the enemy now invading the northeastern part of the State. Upon
you, therefore, will devolve the necessity of impeding his advance
into this region. It is not expected that you will give battle to
a large force, but by felling trees, burning bridges, removing
supplies of forage and subsistence, attacking his trains,
stampeding his animals, cutting off his detachments, and other
similar means, you will be able materially to harass his army and
protect this region of country. You must endeavor by every means
to maintain yourself in the Territory independent of this army.
In case only of absolute necessity you may move southward. If the
enemy threatens to march through the Indian Territory or descend
the Arkansas River you may call on troops from Southwestern
Arkansas and Texas to rally to your aid. You may reward your
Indian troops by giving them such stores as you may think proper
when they make captures from the enemy, but you will please
endeavor to restrain them from committing any barbarities upon the
wounded, prisoners, or dead who may fall into their hands. You may
purchase your supplies of subsistence from wherever you can most
advantageously do so. You will draw your ammunition from Little
Rock or from New Orleans via Red River. Please communicate with
the general commanding when practicable.[82]
It was an elaborate programme but scarcely a noble one. Its note of
selfishness sounded high. The Indians were simply to be made to serve
the ends of the white men. Their methods of warfare were regarded as
distinctly inferior. Pea Ridge was, in fact, the first and last time
that they were allowed to participate in the war on a big scale.
Henceforth, they were rarely ever anything more than scouts and
skirmishers and that was all they were really fitted to be.
[Footnote 81: _Official Records_, vol. viii, 282, 790; vol. liii,
supplement, 796.]
[Footnote 82:--Ibid., vol. viii, 795-796.]
II. LANE'S BRIGADE AND THE INCEPTION OF THE INDIAN
The Indian Expedition had its beginnings, fatefully or otherwise,
in "Lane's Kansas Brigade." On January 29, 1861, President Buchanan
signed the bill for the admission of Kansas into the Union and the
matter about which there had been so much of bitter controversy was at
last professedly settled; but, alas, for the peace of the border, the
radicals, the extremists, the fanatics, call them what one may, who
had been responsible for the controversy and for its bitterness, were
still unsettled. James Lane was chief among them. His was a turbulent
spirit and it permitted its owner no cessation from strife. With
President Lincoln's first call for volunteers, April 15, 1861, Lane's
martial activities began. Within three days, he had gathered together
a company of warriors,[83] the nucleus, psychologically speaking,
of what was to be his notorious, jayhawking, marauding brigade. His
enthusiasm was infectious. It communicated itself to reflective men
like Carl Schurz[84] and was probably the secret of Lane's
[Footnote 83: John Hay records in his _Diary_, "The White House
is turned into barracks. Jim Lane marshaled his Kansas warriors to-day
at Willard's and placed them at the disposal of Major Hunter,
who turned them to-night into the East Room. It is a splendid
company--worthy such an armory. Besides the Western Jayhawkers it
comprises some of the best _material_ in the East. Senator
Pomeroy and old Anthony Bleecker stood shoulder to shoulder in the
ranks. Jim Lane walked proudly up and down the ranks with a new sword
that the Major had given him. The Major has made me his aid, and
I labored under some uncertainty, as to whether I should speak to
privates or not."--THAYER, _Life and Letters of John Hay_, vol.
i, 92.]
[Footnote 84: It would seem to have communicated itself to Carl
Schurz, although Schurz, in his _Reminiscences_, makes no
definite admission of the fact. Hay (cont.)]
mysterious influence with the temperate, humane, just, and so very
much more magnanimous Lincoln, who, in the first days of the war, as
in the later and the last, had his hours of discouragement and deep
depression. For dejection of any sort, the wild excitement and
boundless confidence of a zealot like Lane must have been somewhat of
an antidote, also a stimulant.
The first Kansas state legislature convened March 26, 1861, and set
itself at once to work to put the new machinery of government into
operation. After much political wire-pulling that involved the promise
of spoils to come,[85] James H. Lane and Samuel C. Pomeroy[86] were
declared to be elected United States senators, the term of office of
each to begin with the first session of the thirty-seventh congress.
