While I was on the Pacific slope, April 8, 1865, to be exact, the state of
Missouri adopted what is known to the disgrace of its author as the Drake
constitution. Confederate soldiers and sympathizers were prohibited from
practicing any profession, preaching the gospel, acting as deacon in a
church, or doing various other things, under penalty of a fine not less
than $500 or imprisonment in the county jail not less than six months.
Section 4 of Article 11 gave amnesty to union soldiers for their acts
after Jan. 1, 1861, but held Confederates responsible for acts done either
as soldiers or citizens, and Section 12 provided for the indictment, trial
and punishment of persons accused of crime in counties other than the one
where the offense was committed.
The result of this was that Missourians were largely barred by law from
holding office and the state was overrun with “carpetbag” office-holders,
many of whom came from Kansas, and during the war had been freebooters and
bushwhackers up and down the Kansas border.
Organizing a posse from men like themselves, sheriffs or others pretending
to be sheriffs would take their mobs, rout men out of their beds at night
under service of writs, on which the only return ever made was a pistol
shot somewhere in the darkness, maybe in the victim’s dooryard, perhaps in
some lonely country road.
Visiting for a time with my uncle on the Pacific slope, I returned to
Jackson county in the fall of 1865 to pick up the scattered ends of a
ruined family fortune. I was 21, and no man of my age in Missouri,
perhaps, had better prospects, if I had been unmolested. Mother had been
driven to a refuge in a cabin on one of our farms, my brother Jim had been
away during the last few months of the war fighting in the army, and had
been taken prisoner in Quantrell’s last fight at Wakefield’s house near
Smiley, Ky. He was taken to the military prison at Alton, Ill., and was
released in the fall of 1865, coming home within a few days of my return.
[Illustration: Jim Younger]