Chapter IV: Part 4

Jesse James, having pointed out to him with tolerable accuracy the direction of the house, left the road, skirted the timber rapidly, leaped several ravines, floundered over a few marshy places and finally reached his destination without meeting a citizen or encountering an enemy. He would not dismount, but sat upon his horse at the fence and asked that the mistress of the establishment might come out to him. Little by little, and with many gawky protests and many a bashful simper, he told a plausible story of parental _espionage_ and family discipline. He, ostensibly a she, could not have a beau, could not go with the soldiers, could not sit with them late, nor ride with them, nor romp with them. She was tired of it all and wanted a little fun. Would the mistress let her come to her house occasionally and bring some of the neighborhood girls with her, who were in the same predicament? The mistress laughed and was glad. New faces to her were like new coin, and she put forth a hand and patted the merchantable thing upon the knee, and ogled her smiling mouth and girlish features gleefully. As the she-wolf and venturesome lamb separated, the assignation was assured. That night the amorous country girl, accompanied by three of her female companions, was to return, and the mistress, confident of her ability to provide lovers was to make known among the soldiers the attractive acquisition.

It lacked an hour of sunset when Jesse James got back to Gregg; an hour after sunset the Guerrillas, following hard upon the tracks made by the boy spy, rode rapidly on to keep the trysting place. The house was aglow with lights and jubilant with laughter. Drink abounded, and under cover of the clinking glasses, the men kissed the women. Anticipating the orgy of unusual attraction, twelve Federals had been lured out from the garrison and made to believe that barefoot maidens ran wild in the woods and buxom lasses hid for the hunting. No guards were out; no sentinels posted. Jesse James crept close to a window and peered in. The night was chilly and a large wood fire blazed upon a large hearth. All the company were in one room, five women and a dozen men. Scattered about, yet ready for the grasping, the cavalry carbines were in easy reach, and the revolvers handy about the persons. Sampson trusting everything to Delilah, might not have trusted so much if under the old dispensation there had been anything of bushwhacking.

Gregg loved everybody who wore the gray, and what exercised him most was the question just now of attack. Should he demand a surrender? Jesse James, the boy, said no to the veteran. Twelve men inside the house, and the house inside their own lines where reinforcements might be hurried quickly to them, would surely hold their own against eleven outside, if indeed they did not make it worse. The best thing to do was to fire through the windows and kill what could be killed by a carbine volley, then rush through the door and finish, under the cover of the smoke, horror and panic, those who should survive the broadside.

Luckily the women sat in a corner to themselves and close to a large bed fixed to the wall and to the right of the fireplace. On the side of the house the bed was on, two broad windows opened low upon the ground, and between the windows there was a door, not ajar, but not fastened. Gregg, with five men, went to the upper window, and Taylor, with four, took possession of the lower. The women were out of immediate range. The house shook; the glass shivered, the door was hurled backward, there was a hot stifling crash of revolvers; and on the dresses of the women and the white coverlet of the bed great red splotches. Eight out of the twelve fell dead or wounded at the first fire; after the last fire all were dead. It was a spectacle ghastly beyond any ever witnessed by the Guerrillas, because so circumscribed. Piled two deep the dead men lay, one with a glass grasped tightly in his stiffened fingers, and one in his shut hand the picture of a woman scantily clad. How they wept, the poor, painted things, for the slain soldiers, and how they blasphemed; but Gregg tarried not, neither did he make atonement. As they lay there heaped where they fell and piled together, so they lay still when he mounted and rode away.

* * * * *

In the three months preceding the Lawrence massacre, over two hundred citizens were killed and their property burned or stolen. In mid-winter houses were burned by the hundred and whole neighborhoods devastated and laid waste. Aroused as he had never been before, Quantrell meditated a terrible vengeance.

Lawrence Massacre

In the spring of 1863, Quantrell issued a proclamation to the Federal forces of Kansas that if they did not stop burning and robbing houses, killing old men and women, he would in return come to Lawrence at some unexpected time and paint the city blacker than hades and make its streets run with blood.

On Blackwater, in Johnson County, and at the house of Captain Purdee, Quantrell called the Guerrillas together for the Lawrence massacre. Todd, Jarrette, Blunt, Gregg, Trow, Anderson, Yager, Younger, Estes and Holt, all were there, and when the roll was called three hundred and ten answered promptly to their names. Up to the mustering hour Quantrell had probably not let his left hand know what his right hand had intended. Secrecy necessarily was to be the salvation of the expedition, if indeed there was any salvation for it. The rendezvous night was an August night--a blessed, balmy, mid-summer night--just such a night as would be chosen to give force to reflections and permit the secrets of the soul to escape. The sultry summer day had lain swarthily in the sun and panting; the sultry summer winds had whispered nothing of the shadowy woods, nothing of the babble of unseen brooks. Birds spoke goodbye to birds in the tree tops, and the foliage was filled with twilight. Quantrell sat grave and calm in the midst of his chieftains who were grouped about him. Further away where the shadows were, the men massed themselves in silent companies or spoke low to one another, and briefly. Something of a foreboding, occult though it was, and undefinable, made itself manifest. The shadow of a great tragedy was impending.

Without in the least degree minimizing or magnifying the difficulties of the undertaking, Quantrell laid before his officers his plans for attacking Lawrence. For a week a man of the command--a cool, bold, plausible, desperate man--had been in the city--thought it, over it, about it and around it--and he was here in their midst to speak. Would they listen to him?