That session was
[Footnote 84: (cont.) says, "Going into Nicolay's room this morning,
C. Schurz, and J. Lane were sitting. Jim was at the window, filling
his soul with gall by steady telescopic contemplation of a Secession
flag impudently flaunting over a roof in Alexandria. 'Let me tell
you,' said he to the elegant Teuton, 'we have got to whip these
scoundrels like hell, C. Schurz. They did a good thing stoning our
men at Baltimore and shooting away the flag at Sumter. It has set the
great North a-howling for blood, and they'll have it.'
"'I heard,' said Schurz, 'you preached a sermon to your men
yesterday.'
"'No, sir! this is not time for preaching. When I went to Mexico there
were four preachers in my regiment. In less than a week I issued
orders for them all to stop preaching and go to playing cards. In a
month or so, they were the biggest devils and best fighters I had.'
"An hour afterwards, C. Schurz told me he was going home to arm his
clansmen for the wars. He has obtained three months' leave of absence
from his diplomatic duties, and permission to raise a cavalry
regiment. He will make a wonderful land pirate; bold, quick,
brilliant, and reckless. He will be hard to control and difficult to
direct. Still, we shall see. He is a wonderful man."--THAYER, _Life
and Letters of John Hay_, vol. i, 102-103.]
[Footnote 85: In Connelley's _James Henry Lane, the "Grim Chieftain"
of Kansas_, the following is quoted as coming from Lane himself:
"Of the fifty-six men in the Legislature who voted for Jim Lane,
five-and-forty now wear shoulder-straps. Doesn't Jim Lane look out for
his friends?"]
[Footnote 86: John Brown's rating of Pomeroy, as given by Stearns in
his _Life and Public Services of George Luther Stearns_, 133-134,
would show him to have been a considerably less pugnacious individual
than was Lane.]
[Illustration: SKETCH MAP SHOWING THE MAIN THEATRE OF BORDER WARFARE
AND THE LOCATION OF TRIBES WITHIN THE INDIAN COUNTRY]
the extra one, called for July, 1861. Immediately, a difficulty arose
due to the fact that, subsequent to his election to the senatorship
and in addition thereto, Lane had accepted a colonelcy tendered by
Oliver P. Morton[87] of Indiana, his own native state.[88] Lane's
friends very plausibly contended that a military commission from one
state could not invalidate the title to represent another state in the
Federal senate. The actual fight over the contested seat came in the
next session and, quite regardless of consequences likely to prejudice
his case, Lane went on recruiting for his brigade. Indeed, he
commended himself to Frémont, who, in his capacity as major-general of
volunteers and in charge of the Western Military District, assigned
him to duty in Kansas, thus greatly complicating an already delicate
situation and immeasurably heaping up difficulties, embarrassments,
and disasters for the frontier.
The same indifference towards the West that characterized the
governing authorities in the South was exhibited by eastern men in the
North and, correspondingly, the West, Federal and Confederate,
was unduly sensitive to the indifference, perhaps, also, a trifle
unnecessarily alarmed by symptoms of its own danger. Nevertheless, its
danger was real. Each state gave in its adherence to the Confederacy
separately and, therefore, every single state in the slavery belt had
a problem to solve. The fight for Missouri was fought
[Footnote 87: Morton, war governor of Indiana, who had taken
tremendous interest in the struggle for Kansas and in the events
leading up to the organization of the Republican party, was one of the
most energetic of men in raising troops for the defence of the Union,
especially in the earliest stages of the war. See Foulke's _Life of
Oliver P. Morton_, vol. i.]
[Footnote 88: Some doubt on this point exists. John Speer, Lane's
intimate friend and, in a sense, his biographer, says Lane claimed
Lawrenceburg, Indiana, as his birthplace. By some people he is thought
to have been born in Kentucky.]
on the border and nowhere else. The great evil of squatter sovereignty
days was now epidemic in its most malignant form. Those days had bred
intense hatred between Missourian and Kansan and had developed a
disregard of the value of human life and a ruthlessness and brutality
in fighting, concomitant with it, that the East, in its most primitive
times, had never been called upon to experience. Granted that the
spirit of the crusader had inspired many a free-soiler to venture into
the trans-Missouri region after the Kansas-Nebraska bill had become
law and that real exaltation of soul had transformed some very
mercenary and altogether mundane characters unexpectedly into martyrs;
granted, also, that the pro-slavery man honestly felt that his
cause was just and that his sacred rights of property, under the
constitution, were being violated, his preserves encroached upon, it
yet remains true that great crimes were committed in the name of great
causes and that villains stalked where only saints should have trod.
