Chapter 2

All that winter Independence was the scene of a bloody warfare. One day early in February Capt. Quantrell and David Pool, Bill Gregg and George Shepherd, George Todd and myself, charged in pairs down three of the streets to the court house, other members of the company coming through other streets. We had eleven hurt, but we got away with ammunition and other supplies that were badly needed. Seven militiamen died that day.

Another charge, at daybreak of Feb. 21, resulted badly. Instead of the one company we expected to find, there were four. Although we killed seventeen, we lost one, young George, who fell so close to the guns of the foe that we had considerable difficulty in getting him away for burial. Then we disbanded for a time. Capt. Quantrell believed that it was harder to trail one man than a company, and every little while the company would break up, to rally again at a moment’s notice.

4. THE TRAP THAT FAILED

In March Quantrell planned to attack Independence. We met at David George’s and went from there toward Independence as far as Little Blue church, where Allen Parmer, who afterward married Susie James, the sister of Frank and Jesse, told the captain that instead of there being 300 Jayhawkers in Independence, there were 600. The odds were too strong, and we swung around to the southwest.

Thirteen soldiers who guarded the bridge at the Big Blue found their number unlucky. The bridge was burned and we dined that day at the home of Alex. Majors, of Russell, Majors & Waddell, the freighters, and rested for the night at Maj. Tale’s house, near New Santa Fe, where there was fighting for sure before morning.

A militia command, 300 strong, came out to capture us, but they did not risk an attack until nearly midnight.

Capt. Quantrell, John Jarrette, and I were sleeping together when the alarm was given, the sentry’s challenge, “Who are you?” followed by a pistol shot.

We were up on the instant.

So stealthy had been their approach that they had cut the sentry off from us before alarming him, and he fled into the timber in a shower of lead.

There was a heavy knock on the outer door, and a deep voice shouted: “Make a light.”

Quantrell, listening within, fired through the panel. The visitor fell.

While we barricaded the windows with bedding, the captain polled his men. “Boys,” he said, “we’re in a tight place. We can’t stay here and I do not mean to surrender. All who want to follow me out can say so; all who prefer to give up without a rush can also say so. I will do the best I can for them.”

Four voted to surrender, and went out to the besieging party, leaving seventeen.

Quantrell, James Little, Hoy, Stephen Shores and myself held the upper story, Jarrette, George Shepherd, Toler and others the lower.

Anxious to see who their prisoners were, the militiamen exposed themselves imprudently, and it cost them six.

Would they permit Major Tate’s family to escape? Yes. They were only too glad, for with the family out, the ell, which was not commanded by our fire, offered a tempting mark for the incendiary.

Hardly had the Tales left than the flames began to climb the ell.

There was another parley. Could we have twenty minutes? Ten? Five?

Back came the answer:

“You have one minute. If at its expiration you have not surrendered, not a single man among you shall escape alive.”

“Thank you,” said I; “catching comes before hanging.”

“Count six then and be d—d to you!” shouted back George Shepherd, who was doing the dickering, and Quantrell said quietly, “Shotguns to the front.”

There were six of these, and behind them came those with revolvers only. Then Quantrell opened the door and leaped out. Close behind him were Jarrette, Shepherd, Toler, Little, Hoy and myself, and behind us the revolvers.

In less time than it takes to tell it, the rush was over. We had lost five, Hoy being knocked down with a musket and taken prisoner, while they had eighteen killed and twenty-nine wounded. We did not stop till we got to the timber, but there was really no pursuit. The audacity of the thing had given the troops a taste of something new.

They kept Hoy at Leavenworth for several months and then hanged him. This was the inevitable end of a “guerrilla” when taken prisoner.

5. VENGEANCE INDEED

Among the Jackson county folks who insisted on their right to shelter their friends was an old man named Blythe.

Col. Peabody at Independence had sent out a scouting party to find me or any one else of the company they could “beat up.” Blythe was not at home when they came but his son, aged twelve, was. They took him to the barn and tried to find out where we were, but the little fellow baffled them until he thought he saw a chance to break through the guard, and started for the house.