“Let him speak,” said Todd, sententiously.

Lieutenant Fletcher Taylor came out from the shadow, bowed gravely to the group, and with the brevity of a soldier who knew better how to fight than to talk, laid bare the situation. Disguised as a stock trader, or rather, assuming the role of a speculating man, he had boldly entered Lawrence. Liberal, for he was bountifully supplied with money; keeping open rooms at the Eldridge House, and agreeable in every way and upon every occasion, he had seen all that it was necessary to see, and learned all that could be of any possible advantage to the Guerrillas. The city proper was but weakly garrisoned; the camp beyond the river was not strong; the idea of a raid by Quantrell was honestly derided; the streets were broad and good for charging horsemen, and the hour for the venture was near at hand.

“You have heard the report,” Quantrell said with a deep voice, “but before you decide it is proper that you should know it all. The march to Lawrence is a long one; in every little town there are soldiers; we leave soldiers behind us; we march through soldiers; we attack the town garrisoned by soldiers; we retreat through soldiers; and when we would rest and refit after the exhaustive expedition, we have to do the best we can in the midst of a multitude of soldiers. Come, speak out, somebody. What is it, Anderson?”

“Lawrence or hell, but with one proviso, that we kill every male thing.”

“Todd?”

“Lawrence, if I knew not a man would get back alive.”

“Gregg?”

“Lawrence, it is the home of Jim Lane; the foster mother of the Red Legs; the nurse of the Jayhawkers.”

“Shepherd?”

“Lawrence. I know it of old; ‘niggers’ and white men are just the same there; its a Boston colony and it should be wiped out.”

“Jarrette?”

“Lawrence, by all means. I’ve had my eye on it for a long time. The head devil of all this killing and burning in Jackson County; I vote to fight it with fire--to burn it before we leave it.”

“Dick Maddox?”

“Lawrence; and an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; God understands better than we do the equilibrium of Civil War.”

“Holt?”

“Lawrence, and be quick about it.”

“Yager?”

“Where my house once stood there is a heap of ruins. I haven’t a neighbor that’s got a house--Lawrence and the torch.”

“Blunt?”

“Count me whenever there is killing. Lawrence first and then some other Kansas town; the name is nothing.”

“Have you all voted?”

“All.”

“Then Lawrence it is; saddle up, men!”

Thus was the Lawrence Massacre inaugurated.

Was it justifiable? Is there much of anything that is justifiable in Civil War? Originally, the Jayhawkers in Kansas had been very poor. They coveted the goods of their Missouri neighbors, made wealthy or well-to-do by prosperous years of peace and African slavery. Before they became soldiers they had been brigands, and before they destroyed houses in the name of retaliation they had plundered them at the instance of personal greed. The first Federal officers operating in Kansas; that is to say, those who belonged to the state, were land pirates or pilferers. Lane was a wholesale plunderer; Jennison, in the scaly gradation, stood next to Lane; Anthony next to Jennison; Montgomery next to Anthony; Ransom next to Montgomery, and so on down until it reached to the turn of captains, lieutenants, sergeants, corporals and privates. Stock in herds, droves and multitudes were driven from Missouri into Kansas. Houses gave up their furniture; women, their jewels; children, their wearing apparel; store-rooms, their contents; the land, their crops, and the banks, their deposits. To robbery was added murder; to murder, arson, and to arson depopulation. Is it any wonder, then, that the Missourian whose father was killed should kill in return, whose house was burnt should burn in return, whose property was plundered, should pillage in return, whose life was made miserable, should hunt as a wild beast and rend accordingly? Many such were in Quantrell’s command--many whose lives were blighted; who in a night were made orphans and paupers; who saw the labor and accumulation of years swept away in an hour of wanton destruction; who for no reason on earth save that they were Missourians, were hunted from hiding place to hiding place; who were preyed upon while not a single cow remained or a single shock of grain; who were shot at, bedeviled and proscribed, and who, no matter whether Union or disunion, were permitted to have neither flag nor country.

It was the summer night of August 16, 1863, that the Guerilla column, having at its head its ominous banner, marched west from Purdee’s place on Blackwater. With its simple soldiers, or rather volunteers for the expedition, were Colonels Joseph Holt and Boaz Roberts. Officers of the regular Confederate army, who were in Missouri on recruiting service when the march began, fell into line as much from habit as from inclination.

The first camp was made upon a stream midway between Pleasant Hill and Lone Jack, where the grazing was good and the hiding places excellent. All day Quantrell concealed himself there, getting to saddle just at dark and ordering Todd up from the rear to the advance. Passing Pleasant Hill to the north and marching on rapidly fifteen miles, the second camp was at Harrelson’s, twenty-five miles from the place of starting. At three o’clock in the afternoon of the second day, the route was resumed and followed due west to Aubrey, a pleasant Kansas stream, abounding in grass and timber. Here Quantrell halted until darkness set in, feeding the horses well and permitting the men to cook and eat heartily. At eight o’clock the march began again and continued on throughout the night, in the direction of Lawrence. Three pilots were pressed into service, carried with the command as far as they knew anything of the road or the country, and then shot down remorselessly in the nearest timber.

