USA > Missouri > Scotland County > History of Lewis, Clark, Knox, and Scotland counties, Missouri. From the earliest time to the present, together with sundry personal, business and professional sketches and mumerous family records > Part 13
USA > Missouri > Lewis County > History of Lewis, Clark, Knox, and Scotland counties, Missouri. From the earliest time to the present, together with sundry personal, business and professional sketches and mumerous family records > Part 13
USA > Missouri > Clark County > History of Lewis, Clark, Knox, and Scotland counties, Missouri. From the earliest time to the present, together with sundry personal, business and professional sketches and mumerous family records > Part 13
USA > Missouri > Knox County > History of Lewis, Clark, Knox, and Scotland counties, Missouri. From the earliest time to the present, together with sundry personal, business and professional sketches and mumerous family records > Part 13
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On the 9th Col. McNeil moved from Kirksville to Blooming- ton, the old county seat of Macon County, ready and waiting for another opportunity to strike Porter. From Bloomington he went to Shelbyville, and there, learning something of Porter's movements and objects, he moved down to the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad.
After the battle of Kirksville, when the Federals were looking over their prisoners, it was discovered that among them were some who had previously taken the oath of allegiance to the Pro- visional Government of Missouri, and were at large on parole and under bond. Some of them had been arrested and paroled two or three times not to take up arms against the authority of the United States, but when the enrolling order of Schofield and Gamble came out, they caught up their shot-guns, and joined Porter. In McNeil's command were hundreds of northeast Missourians, and numbers of the violators of paroles were readily
*Subsequently lieutenant-colonel of the regiment, and at present a prominent attorney of Kahoka, Clark County.
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recognized and identified. Some of the prisoners even bore upon their persons copies of their paroles or certificates of loyalty, which were virtually their own death-warrants. For, as is well known, the last sentence of these documents read: "It is hereby understood that for a violation of the terms of this parole the penalty shall be death."*
Thursday, the next day after the battle, quite a number of "oath- breakers," as they were called, were tried by a Federal drum-head court martial,convened by McNeil,in Kirksville, and fifteen of them were convicted of repeated violations of their paroles, and sentenced to be shot. It was a hard sentence and a short shrift, for McNeil approved the proceedings and the order, and the poor fellows were executed the same day. Their names as can best be learned now, were William Bates, R. M. Galbreath, Lewis Rollins, Will- iam Wilson, Columbus Harris, Reuben Thomas, or Thompson, Thomas Webb and Reuben Green, of Monroe County; James Christian, David Wood, Jesse Wood and Thomas Stone, of Shelby ; B. Hayden and William Sallee, of Marion, and John Kent, of Adair. It is reported that Hamilton Brannon, of Marion or Monroe, was shot at the same time.
Thursday afternoon a squad of Knox County Militia captured Col. Frisby Mccullough, as he lay half sick, tired and dispirited, in a brush patch, eight miles north or northwest of Edina. He had left Porter after the Kirksville fight, and was making his way toward the neighborhood of his home, in the northwestern part of Marion County. There is good reason for believing that he had abandoned the Confederate service entirely.
The militia took Col. McCullough to Edina, where he was placed in prison under the charge of Capt. Sells. The next day he was conveyed to Kirksville. Here he was charged with being a guerrilla and an outlaw. It was said he had no commission as an officer, but was fighting on his own responsibility and without authority, and was therefore a guerrilla, purely and simply. It was charged further that he had engaged in recruiting for the Confederate service inside the Union lines, and had " duped men into entering the rebel army in violation of their paroles."
*It seems almost incredible that any man would be so foolish as to carry about him such a paper, but it is explained that copies of paroles and certificates of loyalty were used as passes and exempted the bearers from arrest or molestation so long as their terms were complied with.
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A few of the paroled prisoners asserted that they were persuaded by Mccullough to join Porter. A drum-head court martial, pre- sided over by Lieut .- Col. W. F. Shaffer, of Merrill's Horse, tried him and convicted him of these charges, and sentenced him to be shot, and his trial, conviction, sentence and execution all hap- pened the same day of his arrival at Kirksville, Friday, August 8, 1862.
Col. Mccullough was confined a brief time with the other Confederate prisoners at Kirksville. He received with great composure the word that he was to be shot that afternoon, but protested against this summary disposition of his life. To the court martial he had claimed that he was a Confederate officer with the rank of lieutenant-colonel; but admitted that the latter title had been given him only a few days previously, at Short's well, where he was elected second in command of a regimental organization of which Cyrus Franklin was chosen colonel. He had been a lieutenant-colonel in the Missouri State Guard, but his term of service in that army had long before expired.
