Chapter 3

“We all care for him very deeply,” I told Quantrell, and then asked what charges were preferred against him. He explained that Elkins had not been arrested on his orders, but by some of Parker’s men, who were in vicious humor because of their leader’s recent death. They had told Quantrell that Elkins had joined the Union forces at Kansas City, and was now in Cass county as a spy.

I jumped to my feet, and said that the men that made the charges lied, and that I stood ready to ram the lie down their throats with a pistol point. Quantrell laughed, and chided me about letting my hot blood get the better of cold judgment. I insisted, however, and told him further that Elkins’ father and brother were Southern soldiers, and that Steve was a non-combatant, staying at home to care for his mother, but that I was in no sense a non-combatant, and would stand as his champion in any fight.

Quantrell finally looked at his watch, and then remarked: “I will be on the move in fifteen minutes. I will release Elkins, since you seem so excited about it, and will leave him in your hands. Be careful, for Parker’s men are rather bitter against him.”

Happy at heart, I dashed away to see Elkins, with whom I had only passed a few words and a hand-shake to cheer him up. He knew me, however, and realized that I would save him or die in the attempt, for from a boy it was my reputation that I never deserted a friend.

When I joined him again, several of Parker’s men were standing around in the crowd, and as I shook hands with Elkins and told him of his freedom, I added, “If any damned hound makes further false charges against you, it’s me he’s got to settle with, and that at the pistol point.”

I made that talk as a sort of bluff, for a bluff is often as good as a fight if it’s properly backed up. As Quantrell and his men rode away in the direction of Dave Daily’s neighborhood, I told Elkins to hit out West until he came to the Kansas City and Harrisonville road, and then, under cover of night, he could go either way. I shook his hand goodbye, slapped him on the shoulder, and have never seen him since.

I followed Quantrell’s men for half a mile, fearing that some stragglers might return to take a quiet shot at Elkins, and then stopped for something to eat, and fed our horses.

At the time that I defended Elkins before Quantrell, I knew that Steve’s sympathies were with the North, and had heard that he had joined the Federal army. But it mattered nothing to me—he was my friend.

10. A PRICE ON MY HEAD

When Col. Hays went south in the fall to join Shelby, Capt. Jarrette went with as many of his company as were able to travel and the wounded were left with me in Jackson county.

Missouri militia recognized no red cross, and we were unable for that reason to shelter our men in farm-houses, but built dug-outs in the hills, the roofs covered with earth for concealment.

All that winter we lay in the hollows of Jackson county, while the militia sought to locate the improvised hospitals.

It was a winter of battles too numerous to be told here, and it was a winter, too, that laid a price upon my head.

Capt. Quantrell and his men had raided Olathe and Shawnee-town, and among the killed at Paola on the way out from Olathe was a man named Judy, whose father had formerly lived in Cass county, but had gone to Kansas as a refugee. Judy, the father, returned to Cass county after the war as the appointive sheriff.

It was a matter of common knowledge to the guerillas, at least that young Judy had been killed by Dick Maddox and Joe Hall, and that as a matter of fact at the time of the fight I was miles away at Austin, Mo. But Judy had secured my indictment in Kansas on the charge of killing his son, and threatened me with arrest by a posse so that from 1863 to 1903 I was never in Cass county except as a hunted man. Years afterward this killing of Judy turned up to shut me out of Missouri.

Frequent meetings with the militia were unavoidable during the winter and there was fight after fight. Clashes were almost daily, but few of them involved any large number of men.

George Todd and Albert Cunningham, who were also caring for squads of soldiers in our neighborhood, and I made an expedition early in the winter across the Kansas line near New Santa Fe, where our party of 30 met 62 militiamen. Todd led the charge. With a yell and a rush, every man with a revolver in each hand, they gave the militia a volley at a hundred yards, which was returned, but no men could stand in the face of a rush like that and the militia fell back. In their retreat they were reinforced by 150 more and returned to the attack, driving Todd and his comrades before them. With six men I was holding the rear in the timber when a detachment of 52 ran down upon us. It was a desperate fight, and every man in it was wounded more or less. John McDowell’s horse was killed under him and he, wounded, called to me for help.

Packing him up behind me, we returned to our camp in safety.

This was the McDowell who less than three months later betrayed one of our camps to the militia in Independence and brought down upon us a midwinter raid.

Todd had his camp at Red Grenshaw’s, Cunningham was on the Little Blue, and mine was near Martin O. Jones’ farm, eight miles south of Independence.

