bereavement upon the hearts of a happy and devoted family. Those
who mourned for him mourned all the more tenderly because they
could not weep. Nature, having denied to them the consolation of
tears, left them the infinite intercourse and remembrances of
comradeship and soldierly affection.
The old bands, however, were breaking up. Lieutenant George
Shepherd, taking with him Matt Wyman, John Maupin, Theo. Castle,
Jack Rupe, Silas King, James and Alfred Corum, Bud Story, Perry
Smith, Jack Williams, Jesse James and Arthur Devers, Press Webb,
John Norfolk and others to the number of twenty-six, started south
to Texas, on the 13th of November, 1864. With Shepherd also were
William Gregg and wife, Richard Maddox and wife, and James Hendrix
and wife. These ladies were just as brave and just as devoted and
just as intrepid in peril or extremity as were the men who marched
with them to guard them.
Jesse and Frank James separated at White River, Arkansas, Frank to
go to Kentucky with Quantrell, and Jesse to follow the remnant of
Todd’s still organized veterans into Texas.
Besides killing isolated squads of Federals and making way for
every individual militiaman who supposed that the roads were
absolutely safe for travelers because General Price and his army
had long been gone, Shepherd’s fighting for several days was only
fun. On the 22nd, however, Captain Emmett Goss, an old acquaintance
of the Fifteenth Kansas Cavalry, Jennison’s, was encountered,
commanding thirty-two Jayhawkers.
Of late Goss had been varying his orgies somewhat. He would drink
to excess and lavish his plunder and money on ill-famed mistresses,
who were sometimes Indians, sometimes negresses, and but rarely
pure white. He was about thirty-five years old, square built, had
broad shoulders, a swaggering gait, stood six feet when at himself,
and erect, had red hair and a bad eye and a face that meant fight
when cornered--and desperate fight at that.
November 22, 1864, was an autumn day full of sunshine and falling
leaves. Riding southward from Missouri Lieutenant Shepherd met
Captain Goss riding northward from Cane Hill. Shepherd had
twenty-six men, rank and file. It was an accidental meeting--one of
those sudden, forlorn, isolated, murderous meetings not rare during
the war--a meeting of outlying detachments that asked no quarter
and gave none. It took place on Cabin Creek, in the Cherokee
Nation. Each rank arrayed itself speedily. There were twenty-six
men against thirty-two. The odds were not great--indeed they never
had been considered at all. There came a charge and a sudden and
terrible storm of revolver bullets.
Nothing so weak as the Kansas detachment could possibly live before
the deadly prowess and pistol practice of the Missourians. Of the
thirty-two, twenty-nine were killed. One, riding a magnificent
race horse, escaped on the wings of the wind--one, a negro barber,
was taken along to wait upon the Guerrillas, and the third, a poor
emaciated skeleton, as good as dead of consumption, was permitted
to ride on northward, bearing the story of the thunderbolt.
Among the Missourians four were killed. In the melee Jesse James
encountered Goss and singled him out from all the rest. As
James bore down upon him, he found that his horse, an extremely
high-spirited and powerful one, had taken the bit in its teeth and
was perfectly unmanageable. Besides, his left arm being left weak
from a scarcely healed wound, it was impossible for him to control
his horse or even to guide him.
Pistol balls were as plentiful as the leaves that were pattering
down. However, James had to put up his revolver as he rode, and
rely upon his right hand to reinforce his left. Before he could
turn his horse and break its hold upon his bit, Goss had fired upon
him four times. Close upon him at last James shot him through and
through. Goss swayed heavily in his saddle, but held on.
“Will you surrender?” Jesse asked, recocking his pistol and
presenting it again.
“Never,” was the stern reply. Goss, still reeling in the saddle and
bleeding dreadfully.
When the blue white smoke curled up again there was a riderless
steed among the trees and a guilty spirit somewhere out in the
darkness of the unknown. It took two dragoon revolver bullets to
finish this one, and yet James was not satisfied with his work.
There was a preacher along who also had sat himself steadfast in
the saddle, and had fought as the best of them did. James rode
straight at him after he had finished Goss. The parson’s heart
failed him at last, however, and he started to run. James gained
upon him at every step. When close enough for a shot, he called out
to him:
“Turn about like a man, that I may not shoot you in the back.” The
Jayhawker turned, and his face was white and his tongue voluble.
