USA > Kansas > A standard history of Kansas and Kansans, Volume II > Part 17
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65
The charge that the Federal soldiers undermined this prison was absurd. There never was a particle of evidence to support it. When asked why she believed the building had been undermined Mrs. Womack (Sne Munday) said. "I know it was, because I saw the soldiers going into the Jew's store as thick as bees all day."
This was the only circumstance she could mention to support her declaration. There is perhaps no doubt about the soldiers having gone into the store, but the fact that the proprietor was permitted to sell
3 The statement of Mrs. Womack says Mrs. Vandiver and Mrs. Selvey were killed. Charity Kerr was a cousin of Cole Younger. In his Quan- trill and the Border Wars, the author. following Cole Younger's auto- biography, included Nannie Harris among those killed. Her sister. Mrs. Eliza Deal. now living in Kansas City. Kansas, says that Nannie Harris was not injured.
739
KANSAS AND KANSANS
liquors might account for their visits. And the Jew was caught in the collapse and injured. If he had known of any intention to wreck the building he would not have been there, and no mining could have been carried on in his room without his knowledge. On what date the building fell has not been established. but it was about two weeks before the Law- renee Massacre, and was made one of the excuses for that horrible affair.
The charge that this prison was undermined was taken up by the guerrillas all along the border. Revenge was the cry. Retaliation was demanded. Quantrill, planning, threatening, eajoling, persuading, never eould have induced the guerrillas to undertake the raid on Lawrence but for the collapse of this building. It came at an opportune time in his career and he made the most of it.
CHAPTER XLIV
THE LAWRENCE MASSACRE
The flood in the tide of the Confederacy came in July, 1863, and the recession which followed in the same month indicated that the secession movement would end in failure. When Vicksburg fell and Lee was de- feated at Gettysburg the Southern cause was lost. And along the border the guerrillas reached their greatest strength in the summer of 1863. In the waning of the Confederacy much of its Western force abandoned the field and returned home. Great accession to the guerrilla ranks resulted. In July Quantrill saw that by combining the forces of the border captains enough men could be assembled for a master-stroke. They were called together and a plan proposed, but nothing was done beyond calling another meeting. In the meantime the military prison for women had collapsed. In August when the guerrilla chiefs gathered at the rendezvous, Quantrill, by the skillful use of that unfortunate occurrence, succeeded in enlisting them in his design to destroy Law- rence.
Lawrence had been the chief locality of resistance to the plan of the South to make Kansas a slave State. Kansas had won her freedom, which had, in effect, destroyed slavery. This was the prime cause for the hatred of Kansas, and made it the refuge for many of the loyal citizens exiled by Missouri. Lawrence had been the principal point of attack in the old wars waged by the Missourians, many of whom were in the bush- whacker bands in 1863. The former bitterness remained, and it could be more easily fanned to a flame than could the general animosity against the State or against any other town.
In his designs against Lawrence Quantrill was but playing a part. His implacability was a personal matter. In 1860 he had lived at Law- rence under the assumed name of "Charley Hart," where he led a double life and was guilty of many crimes. He was both Border- Ruffian and abolitionist. Pretending to be engaged in securing passen- gers for the Underground Railroad, he was a kidnapper of free negroes whom he sold into bondage in Missouri. Entrusted with the care of escaped slaves, he returned them to their masters for rewards. Being high in the councils of a band of thieves, he invaded Missouri for the purpose of robbery. Taking advantage of conditions, he despoiled Pro- Slavery residents in Kansas of their horses and cattle. Such a course can run only for a limited time, and in due season Quantrill found him- self under indictment at Lawrence for robbery and arson. It became
740
741
KANSAS AND KANSANS
necessary for him to seek other fields, in doing which he conceived and executed a plot to betray and murder some of his associates. Under pretext of obtaining thirty slaves to be sent over the Underground Rail- road from Kansas to Canada, he induced some young anti-slavery en- thusiasts of Atchison County to accompany him in a foray against Morgan Walker, a planter and slaveholder in Jackson County, Mo. There he betrayed his companions to death, at least one of whom he murdered with his own hands. He remained with the Missourians and rose to be chief of the border-guerrillas. In this capacity he had sacked
W. C. QUANTRILL
[From Photograph Owned by William E. Connelley ]
Aubry and Shawnee and had plundered Olathe and other Kansas towns.1
That the border might feel some sense of security and the Federal troops relax somewhat the severity of their patrol of the State-line, Quantrill contented himself by spreading disquicting rumors and doing little in that region for some weeks. The last invasion of the country in Kansas adjacent to that through which he proposed to pass was made by