He reached it safely, seized a pistol, and made for the woods followed by a hail of bullets. They dropped him in his tracks, but, game to the last, he rolled over as he fell, shot one of his pursuers dead, mortally wounded a second, and badly hurt a third.

They put seventeen bullets in him before he could shoot a fourth time.

A negro servant who had witnessed the seizure of his young master, had fled for the timber, and came upon a party of a dozen of us, including Quantrell and myself. As he quickly told us the story, we made our plans, and ambushed at the “Blue Cut,” a deep pass on the road the soldiers must take back to Independence. The banks are about thirty feet high, and the cut about fifty yards wide.

Not a shot was to be fired until the entire command was in the cut.

Thirty-eight had started to “round up” Cole Younger that morning; seventeen of them lay dead in the cut that night and the rest of them had a lively chase into Independence.

To this day old residents know the Blue Cut as “the slaughter-pen.”

Early in May, 1862, Quantrell’s men were disbanded for a month. Horses were needed, and ammunition. There were plenty of horses in Missouri, but the ammunition presented more of a problem.

Capt. Quantrell, George Todd and myself, attired as Union officers, went to Hamilton, a small town on the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, undetected by the company of the Seventh United States Cavalry in camp there, although we put up at the principal hotel. Todd passed as a major in the Sixth Missouri Cavalry, Quantrell a major in the Ninth, and I a captain in an Illinois regiment. At Hannibal there was a regiment of Federal soldiers. The commander talked very freely with us about Quantrell, Todd, Haller, Younger, Blunt, Pool and other guerrillas of whom he had heard.

While in Hannibal we bought 50,000 revolver caps and such other ammunition as we needed. From there we went to St. Joseph, which was under command of Col. Harrison B. Branch.

“Too many majors traveling together are like too many roses in a bouquet,” suggested Todd. “The other flowers have no show.”

He reduced himself to captain and I to lieutenant.

Our disguise was undiscovered. Col. Branch entertained us at his headquarters most hospitably.

“I hope you may kill a guerrilla with every bullet I have sold you,” said one merchant to me. “I think if ever there was a set of devils let loose, it is Quantrell, Todd, Cole Younger and Dave Pool.”

From St. Joseph we went to Kansas City in a hack, sending Todd into Jackson county with the ammunition. When within three miles of Kansas City the hack was halted by a picket on outpost duty, and while the driver argued with the guard, Quantrell and I slipped out on the other side of the hack and made our way to William Bledsoe’s farm, where we were in friendly hands.

6. IN THE ENEMY’S LINES

Col. Buell, whose garrison of 600 held Independence, had ordered that every male citizen of Jackson county between 18 and 45 years of age should fight against the South.

Col. Upton Hays, who was in Jackson county in July and August, 1862, recruiting a regiment for the Confederate army, decided that it was the time to strike a decisive blow for the dislodging of Buell. In reconnoitering the vicinity he took with him Dick Yager, Boone Muir and myself, all of whom had seen service with Capt. Quantrell.

It was finally decided to make the attack August 11th. Colonel Hays wanted accurate information about the state of things inside town.

“Leave that to me,” said I.

Three days remained before the battle.

Next morning there rode up to the picket line at Independence an old apple-woman, whose gray hair and much of her face was nearly hidden by an old-fashioned and faded sun-bonnet. Spectacles half hid her eyes and a basket on her arm was laden with beets, beans and apples.

The left rein was leather but a rope replaced the right.

“Good morning, grandmother,” bantered the first picket. “Does the rebel crop need any rain out in your country?”

The sergeant at the reserve post seized her bridle, and looking up said:

“Were you younger and prettier, I might kiss you.”

“Were I younger and prettier, I might box your ears for your impudence.”

“Oh, ho! You old she-wolf, what claws you have for scratching!” he retorted, and reached for her hand.

The quick move she made started the horse suddenly, or he might have been surprised to feel that hand.

But the horse was better than apple-women usually ride, and that aroused some suspicion at Col. Buell’s headquarters, so that the ride out was interrupted by a mounted picket who galloped alongside and again her bridle was seized.