“Don’t shoot me,” he pleaded, “I am the chaplain of the Thirteenth
Kansas; my name is U. P. Gardner, I have killed no man, but have
prayed for many; spare me.” James did not answer. Perhaps he turned
away his head a little as he drew out his revolver. When the smoke
lifted, Gardner was dead upon the crisp sere grass with a bullet
through his brain.
Maddox, in this fight, killed three of Goss’ men, Gregg five, Press
Webb three, Wayman four, Hendrix three, and others one or two each.
The march through the Indian country was one long stretch of
ambushments and skirmishes.
Wayman stirred up a hornet’s nest one afternoon, and though stung
twice himself quite severely, he killed four Indians in single
combat and wounded the fifth who escaped.
Press Webb, hunting the same day for a horse, was ambushed by three
Pins and wounded slightly in the arm. He charged singlehanded into
the brush and was shot again before he got out of it, but he killed
the three Indians and captured three excellent ponies, veritably a
god-send to all.
The next day about noon the rear guard, composed of Jesse James,
Bud Story, Harrison Trow and Jack Rupe, was savagely attacked by
seventy-five Federal Cherokees and driven back upon the main body
rapidly. Shepherd, one of the quickest and keenest soldiers the
war produced, had formed every man of the command in the rear of
an open field through which the enemy must advance and over which
in return a telling charge could be made. The three heroic women,
mounted on excellent horses and given shelter in some timber still
further to the rear of the Guerrilla line, bade their husbands,
as they kissed them, fight to the death or conquer. The Indians
bore down as if they meant to ride down a regiment. Firing their
pistols into their very faces with deadly effect, the rear guard
had not succeeded in stopping them a single second, but when in
the counter-charge Shepherd dashed at the oncoming line, it melted
away as snow in a thaw. Shepherd, Maddox, Gregg, the two Corums,
Rupe, Story, James, Hendrick, Webb, Smith Commons, Castle, Wayman
and King fought like men who wanted to make a clean and a merciless
sweep.
John Maupin, not yet well from the two ugly wounds received the day
Anderson was killed, insisted on riding in the charge, and was shot
the third time by the Indian into whom he had put two bullets and
whose horse he rushed up to secure.
Jesse James had his horse killed and a pistol shot from his
hand. Several other Guerrillas were wounded but none killed, and
Williams, James Corum and Maddox lost horses.
Of the sixty-five Indians, fifty-two were counted killed, while
some, known to be wounded, dragged themselves off into the mountain
and escaped.
During the battle Dick Maddox’s wife could not keep still under
cover, and commenced to shoot at the enemy, and had a lock of her
hair shot off just above the ear.
The Surrender
Early in the month of March, 1865, Captain Clements, having been
reinforced by ten men under the command of Captain David Poole,
marched from Sherman, Texas, to Mount Pleasant, Titus County,
Arkansas. From Mount Pleasant, on the 14th of April, the march
began once more and for the last time into Missouri. Forming an
advance of David Poole, John Poole, John Maupin, Jack Bishop, Theo.
Castle, Jesse James and Press Webb, Clements pushed on rapidly,
killing five militiamen in one squad, ten in another, here and
there a single one, and now and then as many together as twenty. In
Benton County, Missouri, a Federal militiaman named Harkness, was
captured, who had halted a brother of Clements and burnt the house
of his mother. James, Maupin and Castle held Harkness tightly while
Clements cut his throat and afterwards scalped him.
At Kingsville, in Johnson County, something of a skirmish took
place and ten Federals were killed. A militiaman named Duncan,
who had a bad name locally and who was described as being a
highwayman and a house burner, also was captured at the same
time. Being fifty-five years of age and gray headed did not save
him. But before he surrendered he fought a desperate battle.
Knowing instinctively what his fate would be if he fell alive into
the hands of any hostile organization, much less a Guerrilla
organization, he took a stand behind a plank fence, armed with a
Spencer rifle and two revolvers, and faced the enemy, now close
upon him. Arch Clements, Jesse James and Jack Bishop dashed at
Duncan. The first shot killed his horse, and in falling the horse
fell upon the rider. At the second fire Clement’s horse also was
killed, but James stopped neither for the deadly aim of the old man
nor for the help of his comrades who were coming up as fast as they
could on foot. He shot him three times before he knocked him from
his feet to his knees, but the fourth shot, striking him fair in
the middle of the forehead, finished the old man and all his sins
together.