1 For an extended account of the life and operations of Quantrill, see Quantrill and the Border Wars, by this author.
742
KANSAS AND KANSANS
Bill Anderson on the 31st of July. On the high land south of Argen- tine, Wyandotte County, at a cross-roads known as "the Junction," lived one Saviers, whose son, Al. Saviers, was a notorions Red Leg and Jayhawker.2 Anderson attacked the Saviers house, but was beaten off by the old gentleman and his daughters. The guerrillas then went west a quarter of a mile to house of Wright Bookout and killed him. Two miles northwest of the Junction they murdered Stephen J. Payne and plundered his premises. They went then to the house of Stephen Per- kins, a prominent and loyal man, to kill him, but he escaped. After burning the Perkins house the guerrillas burned two other dwellings, both on the lands of Shawnee Indians; after which they went up the Kansas River to the house where Anderson's sisters had lived and where he had previously been hiding. Taking the family at this house with them, the bushwhackers eseaped to Missouri before pursuit could be made.3
This was a daring raid. The murders were committed within four miles of General Ewing's headquarters and inside his lines.
The general rendezvous of the guerrillas was on the Blackwater, Johnson County, Missouri, at the farm of Captain Pardee. On the night of the 18th of Angust, every eaptain arrived there with his command. On the 19th the mareh on Lawrence began. Great caution was observed. Extensive scouting was done to detect the presence of any Federal foree. After riding ten miles toward Kansas, camp was made early in the afternoon. Here Quantrill addressed his men and told them where they were going. Before it was dark the guerrillas were again moving. South of the Little Bhie they came upon Colonel John D. Holt, who had one hundred and four men, and he joined the expedi- tion. At seven o'clock on the morning of the 20th the guerrilla column was on the head of the Grand River, four miles from the Kansas line. There the last addition to the guerrilla force was made, a company of fifty men joining it from points to the south. The guerrillas numbered four hundred and forty-eight men, as follows:
The original force 294
Holt's command 104
The last reinforcement. 50
Total. 448
2 The " Red Legs" were Federal scouts on the border during the Civil War. The name came from the red leggins which they wore. As a scourge of the border they were little inferior to Quantrill's guerrillas.
The term "Jayhawker" was applied along the border at the begin- ning of the war to irregular troops and pillaging bands on both sides. It was accepted by some of the Kansas soldiers, and soon eame to be the name by which all of them were known. It now includes all Kansas people. The origin of the name is unknown. that given by Wilder and Ingalls being erroneons. The name was in use in Texas and the West many years before Kansas was a Territory.
3 Major Plumb sent his brother. George Plumb, in pursuit of Anderson on the morning of August 1st. The guerrillas could not be overtaken. Thomas J. Payne, son of Stephen J. Payne, lives yet at Argentine and has furnished an account of this raid into Wyandotte County.
743
KANSAS AND KANSANS
At three o'clock in the afternoon of the 20th Quantrill moved toward the State-line from a dense wood in which he had been concealed. He crossed the line at the southeast corner of Johnson County, near Aubry, one of Ewing's posts commanded by Captain J. A. Pike, with about one hundred men. Here began that strange list of untoward circumstances which so mueh aided the guerrillas in their daring raid. General Ewing, in his official report, said :
Unhappily, however, instead of setting out at once in pursuit, he remained at the station, and merely sent information of Quantrill's movement to my headquarters, and to Captain Coleman, commanding two companies at Little Santa Fe, 12 miles north of the line. Captain Coleman, with near 100 men, marehed at once to Aubry, and the available force of the two stations, numbering about 200 men, set out at midnight in pursuit. But Quantrill's path was over the open prairie, and difficult to follow at night, so that our forees gained but little on him. By Captain Pike's error of judgment in failing to follow promptly and elosely, the surest means of arresting the terrible blow was thrown away, for Quantrill would never have gone as far as Lawrence, or attacked it, with 100 men elose on his rear.