The fate of the young Confederate leader excited considerable sympathy among the Federals present. The officer who brought the sentence to him was moved to tears. McCullough himself was cool and collected. Leaning against a fence, he wrote a few lines to his wife, and these, with his watch and one or two other articles, he delivered to an officer to be given to her, with assur- ances of his devoted affection in the hour of death. Upon the way to the place of his execution he requested the privilege of giving the order to fire, which was granted him. All being ready, he stood bravely up, and without a tremor in his manly frame or a quaver in his clarion voice, he called out. " What I have done, I have done as a principle of right. Aim at the heart. Fire!" The command taking the firing party by sur- prise, one discharged his piece sooner than the rest. The ball struck Col. Mccullough in the breast, and he fell, while the other shots passed over him. Falling with one leg doubled under the body, he requested to have it straightened, and while this was being done he said: "I forgive you for this barbarous act." The squad reloaded their pieces, then emptied them into the dying warrior's body, and all was over. His body was given
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to friends in Kirksville, who buried it there, but it was after- ward removed to and reinterred at Asbury Chapel, Lewis County.
Col. Mccullough had long been a resident of Marion County. He was a good citizen, a high-minded gentlemen, of fine pres- ence, brave as a lion, gentle as a woman. Even in his death, the strongest Unionists who knew him, respected and admired his virtues, and entertained the most bitter regrets that what they considered his misconceptions of duty had led him to his fearful fate. At the time of his death he was thirty-three years of age .*
Porter did not long remain in seclusion. On Friday, August 15, he was in the neighborhood of Emerson, Marion County, with 150 men, not disheartened, not cast down, but cheery, good natured, plucky and hopeful. He sent out his scouts, and they ranged through the country, picking up horses and supplies, and occasionally a prisoner. The country was full of his stragglers who had left him after the Kirksville fight and the disbanding near Novelty, and were in hiding. When they heard "Old Joe" was again in the saddle, they crawled out of the brush and joined him. Many of his men, however, had crossed over into Illinois, and some were cooped up in the Federal prisons at La Grange, Quincy and Palmyra. A company of enrolled militia from La Grange stationed at the West Quincy ferry bagged many a poor "reb" seeking a retreat in the Sucker State. Col. Porter himself remained in the vicinity of Emerson some days. His men lived off the country and recruited their commis- sary departments and corrals from the smoke-houses and stables of the farmers in the country, and indeed seized many an article , because they took a fancy to it. This seems a little inequitable nowadays, but in that period quite often Federal trooper and Confederate raider acquired property rights by
The good old rule, the simple plan, That they may take who have the power, And they may keep who can!
* In a communication to the writer, Gen. McNeil says: "Col. Mccullough was tried by a commission, of which Lieut .- Col. Shaffer was president, under Order No. 2 of Gen. Hal- leck, and Nos. 8 and 18 of Gen. Schofield. He had no commission except a printed paper authoriz- ing 'the bearer' to recruit for the Confederate Army. He was found guilty of bushwhacking or of being a guerrilla. He was a brave fellow, and a splendid specimen of manhood. I would have gladly spared him had duty permitted. As it was, he suffered the fate that would have fallen to you or me if we had been found recruiting inside the Confederate lines. He met a soldier's death as became a soldier."
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HISTORY OF LEWIS COUNTY.
At last Porter went to the southward, again into Monroe and . Shelby. Some of his men remained in the broken, woody country near the north line of Marion County, and Friday evening, August 22, occurred the skirmish on Grassy Creek, mentioned else- where.
Porter was reported near Florida, Monroe County, on Monday, August 25, threatening Paris, with 1,000 men. McNeil moved down from Hunnewell and occupied Paris, with all his available force-800. Tuesday morning, Majs. Rogers and Dodson, with three companies of the Eleventh Missouri State Militia, started from Shelbyville to reinforce him, and Wednesday McNeil moved out to encounter Porter again. He marched from Paris and Hunnewell to Newark and thence to Monticello, where he absorbed into his command the battalion of Maj. Rogers, of the Second Missouri State Militia. At this time Lewis and Marion were full of bands of Confederates, and there was great uneasiness among the Federals. Even Hannibal was thought to be in danger.
