THE BRANDENBURG, KY., TRAGEDY.
Frank James went down to Wakefield's house, where the noted
Guerrilla chieftain, Quantrell, lay wounded unto death. Had the
terrible scenes of the hard, cruel Guerrilla warfare through which
he had passed, obliterated from the breast of Frank James every
tender emotion? It appeared not, when he bent over the white face
of the wounded chief with its traces of suffering and anguish. He
shed tears like rain. He loved his leader, and did not hesitate
to manifest that regard. Knowing that the hand of death was upon
him, Quantrell advised his disheartened followers to accept Henry
Porter's leadership and surrender themselves to the Federal
authorities. It might have been because their dying commander
desired it, that such men as Frank James and his companions so
readily consented to lay down the weapons of war. At any rate, the
formal submission of the Guerrillas was made.
In Missouri, the terrible warfare which had been waged had left
scars wide and deep and bloody, and they were yet recent when the
banners of the contending armies were furled. At any rate, it so
appeared to Frank James, and he did not return at once to the State
of his nativity. The part he had played had been a conspicuous
one, and, on account of Centralia, he was on the list of the
proscribed, and when the war ended, so far as actual hostilities
were concerned, it had not ended, so far as Frank James was
interested, because he was not restored to the peaceful pursuits
which he had abandoned when first the war cry arose in the land. He
still lingered in Kentucky.
The conduct of Frank James for some time after the surrender
indicated a desire on his part to become once more a quiet,
peaceable citizen. He was extremely circumspect in behavior, and
demeaned himself in a most unobtrusive way. Such was the promise
of the new life after the years of bitter strife in the late
Guerrilla. But he was not proof against the assaults of passion.
One day the old flame burst out anew with consuming fury. Frank had
started away from the State and stopped at the town of Brandenburg.
It was several months after the remnants of the desperate band
which Quantrell led into Kentucky had surrendered to the Federal
authorities. But the country was still in an unsettled condition.
Bad men who had found occupation in hovering about the verge of
battle and plundering the ghastly victims of war ere the last
feeble breath had departed from their pale lips, were now idle
and had become wandering thugs in the highways of the land. Horse
thieves and bestial monsters were to be found prowling about in
nearly every community, and more especially in the border States.
A large number of people, and those, too, who had served in the
Confederate, as well as those who had been soldiers in the Union
armies, looked upon the men who had been with Quantrell, and Mundy,
Magruder and Marion, Anderson, Farris, Hickman and other noted
Guerrillas, with suspicion. Many persons looked upon them as men of
evil antecedents--as thieves.
Horse stealing was carried on at a lively rate all along the
border. Kansas, Missouri and Kentucky were particularly afflicted
for many months after the surrender by the presence of these
enemies of the farming and stock-raising communities.
Just about the time Frank James was passing through from Nelson
county to Brandenburg, in Meade county, on the Ohio river, on his
way to Missouri, a number of horses were stolen in Larue county.
A posse went in pursuit of the thieves. They traced them to
Brandenburg. There they found Frank James. There were four of them
when they came up with James, and he was alone, sitting in the
office of a hotel. By some means they induced him to come out, and
then they told him he might consider himself their prisoner on a
charge of horse stealing in Larue county.
"By G--d! I consider no such proposition," exclaimed Frank James,
as he drew a pistol and commenced firing. In less time than it
requires to state the fact, two of the posse lay extended in the
embrace of death, and a third was down and writhing in agony. But
the fourth man fired a shot into Frank's left hip, and then ran
away.
The wounded desperado was immediately surrounded by an excited
throng. The ball had taken effect at the point of his hip, and the
wound produced was not only painful but dangerous. Yet the superb
nerve of the man sustained him in the midst of an appalling crisis.
A perfect storm of excitement was raging in the town. Threats
loud and terrible were made, and Frank James coolly presented his
pistols as he stood leaning against a post and ordered the excited
crowd to stand back, and they obeyed him.
Somehow it has always happened that the Jameses never wanted for
friends wherever they have wandered. It was so on this occasion.
Though the great majority of the people of Brandenburg thirsted for
the blood of the slayer of two men in their midst, yet that grim
young man, though wounded and suffering, had friends at that town,
and in the midst of the excitement, these came to his assistance,
and he was borne away to a secure place, where the populace could
not tell, and nursed by tender hands prompted by affectionate
hearts. Attended by a scientific surgeon, the ghastly wound which
had brought him to the very brink of the abyss of death, began to
heal, and in a few weeks the surgeon who had attended the hidden
patient was able to report that he would surely live and might
ultimately recover entirely from the dreadful wound.
When Frank had gained some strength, and it was deemed safe to
remove him, in a quiet and secret manner he was conveyed in a
close vehicle to the house of a staunch friend and relative in
Nelson county, where he remained during many months, suffering
excruciating pain on account of the horrible wound. He did not
entirely recover from the effects of the wound for several years.