On the morning of the 21st, Lawrence was in sight. An old man a short distance upon the right of the road was feeding his hogs in the gray dawn, the first person seen to stir about the doomed place. Quantrell sent Cole Younger over to the hog-pen to catechize the industrious old farmer and learn from him what changes had taken place in the situation since Taylor had so thoroughly accomplished his mission. Younger, dressed as a Federal lieutenant, exhausted speedily the old man’s limited stock. Really, but little change had taken place. Across the Kansas river there were probably four hundred soldiers in camp, and on the Lawrence side about seventy-five. As for the rebels, he didn’t suppose there was one nearer than Missouri; certainly none within striking distance of Lawrence.

It was a lovely morning. The green of the fields and the blue of the skies were glad together. Birds sang sweetly. The footsteps of autumn had not yet been heard in the land.

“The camp first,” was the cry which ran through the ranks, and Todd, leading Quantrell’s old company, dashed down, yelling and shooting. Scarcely any resistance was made, as every time they stuck their heads out of a tent it was met with a bullet. Ridden over, shot in their blankets, paralyzed, some of them with terror, they ran frantically about. What could they do against the quickest and deadliest pistol shots along the border?

Bill Anderson, Todd, Jarrette, Little, McGuire, Long, Bill McGuire, Richard Kenney, Allen Parmer, Frank James, Clemmons, Shepherd, Hinton, Blunt, Harrison Trow, and the balance of the older men did the most of the killing. They went for revenge, and they took it. These men killed. They burned. The Federals on the opposite side of the river made scarcely any attempt to come to the rescue of their butchered comrades. A few skirmishes held them in check. It was a day of darkness and woe. Killing ran riot. The torch was applied to every residence; the air was filled with cries for mercy; dead men lay in cellars, upon streets, in parlors where costly furniture was, on velvet carpets. The sun came up and flooded the sky with its radiance and yet the devil’s work was not done. Smoke ascended into the air, and the crackling of blazing rafters and crashing of falling walls filled the air. A true story of the day’s terrible work will never be told. Nobody knows it. It is a story of episodes, tragic--a story full of collossal horrors and unexpected deliverances.

Frank James, just as he was in the act of shooting a soldier in uniform who had been caught in a cellar--his pistol was at the Federal’s head--heard an exceedingly soft and penetrating voice calling out to him, “Do not kill him for my sake. He has eight children who have no mother.” James looked and saw a beautiful girl just turned sixteen, blushing at her boldness and trembling before him. In the presence of so much grace and loveliness her father was disarmed. He remembered his own happy youth, his sister, not older than the girl beside him, his mother who had always instilled into his mind lessons of mercy and charity. He put up his pistol.

“Take him, he is yours. I would not harm a hair of his head for the whole state of Kansas,” said James.

Judge Carpenter was killed in the yard of H. C. Clark, and Colonel Holt, one of the Confederate officers with the expedition, saved Clark. He saved others besides Clark. He had been a Union man doing business in Vernon County, Missouri, as a merchant. Jennison, belonging to old Jim Lane of Lawrence, noted “nigger” thief, robber and house burner, who always ran from the enemy, raided the neighborhood in which he lived, plundered him of his goods, burnt his property, insulted his family, and Holt joined the Confederate army for revenge. The notorious general, James H. Lane, to get whom Quantrell would gladly have left and sacrificed the balance of the victims, made his escape through a corn field, hotly pursued but too speedily mounted to be captured. He swam the river.

There were two camps in Lawrence at the time of the attack, one camp of the “nigger” troops being located at the southern end of Massachusetts street and the other camp of white soldiers were camped in the heart of the city. In this latter camp there were twenty-one infantry, eighteen of whom were killed in the first wild charge.

Cole Younger had dragged from his hiding place in a closet a very large man who had the asthma. In his fright and what with his hurry the poor man could not articulate. Younger’s pistol was against his heart when his old wife cried out, “For God’s sake, do not shoot him. He has not slept in a bed for nine years.” This appeal and the asthma together, caused Younger to roar out, “I never intended to harm a hair of his head.”

Todd and Jarrette, while roaming through Eldridge’s house in search of adventure, came upon a door that was locked. Todd knocked and cried out that the building was in flames and it was time to get away. “Let it burn and be d----d,” a deep voice answered, and then the voices of three men were heard in conversation. Jarrette threw his whole weight against the door, bursting it open, and as he did so Todd fired and killed one of the three, Jarrette another and Todd the third, who were hiding there. They were soldiers who had escaped in the morning’s massacre, and who did not even make an effort to defend themselves. Perhaps the number killed will never be accurately known, but I should say there were at least one thousand killed, and none wounded. The loss of property amounted to the enormous sum of $1,500,000. The total buildings consumed were one hundred and eighty-nine. In the city proper Quantrell had one man killed and two wounded. The man who lost his life was drunk when the firing began. His name was Larkin Skaggs, and the fighting at Lawrence was the first he had ever done as a Guerilla.

Fate favored Quantrell from the time he left Missouri until he returned to Missouri. A man from Johnson County, Kansas, started by an Indian trail to inform the people of Lawrence of his coming. He rode too carelessly and his horse fell and so injured him that he died. A full company of soldiers were situated at Oxford, but they seemed more anxious to keep out of the way than to fight.