The irregular warfare of the border, from fifty-four on, while it may,
to military history as a whole, be as unimportant as the quarrels of
kites and crows, was yet a big part of the life of the frontiersman
and frightful in its possibilities. Sherman's march to the sea or
through the Carolinas, disgraceful to modern civilization as each
undeniably was, lacked the sickening phase, guerrilla atrocities, that
made the Civil War in the West, to those at least who were in line
to experience it at close range, an awful nightmare. Union and
Confederate soldiers might well fraternize in eastern camps because
there they so rarely had any cause for personal hostility towards each
other, but not in western. The fight on the border was constant and to
the death.
The leaders in the West or many of them, on both sides, were men of
ungovernable tempers, of violent and unrestrained passions, sometimes
of distressingly base proclivities, although, in the matter of both
vices and virtues, there was considerable difference of degree among
them. Lane and Shelby and Montgomery and Quantrill were hardly types,
rather should it be said they were extreme cases. They seem never to
have taken chances on each other's inactivity. Their motto invariably
was, to be prepared for the worst, and their practice, retaliation.
It was scarcely to be supposed that a man like Lane, who had never
known moderation in the course of the long struggle for Kansas or been
over scrupulous about anything would, in the event of his adopted
state's being exposed anew to her old enemy, the Missourian, be able
to pose contentedly as a legislator or stay quietly in Washington,
his role of guardian of the White House being finished.[89] The
anticipated danger to Kansas visibly threatened in the summer of 1861
and the critical moment saw Lane again in the West, energetic beyond
precedent. He took up his position at Fort Scott, it being his
conviction that, from that point and from the line of the Little
Osage, the entire eastern section of the state, inclusive of Fort
Leavenworth, could best be protected.[90]
[Footnote 89: As Villard tells us [_Memoirs_, vol. i, 169],
Lane was in command of the "Frontier Guards," one of the two special
patrols that protected the White House in the early days of the war.
There were those, however, who resented his presence there. For
example, note the diary entry of Hay, "Going to my room, I met the
Captain. He was a little boozy and very eloquent. He dilated on the
troubles of the time and bewailed the existence of a garrison in the
White House 'to give _éclat_ to Jim Lane.'"--Thayer, op. cit.,
vol. i, 94. The White House guard was in reality under General Hunter
[_Report of the Military Services of General David Hunter_, 8].]
[Footnote 90: _Official Records_, vol. iii, 453, 455.]
Fort Scott was the ranking town among the few Federal strongholds in
the middle Southwest. It was within convenient, if not easy, distance
of Crawford Seminary which, situated to the southward in the Quapaw
Nation, was the headquarters of the Neosho Agency; but no more
perturbed place could be imagined than was that same Neosho Agency at
the opening of the Civil War. Bad white men, always in evidence at
moments of crisis, were known to be interfering with the Osages,
exciting them by their own marauding to deviltry and mischief of the
worst description.[91] As a
[Footnote 91: A letter from Superintendent W.G. Coffin of date, July,
30, 1861 [Indian Office Special Files, no. 201, _Schools_, C.
1275 of 1861] bears evidence of this as bear also the following
letters, the one, private in character, from Augustus Wattles, the
other, without specific date, from William Brooks:
PRIVATE
MONEKA, KANSAS, May 20, 1861.
MR. DOLE
Dear Sir, A messenger has this moment left me, who came up from the
Osages yesterday--a distance of about forty miles. The gentleman lives
on the line joining the Osage Indians, and has, since my acquaintance
with him about three years.
A short time ago, perhaps three weeks, a number of lawless white men
went into the Nation and stole a number of ponies. The Indians made
chase, had a fight and killed several, reported from three to five,
and retook their ponies.
A company of men is now getting up here and in other counties, to go
and fight the Indians. I am appealed to by the Indians to act as their
friend.
They represent that they are loyal to the U.S. Government and will
fight for their Great Father, at Washington, but must be protected
from bad white men at home. The Government must not think them enemies
when they only fight thieves and robbers.