The sergeant and eight men of the guard were perhaps thirty paces back.

“What will you have?” asked the apple-woman. “I am but a poor lone woman going peaceably to my home.”

“Didn’t you hear the sergeant call for you, d—n you?” answered the sentinel.

A spurred boot under the ragged skirt pierced the horse’s flank; the hand that came from the apple basket fired the cocked pistol almost before the sentry knew it, and the picket fell dead.

The reserve stood as if stupefied.

That night I gave Quantrell, for Col. Hays, a plan showing the condition of affairs in Independence.

The morning of the 11th the attack was made and Col. Buell, his force shot to pieces, surrendered.

The apple-woman’s expedition had been a success.

7. LONE JACK

It was in August, 1862, nearly a year after the party at Col. Mockbee’s, that I was formally enrolled in the army of the Confederate States of America by Col. Gideon W. Thompson. I was eighteen, and for some little time had been assisting Col. Hays in recruiting a regiment around my old home.

It was within a day or two after the surrender of Buell at Independence that I was elected as first lieutenant in Capt. Jarrette’s company in Col. Upton B. Hays’ regiment, which was a part of the brigade of Gen. Joseph O. Shelby.

We took the oath, perhaps 300 of us, down on Luther Mason’s farm, a few miles from where I now write, where Col. Hays had encamped after Independence.

Millions of boys and men have read with rising hair the terrible “black oath” which was supposed to have been taken by these brave fighters, but of which they never heard, nor I, until I read it in books published long after the war.

When Col. Hays camped on the Cowherd, White, Howard and Younger farms, Quantrell had been left to guard the approaches to Kansas City, and to prevent the escape to that point of news from the scattered Confederate commands which were recruiting in western Missouri. At the same time he was obtaining from the Chicago and St. Louis papers and other sources, information about the northern armies, which was conveyed by couriers to Confederate officers in the south, and he kept concealed along the Missouri river skiffs and ferry boats to enable the Confederate officers, recruiting north of the river, to have free access to the south.

The night that I was enlisted, I was sent by Col. Hays to meet Cols. Cockrell, Coffee, Tracy, Jackman and Hunter, who, with the remnants of regiments that had been shattered in various battles through the south, were headed toward Col. Hays’ command.

It was Col. Hays’ plan for them to join him the fifteenth, and after a day’s rest, the entire command would attack Kansas City, and, among other advantages resulting from victory there, secure possession of Weller’s steam ferry.

Boone Muir and myself met Coffee and the rest below Rose Hill, on Grand river. Col. Cockrell, whose home was in Johnson county, had gone by a different route, hoping to secure new recruits among his neighbors, and, as senior colonel, had directed the rest of the command to encamp the next evening at Lone Jack, a little village in the southeastern portion of Jackson county, so called from a solitary big black jack tree that rose from an open field nearly a mile from any other timber.

At noon of Aug. 15, Muir and I had been in the saddle twenty-four to thirty hours, and I threw myself on the blue grass to sleep.

Col. Hays, however, was still anxious to have the other command join him, he having plenty of forage, and being well equipped with ammunition as the result of the capture of Independence a few days before. Accordingly I was shortly awakened to accompany him to Lone Jack, where he would personally make known the situation to the other colonels.

Meantime, however, Major Emory L. Foster, in command at Lexington, had hurried out to find Quantrell, if possible, and avenge Independence. Foster had nearly 1,000 cavalrymen, and two pieces of Rabb’s Indiana battery that had already made for itself a name for hard fighting. He did not dream of the presence of Cockrell and his command until he stumbled upon them in Lone Jack.

At nightfall, the Indiana battery opened on Lone Jack, and the Confederate commands were cut in two, Coffee retreating to the south, while Cockrell withdrew to the west, and when Col. Hays and I arrived, had his men drawn up in line of battle, while the officers were holding a council in his quarters.

“Come in, Colonel Hays,” exclaimed Col. Cockrell. “We just sent a runner out to look you up. We want to attack Foster and beat him in the morning. He will just be a nice breakfast spell.”

