The History of Jackson county, Missouri, containing a history of the county, its cities, towns, etc., biographical sketches of its citizens, Jackson county in the late warhistory of Missouri, map of Jackson county, Part 37

Author: Union Historical Company
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Kansas City, Mo. : Union historical company
Number of Pages: 1068

USA > Missouri > Jackson County > The History of Jackson county, Missouri, containing a history of the county, its cities, towns, etc., biographical sketches of its citizens, Jackson county in the late warhistory of Missouri, map of Jackson county > Part 37

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The question might be asked where was the County Sheriff, or the County Marshal when so much outlawry and committance of crime was going on ? You might as well ask where the parson was, for one would have done about as much good as the other. That was the trouble ; there was no law; the law was set aside for the time being, and every man was a law unto himself. No doubt there were county officers-plenty of them, but they were mere figure-heads. They were housed up at Independence, Kansas City and Westport, taking care of number one as best they could, and perhaps did not hear of half the crimes com- mitted in the county. Were they to blame we might ask ? Perhaps not in every instance; there were no informers, no warrants issued and no one to confess his guilt. So, from circumstances such as these, we can partly conceive of the troubles and disasters that swept over our county during the years 1862-4.

In the summer of 1863, a respectable and well-known citizen by the name of John Hagan, was living a few miles south of Independence; he was a man that respected the rights of others, and by words and actions asked others to respect his, but alas ! the sequel will tell things quite differently. One bright Sunday morning, while he and his family, a wife and three children, were driving up to his brother's, William Hagan, who still lives near Lee's Summit, he met a band of Federal soldiers, who were much exasperated because the telegraph wire had been cut the day before. They ordered him to dismount from among his family and go before them into a neighboring wood, where they shot him through the

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head ; he was found next day killed in the manner described. This was the cause of a more bloody tragedy, or at least a more desperate one. Whether a murder could be more bloody and censurable than that which drags a devoted husband and father from the midst of his family and cruelly takes his life, so that the half-distracted wife and her frightened little ones had to go on and find some one to return and search for the missing husband and father, is a serious ques- tion. Yet, we will presently see where blind vengeance and madness did their gory work without the least suspicion as far as learned.

Two young men, both of confederate sympathies resolved upon revenge. One was known as Ed. Hink and the other as Sam Jones, the former was an uncle to the latter. As they were riding along the road where Mr. John Hagan was killed a short time before, they in the ardor and indiscretion of youth, vowed to each other to kill the next man they met. How silly and yet how singular was such as this to the spirit of the times! See those boys that might have been, under favorable circumstances, pious and model young men, sweeping along the highway swearing eternal death and destruction to the first man they met, whether friend or foe! Behold their misguided zeal hurrying them on to the next meeting where they were to imbue their youthful hands in innocent blood. How can we imagine they felt as they turned the bend of the road and saw their victim approaching without the least intimation of their diabolical design. Oh! how fortunate it would have been if some friendly hand could have stopped those youths from their first murder, how some mother's heart would have `rejoiced if her wayward son had escaped the terrible sin of blood-guiltiness ! But like the dangerous son of Hamilcar, they were bound under the heaviest oaths to shed human blood. As they charged along the highway, making the air hideous with their mischievous threats, they met another young man a few miles from Independence. The name of the latter has not been ascertained, though much can be found concerning the high esteem in which he was held by every one. From oral statements of the former young men, when they met the man they killed they did not ask him a single word, not even for the cause with which he sympathized, not whether he was a Union man or a Confederate man, but simply drew their deadly revolvers and shot him dead upon the spot. They did not show him as much mercy as the guiltiest and most deserving of death would have received at the hands of the most desperate guerrilla band. When they had done their worst, after they had sent all that was immortal of their comrade, trembling into the presence of the Great Judge of all without a single moments warning, they searched the body of his fair person and found to their great horror and regret that he was a young medical student just returned home to his friends and relatives with his diploma. Poor man ! He was entirely inno- cent of all the wrongs and their exaggerated reports of either side; little did he dream as he bore his authority "to go and heal the nations" that his career would terminate so unnecessarily and cowardly. But then, he that sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed " has gone forth into the world and has certainly been verified among all tongues and peoples. Not very long after this bloody deed had been done, one of these young men, and the presumption is, the principal one, met his fate. The other is still living, but his garments, as it were, smell of blood. Like Cain, he is fearful of being slain.