The last of April a council was held among the Guerrillas to
discuss the pros and cons of a surrender. Virtually the war was
over. Everywhere the regular Confederate armies had surrendered and
disbanded, and in no direction could any evidences be discovered of
that Guerrilla warfare which many predicted would succeed to the
war of the regular army and the general order. All decided to do as
the rest of the Southern forces had done.
Anxious, however, to give to those of the command who preferred
a contrary course the dignity and the formality of official
authority, Captain Clements entered Lexington, Mo., on the
fifteenth, with Jesse James, Jess Hamlet, Jack Rupe, Willis King
and John Vanmeter, bearing a flag of truce. The provost marshall
of Lexington, Major J. B. Rogers, was a liberal officer of the
old regime, who understood in its fullest and broadest sense that
the war was over, and that however cruel or desperate certain
organizations or certain bodies of men had been in the past, all
proscription of them ceased with their surrender.
Shortly after the surrender, and as Jesse James was riding at the
head of a column with the white flag, eight Federals were met who
were drunk and who did not see the flag of truce or did not regard
it. They fired point blank at the Guerrillas, and were charged
in turn and routed with the loss of four killed and two wounded.
These eight men were the advance of a larger party of sixty, thirty
Johnson County militia, and thirty of the Second Wisconsin Cavalry.
These in the counter attack drove back the Guerrillas and followed
them fiercely, especially the Second Wisconsin. Vanmeter’s horse
was killed but Jack Rupe stopped under fire for him and carried him
to safety. James and Clements, although riding jaded horses--the
same horses, in fact, which had made the long inhospitable trip up
from Texas--galloped steadily away in retreat side by side, and
fighting as best they could. Mounted on a superb black horse, a
single Wisconsin trooper dashed ahead of the balance and closed
in swiftly upon James, who halted to court the encounter. At a
distance of ten feet both fired simultaneously and when the smoke
cleared away the brave Wisconsin man was dead with a dragoon ball
through his heart. Scarcely had this combat closed before another
Wisconsin trooper rushed at James, firing rapidly, and closing
in as he fired. James killed his horse, and the Federal in turn
sent a bullet through James’ right lung. Then the rush passed over
and past him. Another volley killed his horse, and as the Johnson
County militia galloped by, five fired at him as he lay bleeding
under the prostrate horse.
Clements, seeing horse and rider going down together, believed his
beloved comrade was killed, and strove thereafter to make good his
own escape.
Extricating himself with infinite toil and pain, Jesse James left
the road for the woods, pursued by five Federals, who fired at him
constantly as they followed. At a distance of two hundred yards he
killed the foremost Federal and halted long enough under fire to
disencumber himself of his heavy cavalry boots, one of which was a
quarter full of blood. He fired again and shattered the pistol arm
of the second pursuer, the other three closing up and pressing the
maimed Guerrilla as ravenous hounds the torn flanks of a crippled
stag. James was getting weaker and weaker. The foremost of the
three pursuers could be heard distinctly yelling: “Oh! g----d----n
your little soul, we have you at last! Stop, and be killed like a
gentleman!”
James did not reply, but when he attempted to lift his trusty
dragoon pistol to halt the nearest trooper, he found it too heavy
for his hand. But reinforcing his right arm with his left, he fired
finally at the Wisconsin man almost upon him and killed him in the
saddle.
Perhaps then and there might have been an end made to the career
of the desperate Guerrilla if the two remaining pursuers had been
Wisconsin Cavalry instead of Johnson County militia; but terrified
at the prowess of one who had been so terribly wounded, and who
killed even as he reeled along, the militiamen abandoned the chase
and James, staggering on four or five hundred yards further, fell
upon the edge of a creek and fainted. From the 15th to the 17th he
lay alongside the water, bathing his wound continually and drinking
vast quantities of water to quench his burning thirst and fever.
Towards sunset, on the evening of the 17th, he crawled to a field
where a man was plowing, who proved to be a Southern man and a
friend.
That night he rode fifteen miles to the house of a Mr. Bowman, held
upon a horse by his new-found friend, where he remained, waited
upon by Clements and Rupe, until the surrender of Poole, on the
21st, with one hundred and twenty-nine Guerrillas.