Col. Hays sent me back to bring up his command, but on second thought said:

“No, Lieutenant, I’ll go, too.”

On the way back he asked me what I thought about Foster being a “breakfast spell.”

“I think he’ll be rather tough meat for breakfast,” I replied. “He might be all right for dinner.”

But Cockrell and Foster were neighbors in Johnson county, and Cockrell did not have as good an idea of Foster’s fighting qualities that night as he did twenty-four hours later.

The fight started at daybreak, hit or miss, an accidental gunshot giving Foster’s men the alarm. For five hours it waged, most of the time across the village street, not more than sixty feet wide, and during those five hours every recruit there felt the force of Gen. Sherman’s characterization—“War is hell.”

Jackman, with a party of thirty seasoned men, charged the Indiana guns, and captured them, but Major Foster led a gallant charge against the invaders, and recaptured the pieces. We were out of ammunition, and were helpless, had the fight been pressed.

Riding to the still house where we had left the wagon munitions we had taken a few days before at Independence, I obtained a fresh supply and started for the action on the gallop.

Of that mad ride into the camp I remember little except that I had my horse going at full tilt before I came into the line of fire. Although the enemy was within 150 yards, I was not wounded. They did mark my clothes in one or two places, however.

Major Foster, in a letter to Judge George M. Bennett of Minneapolis, said:

“During the progress of the fight my attention was called to a young Confederate riding in front of the Confederate line, distributing ammunition to the men from what seemed to be a ‘splint basket.’ He rode along under a most galling fire from our side the entire length of the Confederate lines, and when he had at last disappeared, our boys recognized his gallantry in ringing cheers. I was told by some of our men from the western border of the state that they recognized the daring young rider as Cole Younger. About 9:30 a.m., I was shot down. The wounded of both forces were gathered up and were placed in houses. My brother and I, both supposed to be mortally wounded, were in the same bed. About an hour after the Confederates left the field, the ranking officer who took command when I became unconscious, gathered his men together and returned to Lexington. Soon after the Confederates returned. The first man who entered my room was a guerrilla, followed by a dozen or more men who seemed to obey him. He was personally known to me and had been my enemy from before the war. He said he and his men had just shot a lieutenant of a Cass county company whom they found wounded and that he would shoot me and my brother. While he was standing over us, threatening us with his drawn pistol, the young man I had seen distributing ammunition along in front of the Confederate line rushed into the room from the west door and seizing the fellow, thrust him out of the room. Several Confederates followed the young Confederate into the room, and I heard them call him Cole Younger. He (Younger) sent for Col. Cockrell (in command of the Confederate forces) and stated the case to him. He also called the young man Cole Younger and directed him to guard the house, which he did. My brother had with him about $300, and I had about $700. This money and our revolvers were, with the knowledge and approval of Cole Younger, placed in safe hands, and were finally delivered to my mother in Warrensburg, Mo. Cole Younger was then certainly a high type of manhood, and every inch a soldier, who risked his own life to protect that of wounded and disabled enemies. I believe he still retains those qualities and would prove himself as good a citizen as we have among us if set free, and would fight for the Stars and Stripes as fearlessly as he did for the Southern flag. I have never seen him since the battle of Lone Jack. I know much of the conditions and circumstances under which the Youngers were placed after the war, and knowing this, I have great sympathy for them. Many men, now prominent and useful citizens of Missouri, were, like the Youngers, unable to return to their homes until some fortunate accident threw them with men they had known before the war, who had influence enough to make easy their return to peace and usefulness. If this had occurred to the Youngers, they would have had good homes in Missouri.”

It is to Major Foster’s surprise of the command at Lone Jack that Kansas City owes its escape from being the scene of a hard battle August 17, 1862.

Quantrell was not in the fight at Lone Jack at all, but Jarrette and Gregg did come up with some of Quantrell’s men just at the end and were in the chase back toward Lexington.

In proportion to the number of men engaged, Lone Jack was one of the hardest fights of the war. That night there were 136 dead and 550 wounded on the battlefield.