Todd’s spirit of adventure, with my hope to avenge my father’s murder, combined in a Christmas adventure which has been misrepresented by other writers.

Todd said he knew some of the band who had killed father were in Kansas City, and Christmas day six of us went in to look them up.

Leaving Zach Traber with our horses just beyond the outposts, the rest of us hunted them until it must have been nearly midnight. We were in a saloon on Main street. I had called for a cigar, and glancing around, saw that we had been recognized by a trooper who had been playing cards. He reached for his pistol, but he never pulled it.

I do not know how many were killed that night. They chased us well out of town and there was a fight at the picket post on the Independence road.

Col. Penick, in command at Independence, hearing of the Kansas City adventure, put a price of $1,000 on my head and other figures on those of my comrades.

It was to get this blood money that six weeks later, Feb. 9, the militia drove my mother out of her house and made her burn it before their eyes.

I was a hunted man.

11. BETRAYED

The day after they burned my mother out of her home they made another trial for the $1,000 reward, and this time they had a better prospect of success, for they had with them the traitor, McDowell, whom I had carried out on my horse in the fight at New Santa Fe a few weeks before. McDowell said he wanted to go home to see his wife and assure her he was all right, but he did not go near her. Instead he hurried into Independence and that evening the militia came out, eighty strong, to take us prisoners. Even they did not trust McDowell, for he, closely guarded, was kept in front.

Forty of them had come within twenty yards of us on the south when my horse warned me, and I called out: “Is that you Todd?”

“Don’t mind us; we’re friends,” came the answer, but I saw they were not, and the lieutenant in command fell at the first fire. The boys swarmed out of the dug-outs, and the fighting was hot.

Retreat to the north was cut off by the other forty and they had us between them. We made for the west, firing as we went, and the soldiers fell right and left. I stayed by Joe Hardin till they dropped him in his tracks, and fought fifteen of the militia while Otho Hinton stopped to get his heavy boots off. Tom Talley, too, had one boot off and one foot stuck in the leg of the other. He could not run and he had no knife to cut the leather. I yanked his boot off and we took to our heels, the militia within 20 yards. Talley’s pistol had filled with snow and he could not fire a shot. But we reached the timber and stood at bay. George Talley was shot dead at this last stand, but when the militia fell back, their dead and wounded numbered seventeen. Nathan Kerr, Geo. Wigginton, Bill Hulse and John McCorkle did well that day.

We were all in our socks, having taken off our overcoats, gloves and heavy boots to lighten our burdens, and the icy road promised to cut our feet to pieces, but we made our way to a rock bridge where a hog trail would hide our tracks, and when we left this trail, I made every one of the boys follow in my footprints, leaving but the one trail till we got to the cedar bluffs. For a stretch of three miles here, these bluffs were practically impassable to horsemen, but we climbed down them and found our way to the home of Mrs. Moore where we were safe again.

The soldiers took back to Independence a pair of gloves marked “Presented to Lieut. Coleman Younger by Miss M. E. Sanders” and they thought Cole Younger was dead for a time. Her brother, Charles Sanders, was one of my company.

Making our way out to Napoleon and Wellington we got new coats and gloves and also located some of the red sheepskin leggings worn by the Red-leg scouts, with which we made a trip over into what was known as “Hell’s corner” on the Missouri, near Independence. Col. Penick’s men, who had in many cases “collected” more horses than they really had use for, had left them with friends at various points. As we went in we spotted as many of these as we thought we could lead out, and took them out with us on our way back.

One of the horses I got on that trip was the meanest horse I ever rode and I named him “Jim Lane” in honor of one of the most efficient raiders that ever disgraced an army uniform. This horse a young woman was keeping for her sweetheart who had left it with her father for safety, as he feared it might be shot. As I mounted the nag, she suddenly grasped the bridle reins. The horse always, I found afterwards, had a trick of rearing up on his hind feet, when he was about to start off. Evidently the young woman was also ignorant of his little habit or else she would never have taken hold of his bridle in an effort to detain me. He was no respecter of persons, this horse of her sweetheart, and he rose high in the air with the young woman still clinging. He turned around and made almost a complete circuit before he came down and again allowed her to enjoy the security of having both feet upon the earth. She was a little frightened after having been lifted off her feet in this way and dangled in the air, and somewhat piqued, too, that I was about to ride away on her sweetheart’s horse, and when I suggested that the horse was not as quiet as he might be and she had better not catch hold of his bridle any more, she called to me as a parting shot, “You horrid old red-leg, you are meaner than Quantrell or Todd or Cole Younger or any of his gang!”