Passing Aubry, the guerrillas dismounted and allowed their horses to graze an hour. Resuming their march at dusk they passed through Spring Hill and turned northwest toward Gardner, which they reached at eleven o'clock. Three miles west they left the Santa Fe Trail and marehed north several miles. It was necessary to have guides, for which serviee the farmers were impressed, and when they no longer knew the roads they were shot, ten guides having been killed in one streteh of eight miles. A mile west of the Quaker settlement of Hesper the guer- rillas found at home an old man named Stone. He was recognized by George Todd, who brained him with an antiquated musket. Here they found a young German whom they mounted behind one of their number and forced to guide them into Lawrence. The Wakarusa was forded at the Blue-Jacket Crossing, and the old Pro-Slavery town of Franklin was reached at dawn on the 21st of August. There they were marching in columns of four, many of them asleep strapped to their saddles, and were eounted by a resident physician, who found them to number four hun- dred and fifty. In coming up to the summit of the ridge beyond Frank- lin, the guerrillas straggled, but once at the top the formation was per- fected, the column of fours resumed, and the descent upon Lawrenee, now in plain view, arranged.
Gregg was sent forward with five men to enter the doomed town and see if it was safe for the army to follow him in. But here some of the bushwhackers lost heart and said the venture was too great. They counseled retreat, or at least a drawing off until conditions were better known. Quantrill said he would enter the town if he had to go in alone, and when he advanced he was followed by the whole command.
Lawrenee was unprotected and helpless. Two eamps of recruits were her only troops; these numbered less than thirty and were unarmed. The arms provided for the defense of the town had been taken from the
744
KANSAS AND KANSANS
citizens and locked up. Quantrill had been expected often, but had failed to come, and it had become the settled conviction that he would never appear at the gates of Lawrence. But there he was. Gregg found the camp of white recruits as Quantrill came up with him, and it was instantly ridden down and most of the recruits killed. The colored reeruits fled at sight of the guerrillas and nearly all escaped. The citi- zens were aroused by horsemen galloping madly through the streets, and the rising roar of firearms. The Eldridge House was surrendered on promise of protection for the guests, and this promise was kept. Men appeared in the streets ouly to be shot down. The torch was applied to dwelling and store. Terror seized the men when the situation was
RUINS OF LAWRENCE, 1863
(Photograph of a Wood Engraving in Harper's Weekly, September, 1863 .- Donated by Sydney Prentice) [Copy by Willard of Pieture in Library of Kansas State Historieal Society ]
realized. They were shot as they ran to cover. Or if they were con- cealed by their wives their homes were burned over them while raving bushmen stood by to murder them if they should try to escape. Stores and liquor shops were looted and burning dwellings ransacked for plunder to carry back to Missouri. Women and children were stripped of jewelry, ornaments, and keepsakes by guerrillas, now drunk and reekless. Husbands were torn from the arms of shrieking wives and murdered. Wounded men were cast into seething flames to die by fire. There was no merey. While the loot of the town was being paeked on horses to be carried into Missouri those appointed to the work of destruction rode headlong, firing with deadly aim and yelling like fiends. When burning buildings fell in on trapped men the air was rent with shouts of exultation. Above the tumult rose triumphant cries for Jeff Davis and the Southern Confederacy. When the town was
745
KANSAS AND KANSANS
destroyed, the loot secured, and not another man in sight to be mur- dered, Quantrill prepared to leave. Nearly two hundred citizens and non-combatants were dead in the ruins. The vengeance of the guerrilla chief was satisfied. As he was calling in his bloody band his guards came down from Mount Oread and reported pursuing columns approaching. Leaving a detail under Gregg to round up the drunken and unruly, Quan- trill hurried south. He left a city in ashes, innocent dead in every street, and hundreds of widows and orphans crying wildly through the gloom or standing hopelessly about their smoldering homes. And on the flag under which he fought he left a blood-stain which only the charity of the sufferers can ever efface.
CHAPTER XLV
THE PURSUIT OF QUANTRILL 1
At eight o'clock on the night of the 20th of August, Captain Cole- man, at Little Santa Fe, received a dispatch from Captain Pike, say- ing that Quantrill, with seven hundred men, was camped on the head of the Grand River, eight miles to the east. Quantrill was, in fact, at that hour approaching Spring Hill, Kansas, twelve miles west of the State-line, and he had been in Kansas at least four hours; and on the prairie near Squiresville his men had dismounted and allowed their horses to graze an hour. A second dispatch from Pike reached Cole- man fifteen minutes later. It stated that Quantrill had passed into Kan- sas with eight hundred men. Captain Coleman at once sent couriers to Kansas City with that information. He also sent a messenger west to notify the towns of the presence of the guerrillas. He hurried with his men to Aubry and assumed command there. This gave him about one hundred and eighty men, and at midnight he took the trail of the guerrillas.