8. A FOUL CRIME

With two big farms in Jackson county, besides money-making stores and a livery stable at Harrisonville, my father at the outbreak of the war was wealthy beyond the average of the people in northwestern Missouri. As a mail contractor, his stables were filled with good horses, and his property was easily worth $100,000, which was much more in those days, in the public esteem, than it is now.

This, perhaps, as much as Walley’s enmity for me, made him the target for the freebooters who infested the Kansas line. In one of Jennison’s first raids, the Younger stable at Harrisonville was raided and $20,000 worth of horses and vehicles taken. The experiment became a habit with the Jayhawkers, and such visits were frequent until the following fall, when the worst of all the indignities heaped upon my family was to be charged against them—the murder of my father.

When the body was discovered, it was taken in charge by Capt. Peabody, who was in command of the militia forces in Kansas City, and when he found $2,000, which father had taken the precaution to conceal in a belt which he wore about him, it was sent home to our family.

It has been charged that my father tried to draw his pistol on a party of soldiers, who suspected me of the murder of one of their comrades and wanted to know my whereabouts. This is false. My father never carried a pistol, to my knowledge, and I have never had any doubt that the band that killed him was led by that same Capt. Walley. Indeed he was suspected at the time, accused of murder, and placed under arrest, but his comrades furnished an alibi, to the satisfaction of the court, and he was released.

He is dead now, and probably he rests more comfortably than he ever did after that night in ’62, for whether he had a conscience or not, he knew that Missouri people had memories, and good ones, too.

But the freebooters were not through.

My sisters were taken prisoners, as were the girls of other families whose sons had gone to join the Confederate army, their captors hoping by this means to frighten the Southern boys into surrender.

After my mother’s home was burned, she took her children and went to Lafayette county. Militiamen followed her, shot at Jim, the oldest of the boys at home, fourteen, and drove him into the brush. Small wonder that he followed his brother as a soldier when he became old enough in 1864!

Despairing of peace south of the Missouri, mother crossed into Clay county, remaining until the War between the States had ended. But not so the war on her. A mob, among whom she recognized some of the men who were pretty definitely known to have murdered my father, broke in on her after she had returned to Jackson county, searched the house for Jim and me, hung John, aged fourteen, to a beam and told him to say his prayers, for he had but a little time to live unless he told where his older brothers were. He defied them and was strung up four times. The fourth time the rope cut deep into the flesh. The boy was unconscious. Brutally hacking his body with knives, they left him for dead. That was early in 1870.

June 2 of that year, before John had recovered from his injuries, mother died.

9. HOW ELKINS ESCAPED

It was along about the first week in October, 1862, that I stopped with a dozen men at the home of Judge Hamilton, on Big Creek, in Cass county. We spent the afternoon there, and just before leaving John Hays, of my command, dashed up with the news that Quantrell was camped only two miles west. He also gave the more important information to me, that some of Captain Parker’s men had arrested Steve Elkins on the charge of being a Union spy, and were taking him to Quantrell’s camp to hang him.

I lost no time in saddling up, and followed by my little detachment, rode hastily away to Quantrell’s camp, for red tape occupied little space in those days, and quick action was necessary if anything was to be done.

I knew Quantrell and his men well and was also aware that there were several Confederate officers in the camp. The moment we reached our destination, I went at once to Captain Charles Harrison, one of the officers, and my warm personal friend, and told him openly of my friendship and esteem for Elkins. He promised to lend me all his aid and influence, and I started out to see Quantrell, after first telling my men to keep their horses saddled, ready for a rescue and retreat in case I failed of a peaceable deliverance.

Quantrell received me courteously and kindly, as he always did, and after a little desultory chat, I carelessly remarked, “I am surprised to find that you have my old friend and teacher, Steve Elkins, in camp as a prisoner.”

"What! Do you know him?" asked Quantrell in astonishment.

I told him that I did, and that he was my school teacher when the war broke out, also that some half a hundred other pupils of Elkins were now fighting in the Southern army.