As Quantrell retreated from Lawrence, he sat upon the right end, William Gregg with twenty men upon the left. Bill Anderson with twenty men, Gregg took with him Frank James, Arch Clemmons, Little, Morrow, Harrison Trow and others of the most desperate men of the band. Anderson took Hockinsmith, Long, McGuire, Parmer, Hicks, Hi George, Doc Campbell and other equally desperate characters. Each was ordered to burn a swath as they marched back parallel with the main body and to kill in proportion as he burned. Soon on every hand were columns of smoke beginning to rise, and soon was heard the rattle of firing arms from around the consuming houses, and old farmers who had taken up arms were shot down as a holiday frolic. This unforgiving farewell lasted for twelve miles until pressed too heavily in the rear. Quantrell was forced to recall his detachments and look to the safety of his aggregate columns.

Missouriward from Kansas ten miles, Quantrell halted to rest and eat a little. Cole Younger rode out into a cabbage patch and got himself a cabbage head and began to eat it. The lady of the house came out. Younger said:

“This is a very fine cabbage you have.” The lady replied:

“I hope it will choke you to death, you d----d old rebel son-of-a-buck.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” was the reply. “Where is your husband?”

Before any of the men had finished eating, the pickets were drawn into the rear, pressed to the girth. Todd and Jarrette held out as two lines that had not broken fast. Step by step, and firing at everyone in pursuit, at arm’s length, for ten miles further the Federals would not charge. Overwhelming in numbers though they were, and capable of taking at any moment everything in opposition to them, they contented themselves with firing at long range and keeping always at and about a deadly distance from the rear. The Guerillas, relying principally upon dash and revolver, felt the need of a charge. Quantrell halted the whole column for a charge. The detachments on either flank had some time since been gathered up and the men brought face to face with urgent need. Turned about quickly and dressed up in line handsomely as he came trotting up in the rear guard Todd fell into line upon the left and Quantrell gave the word. The Federal pursuit had hardly time to fire a volley before it was rent into shreds and scattered upon the prairie.

Order Number 11, August, 1863

Two days after his safe arrival in Missouri from the Lawrence massacre, Quantrell disbanded the Guerrillas. Fully six thousand Federals were on his track. The savageness of the blow struck there had appalled and infuriated the country. The journalistic pulse of the North rose to fever heat and beat as though to its raging fever there had been added raving insanity. In the delirium of the governing powers impossible things were demanded. Quantrell was to be hunted to the death; he was to be hanged, drawn and quartered; his band was to be annihilated; he was to be fought with fire, persecution, depopulation and wholesale destruction. At the height of the very worst of these terrible paroxysms, Ewing’s famous General Order No. 11 was issued. It required every citizen of Jackson, Cass, Bates and a portion of Vernon counties to abandon their houses and come either into the lines of designated places that were fortified, or within the jurisdiction of said lines. If neither was done, and said citizens remained outside beyond the time limit specified for such removal, they were to be regarded as outlaws and punished accordingly. Innocent and guilty alike felt the rigors of this unprecedented proscription. For the Union man there was the same line of demarkation that was drawn for the secessionist. Age had no immunity; sex was not regarded. The rights of property vanished; predatory bands preyed at will; nothing could be sold; everything had to be abandoned; it was the obliterating of prosperity by counties; it was the depopulation of miles upon miles of fertile territory in a night.

General Ewing had been unjustly censured for the promulgation of such an order and held responsible in many ways for its execution. The genius of a celebrated painter, Captain George C. Bingham of Missouri, had been evoked to give infamy to the vandalism of the dead and voice to the indignation of history over its consummation. Bingham’s picture of burning and plundering houses, of a sky made awful with mingling flames and smoke, of a long line of helpless fugitives going away they knew not whither, of appealing women and gray haired non-combatants, of skeleton chimneys rising like wrathful and accusing things from the wreck of pillaged homesteads, of uniformed things called officers rummaging in trunks and drawers, of colonels loaded with plunder, and captains gaudy in stolen jewelry, will live longer than the memories of the strife, and keep alive horrible memories long after Guerrilla and Jayhawker are well forgotten.

Ewing, however, was a soldier. General Order No. 11 came from district headquarters at St. Louis where Scofield commanded, and through Scofield from Washington City direct. Ewing had neither choice nor discretion in the matter. He was a brave, conscientious, hard fighting officer who did his duty as it came to his hands to do. He could not have made, if he had tried, one hair of the infamous Order white or black. It was a portion of the extraordinary order of things, and Ewing occupied towards it scarcely the attitude of an instrument. He promulgated it but he did not originate it; he gave it voice but he did not give it form and substance; his name had been linked to it as to something that should justly cause shame and reproach, but history in the end will separate the soldier from the man and render unto the garb of the civilian what it has failed to concede to the uniform of the commander. As a citizen of the republic he deplored the cruelty of an enactment which he knew to be monstrous; but as a soldier in the line of duty, the necessity of the situation could not justify a moment’s argument. He had but to obey and to execute, and he did both--and mercifully.

For nearly three weeks Jackson County was a Pandemonium, together with the counties of Cass, Bates, Vernon, Clay and Lafayette. Six thousand Federals were in the saddle, but Quantrell held his grip upon these counties despite everything. Depopulation was going on in a two-fold sense--one by emigration or exodus, and one by the skillful killing of perpetual ambushment and lyings-in-waiting. In detachments of ten, the Guerrillas divided up and fought everywhere. Scattered, they came together as if by instinct. Driven from the flanks of one column, they appeared in the rear of another. They had voices that were as the voices of the night birds. Mysterious horsemen appeared on all the roads. Not a single Federal scouting or exploring party escaped paying toll. Sometimes the aggregate of the day’s dead was simply enormous. Frequently the assailants were never seen. Of a sudden, and rising, as it were, out of the ground, they delivered a deadly blow and rode away in the darkness--invisible.