The first courier of Captain Coleman arrived at Kansas City at eleven-thirty, and the second courier came in an hour later. General Ewing was absent, having gone to Leavenworth. Major Plumb, as Chief-of-Staff, was in command. As soon as possible after the arrival of the second dispatch he was on his way to Kansas with seventeen men-all the mounted men immediately available at Kansas City.2 At Westport he added thirty men to his command. The dispatch of Captain Coleman-that Quantrill had entered Kansas with eight hun- dred men-was the only information he had of the situation. At day- light on the morning of the 21st he arrived at Olathe. There he found the garrison in arms, the men having been roused by the long roll on the arrival of Captain Coleman's courier. While he was making in-
1 Ewing and Plumb were both severely criticised at the time and for years afterwards. For that reason the pursuit of Quantrill is treated at length. No one should be shieldled. The writer made a personal examination of the country through which the pursuit was eondneted, and sought every source of information on the subject that the facts might be written here.
2 For the exact time of the arrival of the dispatches at Kansas City see the official report of General Ewing, Rebellion Records, Series I, Vol. XXII, Part I. p. 579. In the same volume, immediately follow- ing the report of General Ewing, will be found all others relating to the Quantrill raid.
746
747
KANSAS AND KANSANS
quiries a great column of black smoke boiling like a thunder-head shot into the sky far to the westward. Observing it a moment, he turned to his men and said, "Quantrill is in Lawrence." Lieutenant Cyrus Leland, Jr., was at Olathe, and was given permission to join the pur- suit. Taking the few mounted men found at Olathe, Major Plumb rode across the country straight for Lawrence. He sent George Plumb with a few men to alarm the people living along the Kansas River, believing the guerrillas might try to return to Missouri that way.3
At Blue-Jacket Crossing of the Wakarusa, some six miles south- east of Lawrence, with but thirty men remaining, his force having been reduced by details to scout and carry dispatches to Kansas City, Plumb found Captain Coleman just ahead of him.+
Clouds of dust and columns of smoke south of Lawrence indicated that Quantrill was retreating on the Fort Scott road and laying waste the country. Plumb took command of Coleman's force. He recrossed the Wakarusa and made all haste south to the Santa Fe Trail at Bald- win, which point he reached ahead of the guerrillas, his appearance saving it and Prairie City from the torch. The sky was without a eloud, the day calm and still, the country parched and dusty, and the heat excessive. The gallop of twelve miles from the Wakarusa to the Santa Fe Trail completed the exhaustion of the horses, all of which had made more than sixty-five miles without rest.5 Some horses had dropped dead in the road ascending the divide traversed by the old Trail.
After burning most of the houses in and about Brooklyn, Quan- trill, driven by fear of Lane who was pressing his rear, started down
3 Samuel Boies. of Lawrence, was saved by Quantrill to drive the ambulance carrying the guerrillas wounded there. He eseaped. He says, in Kansas City Journal, August 29, 1863:
"Quantrill avowed his intention to march to Osawatomie, laying everything waste as he went. At Rothrock's, or Ulrich's, where he stopped to water his horses, Lane first came up with the pursuit, and as Quantrill's men were off the road to the west, Quantrill first thought they would be able to head him off. In that case, he avowed his inten- tion of turning back and marching down the Kaw Valley to Missouri."
4 Thomas Barber, Company C. Eleventh Kansas, has said to the author that Plumb sent a number of dispatches to Ewing at Kansas City and that these were sent to Leavenworth. Major Martin Anderson, Eleventh Kansas, went in pursuit of Quantrill on the 21st, and Barber was with him. They met a courier with a dispatch from Plumb, which urged Ewing to place troops along the State-line, and Plumb supposed that Ewing would be in Kansas City as soon as he could return from Leavenworth.
Captain Coleman and Major Plumh both crossed the Wakarusa. In a letter to his mother, written August 29, 1863, Cyrus Leland, Jr., said, "Major Plumb came up with Captain Coleman just east of Franklin."
5 In his official report General Ewing says :
"By this time the horses of our detachments were almost exhausted. Nearly all were young horses, just issued to the companies, and had marched more than sixty-five miles without rest and without food."