Friday, September 12, Porter, with 400 men, captured Pal- myra, and held the place two hours, losing one man killed and two wounded. One Union citizen was killed, and three militia- men wounded. The town was defended by sixty Marion County militia in the courthouse, under Capt. Dubach and Lieut. Wash- burn, twenty at the jail and thirty more in a store building. The men at the jail surrendered, and were paroled, and forty- five Confederate prisoners they were guarding relased. The Confederates carried away with them a soldier named McKenny, who was in jail for shooting a prisoner, and an aged citizen of Palmyra named Andrew Allsman. The soldier was taken into the brush, two miles north of Palmyra, and shot, and Mr. Alls- man was murdered, a few nights later, on Troublesome Creek, in the southern part of Lewis. In retaliation for the murder of the latter, who was shot while kneeling in the presence of his exeçu- tioners, and whose remains have never been discovered, Gen. McNeil executed ten prisoners, at Palmyra, on the 18th of Octo- ber-a circumstance often called "the Palmyra massacre."
At his camp, on the South Fabius, the next day after the Pal- myra raid, Col. Porter received a reinforcement of 150 men,
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under Ralph Smith, of Lewis County. Other parties of Confed- erates were in the country, but they had lost confidence in Por- ter, and refused to cast their fortunes with him. With his 500 men, the undaunted, self-confident raider, was soon again on the war path, and, turning northwest, he proceeded on a circuitous route toward Newark, and, on Saturday night or Sunday, camped half a mile southwest of Whaley's mill, on the South Fabius, just in the eastern edge of the northeast corner of Shelby. Here a bountiful supply of corn meal was secured, and a square meal or two indulged in. Col. Porter's residence was but a few miles away.
Col. McNeil learned at Monticello of Porter's raid on Pal- myra. A few hours thereafter with Rogers' battalion of the Eleventh Missouri State Militia, and his own of the Second, he immediately set out southward, and marching all night he arrived at Emerson (then called Houston) at 4 o'clock on the morning of the 13th. Here he halted several hours, sending out scouting. parties to obtain information. From his scouts and the citizens he learned the course Porter had pursued from Palmyra, and leaving Emerson Saturday evening McNeil marched northeast to Finley Prairie, in the southern part of Lewis, struck Porter's trail and found one of his camps in the Fabius bottom. That night the Federals camped at Jones' farm, on the Finley Prairie. Sunday morning, September 14, McNeil, with about 500 men and three pieces of artillery, set out early to find Porter. The route taken was westward, across by Anderson's mills, and thence toward Newark.
On reaching the vicinity of the residence of Col. Porter, four miles east of Newark, the Federal advance discovered two mounted Confederate pickets. Chase was given, but they escaped. The wives of both Col. Joe and Capt. Jim Porter were at the residence of the former. Just before this a guide had been picked up who knew where the Confederate camp was, and was willing to lead the way to it. Whaley's mill stood about two miles southeast of Porter's residence.
Gen. McNeil's forces now pressed on rapidly toward the Con- federate camp. Near the mill at about 4 P. M., the advance dis- covered a strong picket guard, the members of which, being fired
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on, turned and fled toward the camp, the Federals following rap- idly. There was mounting in hot haste among the boys in gray, and dreading the terrible cannon which had done so much injury to them before, they retreated in most unseemly haste, with no resistance worthy of the name.
McNeil came thundering into the camp within fifteen minutes after it had been abandoned. The fires were burning, cooking utensils and piles of corn meal and other provisions lay here and there, carpet sacks, clothing and bedding were scattered about, and everything showed a hasty flight and great demorali- zation. In a few moments the bugles sounded the "forward," and the Federal cavalrymen sprang away in pursuit of the flee- ing enemy.
The Confederates followed the course of the South Fabius (on the north bank of which stream Whaley's mill was located) in an easterly direction, keeping on the north side of the stream. For several miles the chase continued, and was very exciting. There was but little danger about it, for the Confederates made no fight proper to be called a fight. They showed no disposition, or not much, to do anything but to get out of the way of the Federals and their cannon as rapidly as possible. They did no real fighting-only incontinent skedaddling. . The Federals crowded upon them, rode them down when they hesitated, and shot them when they offered the slightest resistance.
For miles this pursuit was kept up, the Federals chasing Porter's men as hunters chase a quarry. At last the Confeder- ates followed no roads, but dashed on through bushes and thick- ets dense and rough, over fences high and strong, across ravines wide and deep, and along by-paths narrow and steep. The Federals could follow where they led, and dashed after them.
After three or four miles of this sort of racing, the main por- tion of the Confederates arrived at or near a crossing of the South Fabius known as the old Claggett ford, hard by the resi- dence of a Mr. Pierce. Here they crossed to the south side of the creek, then turned again toward the east for a mile until they intersected the road leading from Claggett's old mill, due south a mile and a half until it struck the Philadelphia and Newark road at Bragg's schoolhouse, in Shelby County-and still that swift,
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unrelenting pursuit, the heavy cavalry at their heels, and the artillery just behind, the postilions lashing their horses like race- riders.
