from Shawneetown puzzled; when the
heavy timber along the Big Blue was reached and a halt made, they
were praying. Quantrell sat upon his horse looking at the Kansans.
His voice was unmoved, his countenance perfectly indifferent as he
ordered: “Bring ropes; four on one tree, three on another.” All of
a sudden death stood in the midst of them, and was recognized. One
poor fellow gave a cry as piercing as the neighing of a frightened
horse. Two trembled, and trembling is the first step towards
kneeling. They had not talked any save among themselves up to this
time, but when they saw Blunt busy with some ropes, one spoke up
to Quantrell: “Captain, just a word: the pistol before the rope; a
soldier’s before a dog’s death. As for me, I’m ready.” Of all the
seven this was the youngest--how brave he was.
The prisoners were arranged in line, the Guerrillas opposite to
them. They had confessed to belonging to Jennison, but denied the
charge of killing and burning. Quantrell hesitated a moment. His
blue eyes searched each face from left to right and back again, and
then he ordered: “Take six men, Blunt, and do the work. Shoot the
young man and hang the balance.”
The oldest man there, some white hair was in his beard, prayed
audibly. Some embraced. Silence and twilight, as twin ghosts, crept
up the river bank together. Blunt made haste, and before Quantrell
had ridden far he heard a pistol shot. He did not even look up; it
affected him no more than the tapping of a woodpecker. At daylight
the next morning a wood-chopper going early to work saw six stark
figures swaying in the river breeze. At the foot of another tree
was a dead man and in his forehead a bullet hole--the old mark.
[Illustration: QUANTRELL HANGS SIX MEN ON THE SNI]
“After Quantrell hanged these men, the only time I was ever scared
during the war,” relates Captain Trow, “I had left camp one night
to visit a lady friend of mine, and a company of Federals got after
me, and in the chase I took to the woods and it was at the place
where Quantrell had hanged these men. My saddle girth broke right
there, but I held on to my horse. I thought the devil and all his
angels were after me, but I made it to the camp.”
The March South in 1862
Winter had come and some snow had fallen. There were no longer any
leaves; nature had nothing more to do with the ambuscades. Bitter
nights, with a foretaste of more bitter nights to follow, reminded
Quantrell that it was time to migrate. Most of the wounded men were
well again. All the dismounted had found serviceable horses. On
October 22, 1862, a quiet muster on the banks of the Little Blue
revealed at inspection nearly all the old faces and forms, with a
sprinkling here and there of new ones. Quantrell counted them two
by two as the Guerrillas dressed in line, and in front rank and
rear rank there were just seventy-eight men. On the morrow they
were moving southward. That old road running between Harrisonville
and Warrensburg was always to the Guerrilas a road of fire, and
here again on their march toward Arkansas, and eight miles east
of Harrisonville, did Todd in the advance strike a Federal scout
of thirty militia cavalrymen. They were Missourians and led by a
Lieutenant Satterlee. To say Todd is to say Charge. To associate
him with something that will illustrate him is to put torch and
powder magazine together. It was the old, old story. On one side
a furious rush, on the other panic and imbecile flight. After a
four-mile race it ended with this for a score: Todd, killed, six;
Boon Schull, five; Fletch Taylor, three; George Shepherd, two;
John Coger, one; Sim Whitsett, one; James Little, one; George
Maddox, one; total, twenty; wounded, none. Even in leaving, what
sinister farewells these Guerrillas were taking!
The second night out Quantrell stopped over beyond Dayton, in
Cass County, and ordered a bivouac for the evening. There came to
his camp here a good looking man, clad like a citizen, who had
business to transact, and who knew how to state it. He was not fat,
he was not heavy. He laughed a good deal, and when he laughed he
showed a perfect set of faultlessly white teeth. He was young. An
aged man is a thinking ruin; this one did not appear to think--he
felt and enjoyed. He was tired of dodging about in the brush, he
said, and he believed he would fight a little. Here, there and
everywhere the Federals had hunted him and shot at him, and he
was weary of so much persecution. “Would Quantrell let him become
a Guerrilla?” “Your name?” asked the chief. The recruit winced
under the abrupt question slightly, and Quantrell saw the start.