Rob't B. Mitchell, who was recently appointed Maj. General of this
State by Gov. Robinson, has resigned, and is now raising volunteers to
fight the Indians. He has always been a Democrat in sympathy with the
pro-slavery party, and his enlisting men now to take them away from
the Missouri frontier, when we are daily threatened with an attack
from that State, and union men are fleeing to us for protection from
there, is certainly a very questionable policy. It could operate no
worse against us, if it were gotten up by a traitor to draw our
men off on purpose to give the Missourians a chance when we are
unprepared. (cont.)]
tribe, the Osages were not very dependable at the best of times and
now that they saw confusion all around
[Footnote 91: (cont.) I presume you have it in your power to prevent
any attack on the Indians in Kansas till such time as they can be
treated with. And such order to the Commander of the Western Division
of the U.S. Army would stop further proceedings.
I shall start to-morrow for Council Grove and meet the Kansas Indians
before General Mitchell's force can get there. As the point of attack
is secret, I fear it may be the Osages, for the purpose of creating
a necessity for a treaty with himself by which he can secure a large
quantity of land for himself and followers. He is acquainted with all
the old Democratic schemes of swindling Indians.
The necessity for prompt action on the part of the Indian Department
increases every day. The element of discord in the community here
now, was once, the pro-slavery party. I see their intention to breed
disturbances with the Indians is malicious and selfish. They are
active and unscrupulous, and must be met promptly and decisively.
I hope you will excuse this, as it appears necessary for me to step
a little out of my orders to notify you of current events. I am very
respectfully Your Ob't Ser'vt AUGUSTUS WATTLES, _Special Agent_
[Indian Office Special Files, no. 201.]
GRAND FALLS, NEWTON CO., MO.
COM. INDIAN AFFAIRS
Washington, D.C.
Hon. Sir: Permit me to inform you, by this means, of the efforts that
have been and are now being made in Southern Kansas to arouse both the
"Osages" and "Cherokees" _to rebel_, and bear arms against the
U.S. Government--At a public meeting near the South E. corner of the
"Osage Nation" called by the settlements for the devising of some
means by which to protect themselves from "unlawful characters," Mr.
John Mathis, who resides in the Osage Nation and has an Osage family,
also Mr. "Robert Foster" who lives in the Cherokee Nation and has a
Cherokee family endeavered by public speeches and otherwise to induce
"Osages", "Cherokees", as well as Americans who live on the "Neutral
Lands" to bear arms against the U.S. Government--_aledging that
there was no U.S. Government_. There was 25 men who joined them and
they proceeded to organise a "_Secession Company_" electing as
Capt R.D. Foster and 1st Lieutenant James Patton--This meeting was
held June 4th 1861--at "McGhees Residence"--The peace of this section
of country requires the removal of these men from the Indian country,
or some measures that will restrain them from exciting the Indians in
Southern Kansas.
Yours Respectfully WM BROOKS.
You will understand why you are addressed by a private individual on
this subject instead of the Agent, since A.J. Dorn, the present Indian
Agent, is an avowed "Secessionist" and consequently would favor,
rather than suppress the move. WM BROOKS.
[Ibid., _Southern Superintendency_, B567 of 1861]]
them their most natural inclination was to pay back old scores and
to make an alliance where such alliance could be most profitable to
themselves. The "remnants" of tribes, Senecas, Shawnees, and Quapaws,
associated with them in the agency, Neosho, that is, although not of
evil disposition, were similarly agitated and with good reason.
Rumors of dissensions among the Cherokees, not so very far away, were
naturally having a disquieting effect upon the neighboring but less
highly organized tribes as was also the unrest in Missouri, in the
southwestern counties of which, however, Union sentiment thus far
dominated.[92] Its continuance would undoubtedly turn upon military
success or failure and that, men like Lyon and Lane knew only too
well.
As the days passed, the Cherokee troubles gained in intensity, so
much so that the agent, John Crawford, even then a secessionist
sympathiser, reported that internecine strife might at any hour be
provoked.[93] So confused was everything that in July the people of
southeastern Kansas were generally apprehensive of an attack from the
direction of either Indian Territory or Arkansas.[94] Kansas troops
had been called to Missouri; but, at the same time, Lyon was
complaining that men from the West, where they were greatly needed,
were being called by Scott to Virginia.[95] On August 6 two emergency
calls went forth, one from Frémont for a brigade from California that
could be stationed at El Paso and moved as occasion might require,
either upon San Antonio or into the Indian Territory,[96]
[Footnote 92: Branch to Mix, June 22, 1861, enclosing letter from
Agent Elder, June 15, 1861 [Indian Office Files, _Neosho_, B 547
of 1861].]