Fights and Skirmishes During Fall and Winter, 1863–1864

As the Lawrence raid put the whole Federal forces after us, it was a continuous fight from September 1, 1863, to Price’s raid in August, 1864, but Quantrell held his own.

Up to the time of the Lawrence massacre there had been no scalping done; after it a good deal. Abe Haller, brother of Lieutenant William Haller, was wounded and hiding in some timber near Texas Prairie in the eastern edge of Jackson County. Alone, he faced seventy-two men, killing and wounding five of the attacking party, when he fell. His slayers scalped him and cut off his ears. Shortly afterwards Andy Blunt came upon the body, mutilated as it was, and pointed out the marks of the knife to his companions.

“We have something to learn yet, boys,” he said, “and we have learned it.” “Scalp for scalp hereafter!”

The next day Blunt, Long, Clemens, Bill Anderson and McGuire captured four militiamen from a regiment belonging to North Missouri. Blunt scalped each of the four, leaving their ears intact, however. He said he had no use for them.

Fire Prairie

The killing went on. Between Fire Prairie and Napoleon Gregg, Taylor, Nolan, Little and Frank James captured six of Pennick’s militiamen. They held over them a kind of court martial and killed them all. These were not scalped.

Wellington

The next day Richard Kenney, John Farretts, Jesse James and Sim Whitsett attacked a picket post of eight men about a mile from Wellington and annihilated it, cutting them off from the town and running them in a contrary direction. Not a man escaped.

Lexington Road

Two days afterwards Ben Morrow, Pat O’Donald and Frank James ambushed an entire Federal company between Salem church on the Lexington road and Widow Child’s. They fought eighty men for nearly an hour, killing seven and wounding thirteen. O’Donald was wounded three times and James and Morrow each once slightly.

Shawnee Town Road

Todd gathered together thirty of his old men and, getting a volunteer guide who knew every hog path in the country, went around past Kansas City boldly and took up a position on the Shawnee Town road, looking for a train of wagons bringing infantry into Kansas City. There were twenty wagons with twenty soldiers to the wagon, besides the drivers. Here and there between the wagons intervals of fifty yards had been permitted to grow. Todd waited until all the wagons but three had passed by the point of his ambush when he sprang out upon them and poured into them and upon their jammed and crowded freight a deadly rain of bullets. Every shot told. Todd butchered sixty in the three wagons and turned away from his work of death and pursued the balance.

Independence

Cole Younger, while Todd was operating in Kansas, gathered about him ten men and hid himself as close to Independence as it was possible to get without getting into town. His eyes for some time had been fastened upon a large corral. He sent William Hulse out to reconnoiter the position and bring word of the guard stationed to protect it. Younger avoided the pickets and by eleven o’clock had made the distance, halting at the turning off place on the main road and giving his horses in charge of two of the detachment. With the other eight on foot led by Hulse, he crept close to the reserve post and fired point blank into the sleeping guard, some rolled up in their blankets and some resting at ease about the fire. Choosing his way as well as possible by the uncertain light. Younger escaped unpursued with three excellent horses to the man after killing seventeen Federals in the night attack and wounding many more.

Blue Springs Fight in December, 1863

Colonel Pennick’s men came from Independence down to Blue Springs and burned houses, killed old men--too old to be in the service. They numbered two hundred, while Quantrell’s men numbered one hundred. On the road from Blue Springs to Independence they killed John Sanders and a man named Kimberland--both old men--and left them lying in the roadway. If neighbors had not offered their services the hogs would have eaten their bodies. They burned from two to twelve houses and left the families homeless.

The people of the neighborhood sent a runner to Quantrell. We mounted, struck a gallop and did not slow down until we charged the rear and went through them like fire through stubble, killing as we went. After the battle was over we counted seventy-five killed and an equal number wounded. Those who were not hit were so scared that we had no more trouble with them.

On our retreat Quantrell’s password was, “Bat them, boys, over the left eye.”

A good old citizen by the name of Uncle George Rider, hearing the firing and seeing us coming, got off his horse and laid down in the woods close to the road, face up, having a belly on him like a ten-gallon beer keg. Quantrell said to Dick Burns, “You go out and bat him over the left eye.” Burns went out to him and hollered back to Quantrell that “he has been dead a week; see how he is swelled up.” We had lots of fun afterwards about his belly saving him.

Wellington

Four miles east of Wellington stood a large house occupied by some lewd women, notorious for their favors and their enticements. Poole knew the situation well, and suggested to Jarrette that a sufficient detour should be made to encompass the building. Arriving there about eleven o’clock at night, it appeared from the outside as if there were some kind of a frolic. Lights shone from many of the windows, music and the sound of dancing feet could be heard occasionally. Frank James crept to a back door and looked in and counted five women and eleven men. Some of the men were sitting on the laps of the women and some were so close to others that to risk a volley would be murderous. At no time without hitting a woman could they make sure of hitting a man. They waited an hour to gain a favorable opportunity, but waited in vain. Jarrette solved the problem.