Attracted by something of novelty in the whole performance, a crowd
collected. Quantrell, without looking at the newcomer, appeared
yet to be analyzing him. Suddenly he spoke up: “I have seen you
before.” “Where?” “Nowhere.” “Think again. I have seen you in
Lawrence, Kansas.” The face was a murderer’s face now, softened by
a woman’s blush. There came to it such a look of mingled fear,
indignation and cruel eagerness that Gregg, standing next to him
and nearest to him, laid his hand on his revolver. “Stop,” said
Quantrell, motioning to Gregg; “do not harm him, but disarm him.”
Two revolvers were taken from his person and a pocket pistol--a
Derringer. While being searched the white teeth shone in a smile
that was almost placid. “You suspect me,” he said, so calmly that
his words sounded as if spoken under the vault of some echoing
dome. “But I have never been in Lawrence in my life.”
Quantrell was lost in thought again, with the strange man--standing
up smiling in the midst of the band--watching him with eyes that
were blue at times and gray at times, and always gentle. More
wood was put on the bivouac fire, and the flames grew ruddy. In
their vivid light the young man did not seem quite so young. He
had also a thick neck, great broad shoulders, and something of
sensuality about the chin. The back of his skull was bulging and
prominent. Here and there in his hair were little white streaks.
Because there was such bloom and color in his cheeks, one could
not remember these. Quantrell still tried to make out his face,
to find a name for that Sphinx in front of him, to recall some
time or circumstance, or place, that would make obscure things
clear, and at last the past returned to him in the light of a
swift revealment. “I have it all now,” he said, “and you are a
Jayhawker. The name is immaterial. I have seen you at Lawrence; I
have seen you at Lane’s headquarters; I have been a soldier myself
with you; we have done duty together--but I have to hang you this
hour, by G--d.” Unabashed, the threatened man drew his breath hard
and strode a step nearer Quantrell. Gregg put a pistol to his
head. “Keep back. Can’t you talk where you are? Do you mean to say
anything?”
The old smile again; could anything ever drive away that
smile--anything ever keep those teeth from shining? “You ask
me if I want to talk, just as if I had anything to talk about.
What can I say? I tell you that I have been hunted, proscribed,
shot at, driven up and down, until I am tired. I want to kill
somebody. I want to know what sleeping a sound night’s sleep
means.” Quantrell’s grave voice broke calmly in: “Bring a rope.”
Blunt brought it. “Make an end fast.” The end was made fast to
a low lying limb. In the firelight the noose expanded. “Up with
him, men.” Four stalwart hands seized him as a vice. He did not
even defend himself. His flesh beneath their grip felt soft and
rounded. The face, although all the bloom was there, hardened
viciously--like the murderer’s face it was. “So you mean to get
rid of me that way? It is like you, Quantrell. I know you but you
do not know me. I have been hunting you for three long years.
You killed my brother in Kansas, you killed others there, your
comrades. I did not know, till afterwards, what kind of a devil
we had around our very messes--a devil who prowled about the camp
fires and shot soldiers in the night that broke bread with him in
the day. Can you guess what brought me here?”
The shifting phases of this uncommon episode attracted all; even
Quantrell himself was interested. The prisoner--threw off all
disguise and defied those who meant to hang him. “You did well to
disarm me,” he said, addressing Gregg, “for I intended to kill
your captain. Everything has been against me. At the Tate house
he escaped; at Clark’s it was no better; we had him surrounded at
Swearington’s and his men cut him out; we ran him for two hundred
miles and he escaped, and now after playing my last card and
staking everything upon it, what is left to me? A dog’s death and
a brother unavenged.” “Do your worst,” he said, and he folded his
arms across his breast and stood stolid as the tree over his head.