At Bragg's schoolhouse Col. Porter again disbanded his forces, and it was " every man for himself and McNeil will take the hindmost." Some went east, some went south, some went west. Porter, with a considerable company, started for Shelby County. A number of horses-on one of which was a United States saddle and accoutrements-and twenty shot-guns and muskets were abandoned and fell into the hands of the enemy. Three Confederates were killed, and a number wounded during the retreat from Whaley's mill, and quite a lot of prisoners were taken.
The Federals came up and halted at the point of the Confed- erate dispersion. Gen. McNeil made his headquarters at Bragg's, in Shelby County, that Sunday night, remaining there till next day. It being impossible and unprofitable to follow the Confed- erates any further, he came on to Philadelphia, and encamped there on Monday night. Leaving Philadelphia Tuesday morn- ing, the Federals arrived at Palmyra about noon, and went into camp. Their loss was as follows: One man of the Eleventh came upon a squad of Confederates in the brush, was fired on and mortally wounded, dying next day; while the baggage train was coming up to Bragg's, after the pursuit had ceased, some of Porter's ambushed men fired upon the escort, killing one (young Scanlan, of Clark), mortally wounding another ( Corp. Stephens, of Knox ), and seriously wounding another.
When McNeil observed the piles of meal on the ground in the rebel camp at Whaley's mill, he declared: "That mill has ground its last grist for the rebel commissary department." By his orders the mill was burned. Among the prisoners captured at Bragg's were two Shelby County men, John Holmes and Harry Latimer, living in the vicinity. Holmes had been once and Latimer twice before taken prisoner and released on parole, and on Holmes' person was found the muster roll of Capt. Marion Whaley's rebel company of eighty men. Learning these facts McNeil had both men executed in Bragg's meadow the morning after their capture.
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After his rout by McNeil at Whaley's mill, and his dis- persion at Bragg's schoolhouse, Col. Porter kept himself hidden. for some days. He abandoned his idea of raising a regiment in northeast Missouri, and realizing that there was no rest for the soles of his feet so long as an active, aggressive commander, like. John McNeil, was in this quarter, he determined to leave. Gathering up about 200 of his "old guard" he gradually worked his way down to the Missouri River, without attracting much attention from the Federals.
At Portland, Callaway County, on the 16th of October, he captured the steamboat "Emelie," on which he crossed 175 men. and horses to the south side. His crossing was interrupted by an attack on his rear guard (of forty or fifty men, commanded by himself) by 120 men, under Surgeon John E. Bruere, of Krekel's battalion of militia, who charged into Portland while the boat was unloading on the south side, killed three of the rear guard and dispersed the remainder. Porter himself, with about fifty men, crossed the river in a skiff at Providence, Boone County, and after a series of remarkable adventures, fighting every few miles, and losing some of his best men, he at last reached Arkan- sas. The column that crossed at Portland, under Capts. Ely, Brooks and Creggs, had a hard fight at the California House, in Pulaski County, with 175 of the Thirteenth Missouri State Militia, under Col. Albert Sigel, losing twenty men, killed and wounded, a. flag, some guns, and three prisoners. The Federals, who were in. ambush, had but one man wounded. The column, about 150 strong,. finally reached Arkansas, and was joined by its old commander, who organized it, with other commands, into a regiment of Con -- federate cavalry, of which he was regularly commissioned colonel.
From Pocahontas, Ark., in December, 1862, Col. Porter, as. acting brigadier, moved with his regiment and the battalions of Colton Green and J. Q. A. Burbridge, to co-operate with Gen. John S. Marmaduke, in his attack on Springfield, Mo. Col .. Porter's command did not, however, participate in the attack, having moved on a line far to the eastward of Marmaduke's route, and toward Rolla. After the failure of Marmaduke's. attack his command and that of Porter united at Marshfield, and.
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began a retreat into Arkansas. At Hartville, in Wright County, on the 11th of January, 1863, a considerable Federal force under Col. Samuel Merrill, of the Twenty-first Iowa Regiment, was en- countered. It was defeated, but at a serious loss to the Con- federates, who had many valuable officers killed and mortally wounded. Among the latter was Col. Porter. While leading & charge he was severely wounded in the leg, but accompanied the army into Arkansas, and died near Batesville, February 18, following. Had he lived he would have received in a short time the commission of a brigadier-general.
THE RECONSTRUCTION PERIOD.