Major Rogers was so well satisfied that James would die that he
thought it unnecessary to parole him, and so declared. To give him
every chance, however, for his life, and to enable him to reach
his mother, then a fugitive in Nebraska, Rodgers furnished him with
transportation, money and a pass.
A good many of my men surrendered with Poole, while others planned
to go to Old Mexico with me and not surrender at all. However,
when I came up from the South, planning to go back to Old Mexico
and join General Shelby with his old command, some of my best
citizen friends insisted on my surrendering and going home, and
through their influence arrangements were made with Major Rodgers
to meet me at the Dillard farm, on Texas Prairie. There we held
a consultation, he and I, for about half a day, regarding my
surrender. He promised me protection and my side arms, and the
horse that I had, and I surrendered, receiving the protection he
had promised me.
I went home and went to work and took my part in trying to make
peace with the Federal soldiers, some of whom proved to be very
good friends to me, and we lived very peacefully after the war.
I very much opposed and tried to put a stop to the robbery,
thieving and horse stealing that was so prominent after the war,
and advised the boys that got into trouble to leave the country
time and time again, and go to Old Mexico while it was yet time to
get away.
I returned home with no money and no means at all, but found plenty
of friends who were ready to help me and who furnished me money to
start with.
I advise all who read this book to appreciate character above
money.
Death of Quantrell
Quantrell, with forty-eight of the most daring of his old band,
accompanied Shepherd as far south as White River, Arkansas. He
left them there to go to his old home in Maryland. He passed all
Federal camps, had no trouble staying in Federal camps, eating with
Federal soldiers, playing Federal himself until he reached Upton
Station, in Hart County, Kentucky, where he crossed the Louisiana
& Nashville Railroad, still representing himself and his men as
Federal soldiers.
Near Marion County he entered the Lebanon and Campbellville
turnpike at Rolling Fork and traveled north to New Market, thence
east to Bradford, and from Bradford towards Hustonville, camping
for the night preceding the entrance into this place at Major
Dray’s, on Rolling Fork. Thirty Federal soldiers were at garrison
at Hustonville, possessed of as many horses in splendid condition,
and these Quantrell determined to appropriate. No opposition was
made to his entrance into the town. No one imagined him to be other
than a Union officer on a scout.
He dismounted quietly at a hotel in the place and entered at once
into a pleasant conversation with the commander of the post.
Authorized by their chieftain, however, to remount themselves as
speedily as possible and as thoroughly as possible, the Guerrillas
spread quickly over the town in search for horses, appropriating
first what could be found in the public stables and later on those
that were still needed to supply the deficiency, from private
places.
As Quantrell conversed with the commander, a Federal private
made haste to inform him of the kind of work the newcomers were
doing, and to complain loudly of the unwarranted and outrageous
appropriation.
Enraged and excited, the commander snatched up a brace of revolvers
as he left his headquarters and buckled them about him and hurried
to the nearest livery stable where the best among the animals of
his men had been kept. Just as he arrived, Allen Parmer was riding
out mounted on a splendid horse. The Federal major laid hands upon
the bridle and bade Parmer dismount. It was as the grappling of a
wave with a rock.
No Guerrilla in the service of the South was cooler or deadlier;
none less given to the emotion of fear. He looked at the Federal
major a little curiously when he first barred the passageway of his
horse and even smiled pleasantly as he took the trouble to explain
to him the nature of the instructions under which he was operating.
“D----n you and d----n your instructions,” the major replied
fiercely. “Dismount!”
“Ah,” ejaculated Parmer, “has it really come to this?” and then
the two men began to draw. Unquestionably there could be but one
result. The right hand of the Federal major had hardly reached
the flap of his revolver, before Parmer’s pistol was against his
forehead, and Parmer’s bullet had torn half the top of his head off.
In June, 1865, Quantrell started from Bedford Russell’s, in
Nelson County, with John Ross, William Hulse, Payne Jones, Clark
Hockinsmith, Isaac Hall, Richard Glasscock, Robert Hall, Bud
Spence, Allen Parmer, Dave Helton and Lee McMurtry. His destination
was Salt River.
At Newel McClaskey’s the turnpike was gained and traveled several
miles, when a singularly severe and penetrating rain storm began.