Some pity began to stir the men visibly. Gregg turned away and went
out beyond the firelight. Even Quantrell’s face softened, but only
for a moment. Then he spoke harshly to Blunt, “He is one of the
worst of a band that I failed to make a finish of before the war
came, but what escapes today is dragged up by the next tomorrow. If
I had not recognized him he would have killed me. I do not hang him
for that, however, I hang him because the whole breed and race to
which he belongs should be exterminated. Sergeant, do your duty.”
Blunt slipped the noose about the prisoner’s neck, and the four men
who had at first disarmed him, tightened it. To the last the bloom
abode in his cheeks. He did not pray, neither did he make plaint
nor moan. No man spoke a word. Something like a huge pendulum swung
as though spun by a strong hand, quivered once or twice, and then
swinging to and fro and regularly, stopped forever. Just at this
moment three quick, hot vollies, and close together, rolled up from
the northern picket post, and the camp was on its feet. If one had
looked then at the dead man’s face, something like a smile might
have been seen there, fixed and sinister, and beneath it the white,
sharp teeth. James Williams had accepted his fate like a hero. At
mortal feud with Quantrell, and living only that he might meet him
face to face in battle, he had joined every regiment, volunteered
upon every scout, rode foremost in every raid, and fought hardest
in every combat. It was not to be. Quantrell was leaving Missouri.
A great gulf was about to separate them. One desperate effort now,
and years of toil and peril at a single blow, might have been
rewarded. He struck it and it cost him his life. To this day the
whole tragic episode is sometimes recalled and discussed along the
border.
The bivouac was rudely broken up. Three hundred Federal cavalry,
crossing Quantrell’s trail late in the afternoon, had followed it
until the darkness fell, halted an hour for supper, and then again,
at a good round trot, rode straight upon Haller, holding the rear
of the movement southward. He fought at the outpost half an hour.
Behind huge trees, he would not fall back until his flanks were in
danger. All the rest of the night he fought them thus, making six
splendid charges and holding on to every position until his grasp
was broken loose by sheer hammering. At Grand River the pursuit
ended and Quantrell swooped down upon Lamar, in Barton County,
where a Federal garrison held the courthouse and the houses near
it. He attacked but got worsted, and attacked again and lost one
of his best men. He attacked the third time and made no better
headway. He finally abandoned the town and resumed, unmolested,
the road to the south. From Jackson County to the Arkansas line
the whole country was swarming with militia and but for the fact
that every Guerrilla was clad in Federal clothing, the march would
have been an incessant battle. As it was, it will never be known
how many isolated Federals, mistaking Quantrell’s men for comrades
of other regiments not on duty with them, fell into a trap that
never gave up their victims alive. Near Cassville in Barry County,
twenty-two were killed thus. They were coming up from Cassville and
were meeting the Guerrillas, who were going south. The order given
by Quantrell was a most simple one, but a most murderous one. By
the side of each Federal in the approaching column a Guerrilla was
to range himself, engage him in conversation, and then, at a given
signal, blow his brains out. Quantrell gave the signal promptly,
shooting the militiaman assigned to him through the middle of the
forehead, and where, upon their horses, twenty-two confident men
laughed and talked in comrade fashion a second before, nothing
remained of the unconscious detachment, which was literally
exterminated, save a few who straggled in agony upon the ground,
and a mass of terrified and plunging horses. Not a Guerrilla missed
his mark.
Younger Remains in Missouri With a Small Detachment--Winter of 1862
and 1863
The remaining part of this chapter is the escapades of Cole
Younger, who stayed in Missouri the winter of 1862 and 1863, with
quite a number of the old band who were not in condition to ride
when Quantrell and Captain Trow went south. But I know them to be
true.
Younger was exceedingly enterprising, and fought almost daily. He
did not seem to be affected by the severity of the winter, and at
night, under a single blanket, he slept often in the snow while it
was too bitter cold for Federal scouting parties to leave their
comfortable cantonments or Federal garrisons to poke their noses
beyond the snug surroundings of their well furnished barracks.