[Footnote 93:--Ibid., _Cherokee_, C 1200 of 1861].
[Footnote 94: _Official Records_, vol. iii, 405.]
[Footnote 95:--Ibid., 397, 408.]
[Footnote 96:--Ibid., 428.]
the other from Congressmen John S. Phelps and Francis P. Blair junior,
who addressed Lincoln upon the subject of enlisting Missouri troops
for an invasion of Arkansas in order to ward off any contemplated
attack upon southwestern Missouri and to keep the Indians west of
Arkansas in subjection.[97] On August 10 came the disastrous Federal
defeat at Wilson's Creek. It was immediately subsequent to that event
and in anticipation of a Kansas invasion by Price and McCulloch that
Lane resolved to take position at Fort Scott.[98]
The Battle of Wilson's Creek, lost to the Federals largely because of
Frémont's failure to support Lyon, was an unmitigated disaster in more
than one sense. The death of Lyon, which the battle caused, was of
itself a severe blow to the Union side as represented in Missouri; but
the moral effect of the Federal defeat upon the Indians was equally
worthy of note. It was instantaneous and striking. It rallied the
wavering Cherokees for the Confederacy[99] and their defection was
something that could not be easily counterbalanced and was certainly
not counterbalanced by the almost coincident, cheap, disreputable, and
very general Osage offer, made towards the end of August, of services
to the United States in exchange for flour and whiskey.[100]
The disaster in its effect upon Lane was, however, little short of
exhilarating. It brought him sympathy, understanding, and a fair
measure of support from people who, not until the eleventh hour, had
really comprehended their own danger and it inspired him to redouble
his efforts to organize a brigade that should
[Footnote 97: _Official Records_, vol. iii, 430.]
[Footnote 98:--Ibid., 446.]
[Footnote 99: The Daily Conservative (Leavenworth), October 5, 1861.]
[Footnote 100:--Ibid., August 30, 1861, quoting from the Fort
Scott _Democrat_.]
adequately protect Kansas and recover ground lost. Prior to the
battle, "scarcely a battalion had been recruited for each" of the five
regiments, the Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Kansas, which
he had been empowered by the War Department to raise.[101] It was in
the days of gathering reinforcements, for which he made an earnest
plea on August 29,[102] that he developed a disposition to utilize the
loyal Indians in his undertaking. The Indians, in their turn, were
looking to him for much needed assistance. About a month previous to
the disaster of August 10, Agent Elder had been obliged to make Fort
Scott, for the time being, the Neosho Agency headquarters, everything
being desperately insecure at Crawford's Seminary.[103]
[Footnote 101: Britton, _Civil War on the Border_, vol. i, 122.]
[Footnote 102: _Official Records_, vol. iii, 465.]
[Footnote 103: The following letter, an enclosure of a report from
Branch to Dole, August 14, 1861, gives some slight indication of its
insecurity:
OFFICE OF NEOSHO AGENCY
Fort Scott, July 27, 1861.
Sir--I deem it important to inform the Department of the situation
of this Agency at this time. After entering upon the duties of this
office as per instructions--and attending to all the business that
seemed to require my immediate attention--I repaired to Franklin Co.
Kan. to remove my family to the Agency.
Leaving the Agency in care of James Killebrew Esq the Gov't Farmer for
the Quapaw Nation. Soon after I left I was informed by him that the
Agency had been surrounded by a band of armed men, and instituted an
inquiry for "_that Abolition Superintendent and Agent_." After
various interrogatories and answers they returned in the direction of
Missouri and Arkansas lines from whence they were supposed to
have come. He has since written me and Special Agent Whitney and
Superintendent Coffin told me that it would be very unsafe for me to
stay at that place under the present excited state of public feeling
in that vicinity. I however started with my family on the 6th July and
arrived at Fort Scott on the 9th intending to go direct to the Agency.
Here I learned from Capt Jennison commanding a detachment of Kansas
Militia, who had been scouting in that vicinity, that the country
was full of marauding parties from Gov. Jackson's Camp in S.W. Mo.
I therefore concluded to remain here and watch the course of events
believing as I did the Federal troops (cont.)]