He was dressed in Federal uniform, and after placing his men so as to cut off any escape from the house if the occupants once came outside, he rode boldly up to the fence in front of the premises and cried, “Hello!” A soldier came to the door with a gun in his hand and answered him. Jarrette continued, “Who are you that you come to this place in defiance of every order issued for a month? What business have you here tonight? Who gave you permission to come? Where are your passes? Come out here and let me read them.” Thinking Jarrette a provost captain scouting for runaways from the Lexington garrison, ten of the eleven militiamen started confidently for the fence, receiving, when half way, the crushing fire of twenty concealed Guerrillas. In a space four blankets might have covered the ten fell and died, only one of the lot discharging a weapon or making a pretense of resistance.

Frank James stooped to count them, and as he rose he remarked: “There are but ten here. Awhile ago there were eleven.” The building was entered, searched from top to bottom in every nook and corner, but no soldier. The women were questioned, one at a time, separately. They knew only that when the man at the fence called they all went out together.

Frank James, whose passive face had from the first expressed neither curiosity nor doubt, spoke up again and briefly: “Awhile ago I counted but five women, now there are six.” Save four sentinels on duty at either end of the main road, Guerrillas had gathered together in the lower large room of the dwelling house. The fire had burned low, and was fitful and flickering. Where there had been half a dozen candles there were now only two.

“Bring more,” said Poole, “and we will separate this wolf from the ewes.”

“Aye, if we have to strip the lot,” spoke up a coarse voice in the crowd.

“Silence,” cried Jarrette, laying a hand upon a pistol and turning to his men in the shadow, “not a woman shall be touched. We are wild beasts, yes, but we war on wild beasts.”

More light was brought, and with a candle in each hand Poole went from woman to woman, scanning the face of each long and searchingly, and saying when he had finished, “I give it up. If one of the six here is a man, let him keep his dress and his scalp.”

Frank James, just behind Poole, had inspected each countenance also as the candles passed before it, and when Poole had done speaking, he laid a finger upon a woman’s shoulder and spoke as one having authority: “This is the man. If I miss my reckoning, shoot me dead.”

The marvelous nerve, which up to this time had stood with the militiaman as a shield and a defense, deserted him when the extremity came, and he turned ghastly white, trembled to his feet, and fell, sobbing and praying on his knees. Horrified by the slaughter in the yard, and afraid to rush from the house lest he be shot down also, he hurriedly put on the garments of one of the women, composed his features as best he could, and waited in suspense the departure of the Guerrillas. Almost a boy, his smooth face was fresher and fairer than the face of any real woman there. His hair, worn naturally long and inclined to be brown, was thick and fine. The dress hid his feet, or the boots would have betrayed him at the start. Not knowing that an observation had been made before the firing, and the number accurately taken of both men and women, he hoped to brave it through and laugh afterwards and tell to his messmates how near death had passed by him and did not stop. The reaction, however, upon discovery, was pitiful. He was too young to die, he pleaded. He had never harmed a human being in his life. If he was spared he would abandon the army and throw away his gun. As he prayed he wept, but Jarrette abated further abasement of his manhood.

“He is yours, James,” he said, “and fairly yours. When he changed color ever so little under Poole’s inspection you saw it and no other man saw it, and he belongs to you. Take him.” Property in human flesh was often disposed of in this way.

“Come,” said Frank James, lifting the young Federal up to his feet with his left hand and drawing his revolver with his right; “come outside, it is not far to go.”

Scarcely able to stand, yet unresisting, the militiaman followed the Guerrilla--the lamb following the tiger. As they went by the ghastly heap, all ragged and intangible in the uncertain light, the one shuddered and the other was glad. At the fence the poor prisoner was so weak he could scarcely climb it. Beyond the fence was the road and down this road a few hundred yards towards Lexington Frank James led his victim. Under the shadows of a huge tree he halted. It was quite dark there. Only the good God could see what was done; the leaves shut the stars out.

“Do not kill me for my mother’s sake,” came from the pinched lips of the poor victim, “for I have no one else to pray for me. Spare me just this once.”

“You are free,” said James, “go,” and as he spoke he pointed in the direction of Lexington.

“Free? You do not kill me? You tell me go? Great God, am I sleeping or awake!” and the man’s teeth chattered and he shook as if in a fit of ague.

“Yes, go and go quickly; you are past the guards, past all danger; you belong to me and I give you your life. =Go!=”

At that moment Frank James lifted his pistol in the air and fired. When he returned to the house Jarrette, who had heard the pistol shot, rallied him.

“Yes,” he said, “it was soon over. Boys and babies are not hard to kill.” James had just taken the trouble to save the life of a Federal soldier because he had appealed to him in the name of his mother.

Jarrette continued on his raid. South of Lexington six miles he came suddenly upon nine Federals in a school house, sheltered against a heavy rain that was falling. After shooting the nine and appropriating the house, he propped each corpse up to a desk, put a book before it and wrote upon the blackboard fixed against the wall: “John Jarrette and David Poole taught this school today for one hour. We found the pupils all loyal and we left them as we found them.”

Again in the German settlement a company of militia were engaged and cut to pieces. Near Dover five militiamen from Carroll County were caught encamped at Tebo bridge and shot. Near Waverly ten men at odd times were picked up and put out of the way. And on the return march to Jackson County no less than forty-three straggling Federals, in squads of from three to nine, were either surprised or overtaken and executed without trial or discussion.