The Guerrilla rode everywhere and waylaid roads, bridges, lines of
couriers and routes of travel. Six mail carriers disappeared in one
week between Independence and Kansas City.
In a month after Quantrell arrived in Texas, George Todd returned
to Jackson County, bringing with him Fletch Taylor, Boon Schull,
James Little, Andy Walker and James Reed. Todd and Younger again
came together by the bloodhound instinct which all men have who
hunt or are hunted. Todd had scarcely made himself known to the
Guerrilla in Jackson County before he had commenced to kill
militiamen. A foraging party from Independence were gathering corn
from a field belonging to Daniel White, a most worthy citizen of
the vicinity, when Todd and Younger broke in upon it, shot five
down in the field and put the rest to flight. Next day, November
30, 1862, Younger, having with him Josiah and Job McCockle and
Tom Talley, met four of Jennison’s regiment face to face in
the neighborhood of the county poor house. Younger, who had an
extraordinary voice, called out loud enough to be heard a mile,
“You are four, and we are four. Stand until we come up.” Instead
of standing, however, the Jayhawkers turned about and rode off as
rapidly as possible, followed by Younger and his men. All being
excellently mounted, the ride lasted fully three miles before
either party won or lost. At last the Guerrillas began to gain
and kept gaining. Three of the four Jayhawkers were finally shot
from their saddles and the fourth escaped by superior riding and
superior running.
Todd, retaining with him those brought up from Arkansas, kept
adding to them all who either from choice or necessity were forced
to take refuge in the brush. Never happy except when on the war
path, he suggested to Younger and Cunningham a ride into Kansas
City west of Little Santa Fe, always doubtful if not dangerous
ground. Thirty Guerrillas met sixty-two Jayhawkers. It was a
prairie fight, brief, bloody, and finished at a gallop. Todd’s
tactics, the old yell and the old rush, swept everything--a
revolver in each hand, the bridle reins in his teeth, the horse at
a full run, the individual rider firing right and left. This is the
way the Guerrillas charged. The sixty-two Jayhawkers fought better
than most of the militia had been in the habit of fighting, but
they could not stand up to the work at revolver range. When Todd
charged them furiously, which he did as soon as he came in sight of
them, they stood a volley at one hundred yards and returned it, but
not a closer grapple.
It was while holding the rear with six men that Cole Younger was
attacked by fifty-two men and literally run over. In the midst
of the _melee_ bullets fell like hail stones in summer weather.
John McDowell’s horse went down, the rider under him and badly
hit. He cried out to Younger for help. Younger, hurt himself and
almost overwhelmed, dismounted under fire and rescued McDowell
and brought him safely back from the furious crash, killing as he
went a Federal soldier whose horse had carried him beyond Younger
and McDowell who were struggling in the road together. Afterwards
Younger was betrayed by the man to save whose life he had risked
his own.
Divided again, and operating in different localities, Todd, Younger
and Cunningham carried the terror of the Guerrilla name throughout
the border counties of Kansas and Missouri. Every day, and
sometimes twice a day, from December 3rd to December 18th, these
three fought some scouting party or attacked some picket post.
At the crossing of the Big Blue on the road to Kansas City--the
place where the former bridge had been burned by Quantrell--Todd
surprised six militiamen and killed them all and then hung them up
on a long pole, resting it, either end upon forks, just as hogs
are hung in the country after being slaughtered. The Federals,
seeing this, began to get ready to drive them away from their lines
of communication. Three heavy columns were sent out to scour the
country. Surprising Cunningham in camp on Big Creek, they killed
one of his splendid soldiers, Will Freeman, and drove the rest of
the Guerrillas back into Jackson County.
Todd, joining himself quickly to Younger, ambuscaded the column
hunting him, and in a series of combats between Little Blue and
Kansas City, killed forty-seven of the pursuers, captured five
wagons and thirty-three head of horses.
There was a lull again in marching and counter marching as the
winter got colder and colder and some deep snow fell. Christmas
time came, and the Guerrillas would have a Christmas frolic.