The night we made our escape, they burned the homes of Grandmother Fristoe, and her neighbor, Mrs. Rucker, and gray heads suffered because younger ones had not been noosed.

12. QUANTRELL ON WAR

After the Lone Jack fight, Capt. Quantrell had joined Gen. Shelby at Cane Hill, Arkansas, but shortly left his command to go to the Confederate capital at Richmond to ask to be commissioned as a colonel under the partisan ranger act and to be so recognized by the war department as to have any protection the Confederate States might be able to afford him. He knew the service was a furious one, but he believed that to succeed the South must fight desperately.

Secretary Cooper suggested that war had its amenities and refinements and that in the nineteenth century it was simply barbarism to talk of a black flag.

“Barbarism,” rejoined Quantrell, according to Senator Louis T. Wigfall, of Texas, who was present at the interview, “barbarism, Mr. Secretary, means war and war means barbarism. You ask an impossible thing, Mr. Secretary. This secession or revolution, or whatever you call it, cannot conquer without violence. Your young Confederacy wants victory. Men must be killed.”

“What would you do, Captain Quantrell, were yours the power and the opportunity?” inquired the secretary.

“Do, Mr. Secretary? I would wage such a war as to make surrender forever impossible. I would break up foreign enlistments by indiscriminate massacre. I would win the independence of my people or I would find them graves.”

William Clarke Quantrell

“What of our prisoners?”

“There would be no prisoners,” exclaimed the fiery captain. “Do they take any prisoners from me? Surrounded, I do not surrender; hunted, I hunt my hunters; hated and made blacker than a dozen devils, I add to my hoofs the swiftness of a horse and to my horns the terrors of a savage following. Kansas should be laid waste at once. Meet the torch with the torch, pillage with pillage, slaughter with slaughter, subjugation with extermination. You have my ideas of war, Mr. Secretary, and I am sorry they do not accord with your own or with the ideas of the government you have the honor to represent so well.”

Disappointed, Capt. Quantrell left without his commission. He had felt the truth of his fiery speech.

Our tenders of exchanges of prisoners had been scorned by the officers of the militia. There was a boy who was an exception to this rule, to whom I want to pay a tribute. He was a young lieutenant from Brown county and if my memory serves me right, his name also was Brown. We had taken him prisoner at Olathe.

At Leavenworth they had one of our boys named Hoy, who had been taken at the Tate house, and we paroled Brown, and sent him to Leavenworth to ask the exchange of Hoy.

Brown went, too, and was laughed at for his earnestness. Exchange was ridiculed. “You are free,” they said to him, “why worry about exchanges?”

But Brown had given his word as a man and as a soldier and he came back to our camp and surrendered. He was told to return to the lines of his own army, and given safe conduct and money to provide for his immediate wants, but he vowed he would never fight again under his country’s flag until he had been exchanged in accordance with his parole.

There was a cheer for that man when he left the camp, and anyone who had proposed shooting him would himself have been riddled.

13. THE PALMYRA BUTCHERY

As long as Pete Donan was the editor of the Lexington Caucasian, that paper once each year published an account substantially in this wise:

“So long as God gives us life and the earth is cursed with the presence of McNeil we feel it to be our solemn duty to rehearse once every year the story of the most atrocious and horrible occurrence in the annals of barbarous warfare.”

“On Friday, the 17th day of October, 1862, a deed was enacted at the fair grounds at Palmyra, Mo., which sent a thrill of horror through the civilized world.”

“Ten brave and true and innocent men were taken from their prison, driven to the edge of the town, seated on their rough board coffins, for no crime of their own, and murdered like so many swine.”

“Murdered!”

“Butchered!!”

“By the hell-spawned and hell-bound, trebly damned old blotch upon creation’s face, John McNeil, until recently by the grace of bayonets, Tom Fletcher, and the devil, sheriff of St. Louis county.”

“Murdered!”

“Shot to death!!”

“There was our poor, handsome, gallant boyhood friend Tom Sidener—”

“As pure a soul as ever winged its flight from blood-stained sod to that God who will yet to all eternity damn the fiendish butcher, McNeil.”

“Poor Tom!”

“He was engaged to be married to a young lady in Monroe county.”

“When he learned he was to be shot, he sent for his wedding suit, which had just been made, declaring that if he couldn’t be married in it; he intended to die in it.”

“Arrayed in his elegant black broad cloth, and his white silk vest, when he mounted his coarse plank coffin, in the wagon that was to bear him to his death he looked as if he was going to be married instead of shot.”

