“Lawrence,” he relied. “It is the home of Jim Lane; the nurse of
Jayhawkers.”
“Jarrette?”
“Lawrence, by all means,” my brother-in-law answered. “It is the head
devil of the killing and burning in Jackson county. I vote to fight it
and with fire burn it before we leave.”
Shepherd, Dick Maddox, so on, Quantrell called the roll.
“Have you all voted?” shouted Quantrell.
There was no word.
“Then Lawrence it is; saddle up.”
We reached Lawrence the morning of the 21st. Quantrell sent me to quiz an
old farmer who was feeding his hogs as to whether there had been any
material changes in Lawrence since Lieut. Taylor had been there. He
thought there were 75 soldiers in Lawrence; there were really 200.
Four abreast, the column dashed into the town with the cry:
“The camp first!”
It was a day of butchery. Bill Anderson claimed to have killed fourteen
and the count was allowed. But it is not true that women were killed.
One negro woman leaned out of a window and shouted:
“You—of—.”
She toppled out dead before it was seen she was a woman.
The death list that day is variously estimated at from 143 to 216 and the
property loss by the firing of the town, the sacking of the bank, and the
rest, at $1,500.000.
Maj. John N. Edwards, in his _Noted Guerrillas,_ says:
“Cole Younger saved at least a dozen lives this day. Indeed, he killed
none save in open and manly battle. At one house he captured five
citizens over whom he put a guard and at another three whom he defended
and protected. The notorious Gen. James H. Lane, to get whom Quantrell
would gladly have left and sacrificed all the balance of the victims, made
his escape through a corn-field, hotly pursued but too splendidly mounted
to be captured.”
My second lieutenant, Lon Railey, and a detachment gave Jim Lane a hot
chase that day but in vain.
When I joined Brother-in-law Jarrette’s company, he said:
“Cole, your mother and your sister told me to take care of you.”
That day it was reversed. Coming out of Lawrence his horse was shot under
him. He took the saddle off and tried to put it on a mustang that one of
the boys was leading. Some of the boys say he had $8,000 in the saddle
bags for the benefit of the widows and orphans of Missouri, but whether
that is true or not I have no knowledge. While he was trying to saddle
the mustang, he was nearly surrounded by the enemy. I dashed back and
made him get up behind me. The saddle was left for the Kansas men.
One of the treasures that we did bring out of Lawrence that day, however,
was Jim Lane’s “black flag,” with the inscription “Presented to Gen. James
H. Lane by the ladies of Leavenworth”.
That is the only black flag that I knew anything about in connection with
the Lawrence raid.
Lawrence was followed by a feverish demand from the North for vengeance.
Quantrell was to be hanged, drawn and quartered, his band annihilated;
nothing was too terrible for his punishment.
Four days after the raid, Gen. Thomas Ewing at St. Louis issued his
celebrated General Order No. 11. This required that all persons living in
Jackson, Cass and Bates counties, except one township, or within one mile
of a military post, should remove within fifteen days. Those establishing
their loyalty were permitted to go within the lines of any military post,
or to Kansas, but all others were to remove without the bounds of the
military district. All grain and hay in the proscribed district was to be
turned into the military post before Sept. 9, and any grain or hay not so
turned in was to be destroyed.
It was the depopulation of western Missouri. Any citizen not within the
limits of the military post after Sept. 9 was regarded as an outlaw.
Pursued by 6,000 soldiers, the Confederates in that vicinity must
ultimately rejoin their army farther south, but they harassed their
pursuers for weeks in little bands rarely exceeding ten.
The horrors of guerrilla warfare before the raid at Lawrence, were
eclipsed after it. Scalping, for the first time, was resorted to.
Andy Blunt found Ab. Haller’s body, so mutilated, in the woods near Texas
Prairie on the eastern edge of Jackson county.
“We had something to learn yet,” said Blunt to his companions, “and we
have learned it. Scalp for scalp hereafter.”
Among the brave fighters who were participants in the fight at Lawrence
were Tom Maupin, Dick Yager, Payne Jones, Frank Shepherd, Harrison Trow,
Dick Burns, Andy McGuire and Ben Broomfield.