Nothing bolder or braver is recorded upon the records of either
side in the Civil War than this so-called Christmas frolic.
Colonel Henry Younger, father of Coleman Younger, was one of the
most respected citizens of Western Missouri. He was a stalwart
pioneer of Jackson County, having fourteen children born to him
and his noble wife, a true Christian woman. A politician of the
old school, Colonel Younger was for a number of years a judge of
the county court of Jackson County, and for several terms was a
member of the state legislature. In 1858, he left Jackson County
for Cass County where he dealt largely in stock. He was also an
extensive farmer, an enterprising merchant and the keeper of one of
the best and most popular livery stables in the West, located at
Harrisonville, the County seat of Cass County. His blooded horses
were very superior, and he usually had on hand for speculative
purposes amounts of money ranging from $6,000 to $10,000. On one
of Jennison’s periodical raides in the fall of 1862, he sacked and
burned Harrisonville. Colonel Younger, although a staunch Union
man, and known to be such, was made to lose heavily. Jennison and
his officers took from him $4,000 worth of buggies, carriages and
hacks and fifty head of blooded horses worth $500 each. Then the
balance of his property that was perishable and not movable, was
burned. The intention was to kill Colonel Younger, on the principle
that dead men tell no tales, but he escaped with great difficulty
and made his way to Independence. Jennison was told that Colonel
Younger was rich and that he invariably carried with him large
amounts of money. A plan was immediately laid to kill him. Twenty
cut-throats were organized as a band, under a Jayhawker named
Bailey, and set to watch his every movement. They dogged him from
Independence to Kansas City and from Kansas City down to Cass
County. Coming upon him at last in an isolated place within a few
miles of Harrisonville, they riddled his body with bullets, rifled
his pockets and left his body stark and partially stripped by the
roadside.
Eight hundred Federals held Kansas City, and on every road was a
strong picket post. The streets were patrolled continually, and
ready always for an emergency. Horses saddled and bridled stood in
their stalls.
Early on the morning of December 25th, 1862, Todd asked Younger if
he would like to have a little fun. “What kind of fun?” the latter
inquired. “A portion of the command that murdered your father are
in Kansas City,” said Todd, “and if you say so we will go into
the place and kill a few of them.” Younger caught eagerly at the
proposition and commenced at once to get ready for the enterprise.
Six were to compose the adventuresome party--Todd, Younger, Abe
Cunningham, Fletch Taylor, Zach Traber and George Clayton. Clad in
the uniform of the Federal cavalry, carrying instead of one pistol,
four, they arrived about dusk at the picket post on the Westport
and Kansas City road. They were not even halted. The uniform was a
passport; to get in did not require a countersign. They left the
horses in charge of Traber, bidding him do the best he could do if
the worst came to the worst.
The city was filled with revelry. All the saloons were crowded.
The five Guerrillas, with their heavy cavalry overcoats buttoned
loosely about them, boldly walked down Main Street and into the
Christmas revelry. Visiting this saloon and that saloon, they sat
knee to knee with some of the Jennison men, some of Jennison’s most
blood-thirsty troopers, and drank confusion over and over again to
the cut-throat Quantrell and his bushwhacking crew.
Todd knew several of the gang who had waylaid and slain Colonel
Younger, but hunt how he could, he could not find a single man of
them. Entering near onto midnight an ordinary drinking place near
the public square, six soldiers were discovered sitting at two
tables playing cards, two at one and four at another. A man and a
boy were behind the bar. Todd, as he entered, spoke low to Younger.
“Run to cover at last. Five of the six men before you were in
Bailey’s crowd that murdered your father. How does your pulse feel?”
“Like an iron man’s. I feel like I could kill the whole six myself.”
They went up to the bar, called for whiskey and invited the card
players to join. They did so.
If it was agreeable, the boy might bring their whiskey to them and
the game could go on.
“Certainly,” said Todd, with purring of a tiger cat ready for a
spring, “that’s what the boy is here for.”