748
KANSAS AND KANSANS
the Santa Fe Trail towards Baldwin. From a high point in the road he saw Major Plumb's column marching up the Santa Fe Trail to meet him. Quantrill left the Trail and turned to the south to avoid Plumb, intending to regain the Trail at Baldwin; but after having gone a mile he decided that this could not be done. The guerrilla leader was disconcerted, and after a hurried conference with his guides and cap- tains, retraced his course to a point near Brooklyn, where he turned south on the Fort Scott road. From the point where he turned back he sent a scouting party to reach and destroy Baldwin and Prairie City if possible, and in any event to keep between Plumb's men and the guerrillas.6
When the guerrillas were pushed off the Santa Fe Trail the eitizens led by Lane in pursuit kept to the road until they met the Union troops. Whether Lane and Plumb met at this time is not clear.7 The militia regiment of that region was rapidly assembling. Sandy Lowe, Colonel of the Twenty-first Kansas Militia, had summoned his men and joined the pursuing citizens.s After a brief conference Plumb divided his command, sending Captain Coleman to fall on the guerrilla rear, and intending himself to go with the militia south to a ford on Ottawa Creek to stand across the road. When Plumb started from Kansas City. he sent an orderly to the quarters of Lieutenant John H. Singer with an order to form his men and follow into Kansas. Singer made a rapid march on the trail of Plumb, coming up while the conference was in progress. Plumb inquired how many horses Singer had that could still trot, and sixty were found. They were given to Captain Coleman who secured in his own command enough in addi-
6 Statement of Captain William H. Gregg, who always speaks of the site of Brooklyn as Black-Jack Point. Whether this is the real Black- Jack and the name was given later through ignorance to those groves some miles east where John Brown captured H. Clay Pate is not known. 7 Cyrus Leland. Jr., is positive they did not meet here. Lieutenant John M. Singer is fully as positive that they did. He says that a little south of this point he heard Lane urging Plumb to turn the troops over to him-Lane-and that some high words passed when Plumb refused. It is certain that Lane demanded of Plumb the command of the troops. Lane was, for some cause, far behind his citizens when they charged through the lane following Captain Coleman, and his controversy with Plumb would account for the detention.
s Lowe had been active in the border wars as a loyal man. Because of an indignity to which his wife had been subjected by the guerrillas he made the war a personal matter. It is said that he slew from time to time the twenty-eight guerrillas. mostly by assassination. who mis- treated his wife and child. Three of his companies were about Baldwin: and that of Captain Jackson Bell. of Black-Jack. William W. Junkin, of Baldwin, was in Captain Pingree's Company. He said to the author that Colonel Lowe did not succeed in getting many of his men together. The time was too short. Junkin captured a guerrilla and took him to Lowe. who in mediately shot him dead. saying as he did so: "That makes forty of them I have killed. I had killed thirty-nine before this one." His act and the reflection he expressed thereon seemed to give him immense satisfaction.
749
KANSAS AND KANSANS
tion to make two hundred men. With these he charged through the lane running north of William C. Black's house to the Fort Scott road, and was followed by the citizens who had come with Lane, and others under Leland. This left Plumb with about one hundred soldiers on horses which could not be forced into a trot because of exhaustion. With these and Colonel Lowe's militia he started south to form the ambush at the crossing of Ottawa Creek. At Prairie City he heard the firing and uproar of Captain Coleman's charge on the guerrillas, and finding that it would be impossible for him to keep up with the militia on the way to the ford, he turned west and went to Captain Coleman's aid. He arrived at the Fletcher farm as Captain Coleman was driven back through the cornfield, and checked the guerrillas, who did not cross the north fence.
Passing to the south of the field, Quantrill gave Captain Gregg, a rear-guard of sixty men and ordered him to remain facing the field until the guerrilla force had crossed Ottawa Creek, after which he followed them. The ford was not more than half a mile from the corn- field, and was not the ford on the main road, which was some five miles away. It was necessary for Major Plumb to reform his troops for the pursuit, putting those in front who had horses that were still able to trot, and these were mostly the militia and citizens under Lieuten- ant Leland. They charged the guerrilla rear-guard many times that afternoon, but when the cavalry would appear Captain Gregg would retreat through a second line which he kept always back of him, then form across the road near the retreating column. The Federal sol- diers were from a mile to three miles in the rear all the time. Major Plumb's horse failed from heat and exhaustion in the afternoon, and George Plumb took one for him from a farmer. After he got this fresh horse Major Plumb rode much with Leland.10 "Quantrill rode forward and asked the guide where he was taking them to," says Boies. "The guide replied that the town before them was Morristown, Missouri. Quantrill looked a moment and then cursed the guide, tell- ing him that the town was Paola; that a heavy force was there, and
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.