The Grinter Fight

A Dutch colonel, with his company of men, one day came into Piser’s saloon in Independence, Mo., and got to drinking pretty freely and said to Piser, the saloon keeper:

“Dose you’se knows where dot Quantrell, dot kill-devil, iss? Gife us another drink. We are going out and get dot Quantrells today, brings his scalps in on ours vidle bits.”

Piser, a friend of both Federals and Confederates, pleaded with him to leave the job alone. The Dutch colonel wore a pair of earrings as big as a ring in a bull’s nose.

“Give us another drinks,” the Dutch colonel said. “Ills tells youse we are going after Quantrells, and ven I finds him I is going to says, ‘Haltz!’ and ven I says ‘haltz’ dot means him stops a little viles.”

So they took the Independence and Harrisonville road and found Quantrell camped close to old man Grinter’s and as usual always ready for any surprise, for he had been surprised so much. When the Dutch colonel and his company came in sight, Quantrell ordered his men to mount and charge, which they did, and when the smoke cleared away only two remained to tell the story. They were a couple hundred yards away sitting on their horses cursing us, calling us all kinds of d----d “secesh,” telling us to come on. I said to Sim Whitsett, “Let’s give them a little chase. They seem to be so brave.” We took after them but they would not stand. They broke and ran. We ran them for a quarter of a mile down the big road. One fell off his horse dead, the other one jumped off and ran into old man Grinter’s house. Mrs. Grinter was in the yard. He ran to her and said, “Hide me.” She put him under a bee gum. Sim and I stopped but never could find him. Sim does not to this day like the Grinter name. Sim said, “I got the earring, but he is the lad.” He afterwards gave them to a girl on Texas Prairie, Missouri. Poor old Dutchman. He lost his life with all his men but one.

The Centralia Massacre

In history, this is called a battle of massacre, but there never was a fight during the Civil War that was fought any more fairly than this battle was fought.

Along about September, 1864, at Paris, in Monroe County, there had been a Federal garrison three hundred strong, under the command of a Major Johnson. These soldiers, on the watch for Anderson, had been busy in scouting expeditions and had come down as near to Centralia as Sturgeon.

After Anderson had done all the devilment that he could lay his hands to in Centralia and had retired again to the Singleton camp, Major Johnson came into the pillaged town, swearing all kind of fearful and frightful things.

At the head of his column a black flag was carried. So also was there one at the head of Todd’s column. In Johnson’s ranks the Stars and Stripes for this day had been laid aside. In the ranks of the Guerrillas the Stars and Stripes flew fair and free, as if there had been the intention to add to the desperation of the sable banner the gracefulness and abandon of legitimate war.

The Union citizens of Centralia, knowing Anderson only in his transactions, besought Johnson to beware of him. He was no match for Anderson. It was useless to sacrifice both himself and his men. Anderson had not retreated; he was in ambush somewhere about the prairie. He would swoop down like an eagle; he would smite and spare not. Johnson was as brave as the best of them, but he did not know what he was doing. He had never in his life fought Guerrillas--such Guerrillas as were now to meet him.

He listened patiently to the warnings that were well meant, and he put away firmly the hands that were lifted to stay his horse. He pointed gleefully to his black flag, and boasted that quarter should neither be given nor asked. He had come to carry back with him the body of Bill Anderson, and that body he would have, dead or alive.

Fate, however, had not yet entirely turned its face away from the Federal officer. As he rode out from the town at the head of his column a young Union girl, described as very fair and beautiful, rushed up to Major Johnson and halted him. She spoke as one inspired. She declared that a presentiment had come to her, and that if he led his men that day against Bill Anderson, she felt and knew that but few of them would return alive. The girl almost knelt in the dust as she besought the leader, but to no avail.

Johnson’s blood was all on fire, and he would march and fight, no matter whether death waited for him one mile off, or one hundred miles off. He not only carried a black flag himself, and swore to give no quarter, but he declared on his return that he would devastate the country and leave of the habitations of the southern men not one stone upon another. He was greatly enraged towards the last. He cursed the people as “damned secesh,” and swore that they were in league with the murderers and robbers. Extermination, in fact, was what they all needed, and if fortune favored him in the fight, it was extermination that all should have. Fortune did not favor him.

Johnson rode east of south, probably three miles. The scouts who went to Singleton’s barn, where Anderson camped, came back to say that the Guerrillas had been there, had fed there, had rested there, and had gone down into the timber beyond to hide themselves. It was now about four o’clock in the afternoon.

Back from the barn, a long, high ridge lifted itself up from the undulating level of the more regular country and broke the vision southward. Beyond this ridge a wide, smooth prairie stretched itself out, and still beyond this prairie, and further to the south, was the timber in which the scouts said Bill Anderson was hiding.

As Johnson rode towards the ridge, still distant from it a mile or so, ten men anticipated him by coming up fair to view, and in skirmishing order. The leader of this little band, Captain John Thrailkill, had picked for the occasion David and John Poole, Frank and Jesse James, Tuck Hill, Peyton Long, Ben Morrow, James Younger, E. P. DeHart, Ed Greenwood and Harrison Trow. Next to Thrailkill rode Jesse James, and next to Jesse, Frank. Johnson had need to beware of what might be before him in the unknown when such giants as these began to show themselves.