Intelligence of the fall of Richmond and of the surrender of Gen. Lee's and Gen. Johnston's armies was received by the Unionists of the county and of Northeast Missouri generally with great delight. Demonstrations of rejoicing were indulged in at all of the principal towns. The gratification was intensified when in May news came that Kirby Smith's Trans-Mississippi army had surrendered to the forces of Gens. Canby and Pope. A majority of the Lewis County Confederates were in Gen. Smith's army, and surrendered, and were paroled at Shreveport, La. The Federals generously furnished to all who would accept it transportation to their homes.
Nearly everybody was glad the war was over. Even many of Confederate sympathisers were not sorry, although the terms of peace may not have been quite to their liking. The bigoted and grossly ignorant of both parties were perhaps not reconciled. Some of the extreme Radicals wanted more bloodshed; some of the Confederate people wanted somebody else to do some more fighting. Very soon the ex-Confederate soldiers began to return. In most instances the vanquished men in gray were allowed to remain at their homes in peace and unmolested. Having fought a hard fight and been fairly defeated, they philosophically accepted the situation, and, true to the letter and spirit of their paroles, demeaned themselves, in all particulars, as true and loyal citizens of the United States. Occasionally, however, in some neighborhoods, or at least in a few instances in the southern part of the county, returned ex-Confederates were warned to leave the
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county. The foolish utterances of Senator Green and a few hot- heads among the Secessionists in 1861 were remembered and quoted: " If you win, we will leave; if we win you shall leave." " And now," said the Radicals, "you shall abide by your own terms." - Perhaps, but for the interference of Col. John M. Glover and Surgeon John L. Taylor, there would have been violence and some men would have been driven out of the county. Glover and Taylor had served very creditably in the Federal Army, had interfered to prevent Union men from being driven away from their homes in 1861 by Secessionists, and now, in 1865, they were called upon to prevent Secessionists from being driven away from their homes by Union men. They counseled modera- tion and forbearance, denounced the threatening Radicals, encour- aged the threatened "rebels " to stand their ground, and prevented much trouble.
On the 18th of April the Missouri State Convention, by a vote of 38 to 14, framed a new constitution, which was to be sub- mitted to the voters for adoption on the 6th of June. Upon the final adoption of the constitution in the convention, Hon. James P. Mitchell, of Lewis, was sick and did not vote. All of those who had participated in or given any sort of voluntary aid or encouragement to the Rebellion or to the Confederate cause were, by the third section of the proposed new constitution, prohibited from voting or holding office, and even from teaching, preaching, practicing law, or serving as jurors. And all such were prohibited from voting for or against the adoption of the constitution.
The canvass which succeeded was one of great bitterness. The qualified voters, all Union men, of course, were divided on the question, the conservative portion opposing the Radicals favoring the constitution. The former claimed that the instrument was framed in a malevolent spirit, and could not be justified except upon retaliatory grounds, unwarranted now that the war was over and the rebellion crushed. The harsh features, those disqualify- ing voters, teachers and preachers, for complicity in the rebellion, were severely commented upon, and it was shown that hundreds of tax-payers, old and honored citizens, who had been non- combatants during the war, but had sympathies, which they could not control, were not only to be relegated to a position of
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perpetual minority, but were denied a voice in the adoption or rejection of an organic law which was to govern them and their children after them. The entire political sections of the constitu- tion were claimed to be unduly vigorous, illiberal, proscriptive and un-American. Very many ex-Union officers and soldiers, and many still in the Federal service, were among the most strenuous opponents of the proposed new constitution.
On the other hand, the Radicals claimed that the results of the war were not to be entrusted to the care and keeping of the former enemies of the Union; that men who had renounced their allegiance to the United States and to the State of Missouri and had warred against them, claiming to be citizens of the Confed- erate States and owing sole allegiance and obedience to that gov- ernment and its flag, were not, and ought not to be, proper recip- ients of the ballot; that those who sympathized with the Con- federate cause, but remained at home and would not go out to fight, were worse than those who were bold enough to take up arms, and less fit to have a voice in the control of a government which they had desired might be destroyed. It was further alleged that had the war resulted differently, and Missouri become in fact one of the Confederate States, then no Union soldier, no militiaman, and nobody who had sympathized with the Union cause, would have been allowed a vote; that in all probability Senator Green's promise, that all Union men should be "kicked out of the State," would have been fulfilled, and Gen. Price's threat (of November 26, 1861) carried out, and "the $200,000,000 of Northern means" in Missouri confiscated for the benefit of those who had remained loyal to the Confed- erate cause and suffered thereby. Howe, of the La Grange American, said: " A man who is a traitor to his country is not - to be trusted. If the rebels are allowed to vote they will soon control the county and State and domineer over the loyal portion of the country. They will despise and lord it over those who have restored them to power, and when it comes to office-holding no 'Federal ' need apply."
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