Quantrell, to escape this, turned from the road on the left and
into a woods pasture near a postoffice called Smiley. Through this
pasture and for half a mile further he rode until he reached the
residence of a Mr. Wakefield, in whose barn the Guerrillas took
shelter. Unsuspicious of danger and of the belief that the nearest
enemy was at least twenty miles away, the men dismounted, unbridled
their horses, and fed them at the racks ranged about the shed
embracing two sides of the barn.
While the horses were eating the Guerrillas amused themselves with
a sham battle, choosing sides and using corncobs for ammunition. In
the midst of much hilarity and boisterousness, Glasscock’s keen
eye saw through the blinding rain a column of cavalry, one hundred
and twenty strong, approaching the barn at a trot.
He cried out instantly, and loud enough to be heard at Wakefield’s
house sixty yards away: “Here they are! Here they are.” Instantly
all the men were in motion and rushing to their horses.
Captain Edward Terrell, known well to Quantrell and fought
stubbornly once before, had been traveling the turnpike from the
direction of Taylorsville, as completely ignorant of Quantrell’s
proximity as Quantrell had been of his, and would have passed on
undoubtedly without a combat if the trail left by the Guerrillas in
passing from the road to the pasture had not attracted attention.
This he followed to within sight of the barn, understood in a
moment the character of the men sheltered there, and closed upon it
rapidly, firing as he came on.
Before a single Guerrilla had put a bridle upon a horse, Terrill
was at the main gate of the lot, a distance of some fifty feet
from the barn, and pouring such a storm of carbine bullets among
them that their horses ran furiously about the lot, difficult to
approach and impossible to restrain.
Fighting desperately and deliberately, and driving away from the
main gate a dozen or more Federals stationed there, John Ross,
William Hulse, Allen Parmer, Lee McMurtry, and Bud Pence, cut
their way through, mounted and defiant. The entire combat did not
last ten minutes. It was a fight in which every man had to do for
himself and do what was done speedily.
Once above the rattling of musketry, the neighing of horses and the
shouting of combatants, Quantrell’s voice rang out loud and clear:
“Cut through, boys, cut through somehow! Don’t surrender while
there is a chance to get out.”
The fire upon the Guerrillas was furious. Quantrell’s horse, a
thoroughbred animal of great spirit and speed, could not be caught.
His master, anxious to secure him, followed him composedly about
the lot for several minutes, trying under showers of bullets to get
hands upon his favorite.
At this moment Clark Hockingsmith, who was mounted and free to go
away at a run, saw the peril of his chief, and galloped to his
rescue. Quantrell, touched by this act of devotion, recognized it
by a smile, and held out his hand to his comrade without speaking.
Hockingsmith dismounted until Quantrell took his own place in the
saddle, and then sprang up behind him.
Another furious volley from Terrill’s men lining all the fence
about the great gate, killed Hockingsmith and killed the horse
he and Quantrell were upon. The second hero now gave his life to
Quantrell. Richard Glasscock also had secured his own horse as
Hockingsmith had done and was free to ride’ away in safety as he
had been.
Opposite the main entrance to the barn lot there was an exit
uncovered by the enemy and beyond this exit a stretch of heavy
timber. Those who gained the timber were safe. Hockingsmith knew
it when he deliberately laid down his life for his chief, and
Glasscock knew it when he also turned about and hurried up to the
two men struggling there--Quantrell to drag himself out from under
the horse and Hockingsmith in the agonies of death.
The second volley from the gate mortally wounded Quantrell and
killed Glasscock’s horse. Then a charge of fifty shouting, shooting
men swept over the barn lot. Robert Hall, Payne Jones, David
Helton, and Isaac Hall had gone out some time before on foot.
J. B. Tooley, A. B. Southwick and C. H. Southwick, wounded badly,
escaped fighting. Only the dead man lying by his wounded chief,
and Glasscock, erect, splendid, and fighting to the last, remained
as trophies of the desperate combat. Two balls struck Quantrell.
The first, the heavy ball of a Spencer carbine, entered close to
the right collar bone, ranged down along the spine, injuring it
severely, and hid itself somewhere in the body. The second ball cut
off the finger next to the little finger of the left hand, tearing
it from its socket, and lacerating the hand itself badly. The
shoulder wound did its work, however, for it was a mortal wound.
All the lower portion of Quantrell’s body was paralyzed and as he
was lifted and carried to Wakefield’s house his legs were limp and
his extremities cold and totally without sensation.