The Guerrillas numbered, all told, exactly two hundred and sixty-two. In Anderson’s company there were sixty-one men, in George Todd’s forty-eight, in Poole’s forty-nine, in Thomas Todd’s fifty-four, and in Thrailkill’s fifty--two hundred and sixty-two against three hundred.

As Thrailkill went forward to skirmish with the advancing enemy, Todd came out of the timber where he had been hiding, and formed a line of battle in an old field in front of it. Still further to the front a sloping hill, half a mile away, arose between Johnson and the Guerillas. Todd rode to the crest of this, pushing Thrailkill well forward into the prairie beyond, and took his position there. When he lifted his hat and waved it the whole force was to move rapidly on. Anderson held the right, George Todd joined to Anderson, Poole to George Todd, Thomas Todd to Poole, and Thrailkill to Thomas Todd--and thus were the ranks arrayed.

The ten skirmishers quickly surmounted the hill and disappeared. Todd, as a carved statue, stood his horse upon its summit. Johnson moved right onward. Some shots at long range were fired and some bullets from the muskets of the Federals reached to and beyond the ridge where Todd watched, Peyton Long by his side. From a column of fours Johnson’s men galloped at once into line of battle, right in front, and marched so, pressing up well and calmly.

The advanced Guerillas opened fire briskly at last, and the skirmishing grew suddenly hot. Thrailkill, however, knew his business too well to tarry long at such work, and fell back towards the ridge.

As this movement was being executed, Johnson’s men raised a shout and dashed forward together and in a compact mass order formation, ranks all gone. This looked bad. Such sudden exultation over a skirmish wherein none were killed exhibited nervousness. Such a spontaneous giving way of the body, even beyond the will of their commander, should have manifested neither surprise nor delight and looked ominous for discipline.

Thrailkill formed again when he reached Todd’s line of battle, and Johnson rearranged his ranks and went towards the slope at a brisk walk. Some upon the right broke into a trot, but he halted them, cursed them, and bade them look better to their line.

Up the hill’s crest, however, a column of men suddenly rode into view, halted, dismounted and seemed to be busy or confused about something.

Inexperienced, Johnson is declared to have said to his adjutant: “They will fight on foot--what does that mean?” It meant that the men were tightening their saddle girths, putting fresh caps on their revolvers, looking well to bridle reins and bridle bits, and preparing for a charge that would have about it the fury of a whirlwind. By and by the Guerrillas were mounted again. From a column they transformed themselves into a line two deep and with a double interval between all files. At a slow walk they moved over the crest towards Major Johnson, now advancing at a walk that was more brisk.

Perhaps it was now five o’clock. The September sun was low in the west, not red nor angry, but an Indian summer sun, full yet of generous warmth and grateful beaming. The crisp grass crinkled under foot. A distance of five hundred yards separated the two lines. Not a shot had been fired. Todd showed a naked front, bare of skirmishers and stripped for a fight that he knew would be murderous to the Federals. And why should they not stand? The black flag waved alike over each, and from the lips of the leaders of each there had been all that day only threats of extermination and death.

Johnson halted his men and rode along his front speaking a few calm and collected words. They could not be heard in Todd’s ranks, but they might have been divined. Most battle speeches are the same. They abound in good advice. They are generally full of such sentences as this: “Aim low, keep cool, fire when you get loaded. Let the wounded lie till the fight is over.”

But could it be possible that Johnson meant to receive the charge of the Guerrillas at a halt! What cavalry books had he read? Who had taught him such ruinous and suicidal tactics? And yet, monstrous as the resolution was in a military sense, it had actually been made, and Johnson called out loud enough to be heard by the opposing force: “Come on, we are ready for the fight!”

The challenge was accepted. The Guerillas gathered themselves together as if by a sudden impulse, and took the bridle reins between their teeth. In the hands of each man there was a deadly revolver. There were carbines, too, and yet they had never been unslung. The sun was not high, and there was great need to finish quickly whatever had need to be done. Riding the best and fastest horses in Missouri, George Shepherd, Oll Shepherd, Frank Shepherd, Frank Gregg, Morrow, McGuire, Allen Parmer, Hence and Lafe Privin, James Younger, Press Webb, Babe Hudspeth, Dick Burnes, Ambrose and Thomas Maxwell, Richard Kinney, Si and Ike Flannery, Jesse and Frank James, David Poole; John Poole, Ed Greenwood, Al Scott, Frank Gray, George Maddox, Dick Maddox, De Hart, Jeff Emery, Bill Anderson, Tuck Hill, James Cummings, John Rupe, Silas King, James Corum, Moses Huffaker, Ben Broomfield, Peyton Long, Jack Southerland, William Reynolds, William and Charles Stewart, Bud Pence, Nat Tigue, Gooly Robertson, Hiram Guess, Buster Parr, William Gaw, Chat Rennick, Henry Porter, Arch and Henry Clements, Jesse Hamlet, John Thrailkill, Si Gordon, George Todd, Thomas Todd, William and Hugh Archie, Plunk Murray, Ling Litten, Joshua Esters, Sam Wade, Creth Creek, Theodore Castle, John Chatman and three score men of other unnamed heroes struck fast the Federal ranks as if the rush was a rush of tigers. Frank James, riding a splendid race mare, led by half a length, then Arch Clements, then Ben Morrow, then Peyton Long and then Harrison Trow.