“The very guards cried like children when they bade him goodbye.”

“Raising his cap and bowing to the weeping women who lined the streets, he was driven from their sight forever!”

“Half an hour afterward six musket balls had pierced his noble heart, and his white silk vest was torn and dyed with his martyr blood!”

“There was poor old Willis Baker, his head whitened with the snows of more than seventy winters—”

“Heroic old man!”

“With his white hair streaming in the wind, he seated himself on his rude coffin and died without a shudder; refusing with his last breath to forgive his executioners, and swearing he would ‘meet them and torment them in hell through all eternity.’ ”

“There was that helpless, half-idiot boy from Lewis county, who allowed himself to be blindfolded; then hearing Sidener and the others refuse, slipped up one corner of the bandage, and seeing the rest with their eyes uncovered, removed the handkerchief from his own, died as innocent as a lamb.”

“There were Humstead and Bixler, and Lake, and McPheeters.”

“And there was that most wondrous martyr of them all—young Smith, of Knox county—who died for another man.”

“Humphrey was the doomed man.”

“His heart-broken wife, in widow’s weeds, with her eight helpless little ones in deep mourning, that was only less black than the anguish they endured, or the heart of him to whom they appealed, rushed to the feet of McNeil, and in accents so piteous that a soul of adamant must have melted under it, besought him for the life of the husband and father.”

“She was brutally repulsed.”

“But Strachan, the monster of Shelby county, whom the angel a few months afterward smote with Herodian rottenness—Strachan, whose flesh literally fell from his living skeleton—Strachan, who has long been paying in the deepest, blackest, hottest hole in perdition the penalty of his forty-ply damnation-deserving crimes was provost marshal.”

“He saw the frantic agony of the woman; called her into his office and told her he would save her husband if she would give him three hundred dollars and then submit—but oh! humanity shudders, sickens at the horrid proposal.”

“The wretched, half-crazed, agonized wife, not knowing what she did—acceded to save her husband’s life—and the next morning she was found lying insane and nearly dead, with her baby at her breast, near the public spring at Palmyra.”

“And after all this, her husband was only released on condition that another should be shot in his place.”

“Young Smith was selected.”

“And then ensued a contest without a parallel in all the six thousand years of human history.”

“Humphrey refused to let any man die in his stead, declaring he should feel himself a murderer if he did.”

“Smith protested that he was only a poor orphan boy, and so far as he knew there was not a soul on earth to grieve for him; that Humphrey had a large family entirely dependent upon him for daily bread, and it was his duty to live while he could.”

“And Smith, the simple country lad, only seventeen years old, the Hero without a peer on all Fame’s mighty scroll, took his seat on a rough box—and was shot!”

“Will not God eternally damn his murderers?”

“We might dwell for hours on the incidents connected with this most frightful butchery of ancient or modern ages.”

“But why go on?”

“The murder was done!”

“The Confederate government talked of demanding the murderer McNeil.”

“Then a ‘memorial’ was gotten up, and signed by two thousand Missourians, recommending the heaven-earth-and-hell-accursed old monster, on account of his Palmyra massacre, to special favor and he was promoted to a brigadier-generalship.”

14. LAWRENCE

Disguised as a cattle trader, Lieutenant Fletcher Taylor, now a prominent and wealthy citizen of Joplin, Mo., spent a week at the Eldridge house in Lawrence, Kansas, from which place had gone out the Jayhawkers who in three months just previous had slain 200 men and boys, taken many women prisoners, and stolen no one knows how many horses.

At the house of Capt. Purdee on the Blackwater in Johnson county, 310 men answered August 16, 1863, to the summons of Capt. Quantrell to hear the report of Lieut. Taylor’s reconnaissance.

The lieutenant’s report was encouraging. The city itself was poorly garrisoned; the camp beyond was not formidable; the streets were wide.

“You have heard the report,” said Quantrell when the lieutenant finished. “It is a long march; we march through soldiers; we attack soldiers; we must retreat through soldiers. What shall it be? Speak out. Anderson!”

“Lawrence or hell,” relied Anderson, instantly. With fire flashing in his eyes as he recalled the recent wreck from which his sister had been taken in Kansas City, he added: “But with one proviso, that we kill every male thing.”

“Todd?” called Quantrell.

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

This was Capt. William Gregg, who still lives in Kansas City, one of the bravest men that ever faced powder, and in action the coolest, probably, in the entire command.

William Gregg

“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.