Thus far it has been seen that there were crimes committed-black and in- delible crimes that our country can never blot out; crimes, for generations yet to come, that will make the blood chill to relate. And these, too, we must re- member, were committed by men who were on both sides of that dreadful war ; over which, however, we ask our kind readers and noble Americans to spread the robe of charity, so that a few years hence the world will never know that we were once engaged in such a deadly struggle. But before concluding this chap-

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ter, it is but due the historical narrative that some of the crimes committed in Jackson county in the years of 1864-5 should be noticed.

By the spring of 1863 there were to be no doubts as to a man's politics, whether a "jayhawker " or a " bush-whacker," a militiaman or a guerrilla, a Fed- eral or a Confederate, he was to show his colors and get into line or leave the country. Prominent among those who had distinguished themselves in the deeds of crime was Quantrell. He did many things as a guerrilla chieftan that the world would not believe, and perhaps he himself will not conceive of its enormity until he stands before the Judge of all the earth at the last day, and then in what he did he was not alone by any means; it was through Quantrell that the world ever heard and felt the merciless vengeance of Cole Younger, Bill Anderson, George Tucker, the James Boys and a host of other blood-thirsty wretches that have long since met their terrible fate. As has been stated elsewhere, most of these had causes of their own for entering so desperately into the war. Many of their families and relatives had suffered almost inhumanly from the other side. By the unfortunate crimes offered to Quantrell and his neighbors, to the Younger Brothers, their parents and sisters, was brought such a whirlpool of madness upon the peo- ple of the country, that the like has never been experienced in the history of the country; but it is not so much the insults that brought these outlaws to the front as the terrible deeds they committed-not that their injuries should be overlook- ed, for such is not the case. They have given rise to not a few almost fictitious works, in which the very wrong offendings done have been greatly exaggerated. The year 1863, it seems inaugurated a different movement on the part ot the des-

peradoes and guerrillas in Jackson county. The country was being filled with Federal soldiers, so that it was impossible for the guerillas to have anything like a permanent camp or headquarters; consequently, they selected from among the Southern sympathizers the bravest and most dangerous men to be found; they bound themselves together by an oath that, perhaps, has not its equal in the mem- ory of man, that they would work together, act under the black flag and take no prisoners ! About the time such a combination was effected, and as though it needed some fresh and startling crime to revive the memory of Colonel Younger's assassination, his daughters' prison death and the recent death of other friends and neighbors, Mr. Lee, Quantrell's respected friend, was dragged from his house and put to death. Mrs. Younger, Cole's mother, though deprived of her hus- band and stripped of all her children, was compelled, at the point of the bayonet, to apply the torch to her own house. Such fresh deeds as this brought to light the bloody Bill Anderson and some of the James Boys and relatives. Bill An- derson was, perhaps, the most unconscientious man that ever shed blood. The number of lives these men have destroyed has never been known. The number that the soldiers and county officials destroyed in attempting to take them has never been ascertained. The innocent suffered invariably, while the guilty es- caped.

Quantrell and his men, principal among whom was Cole Younger, in these latter years of the war, did not hesitate to dash into the very heart of any defens- less community, do their fatal work, make their way back into the eastern por- tion of Jackson county, and there suddenly disappear in their mysterious cave. Do we wish to stop and learn more definitely ? Will we attempt to reviv- ify those horrid scenes that the most credulous will hardly believe? Were we disposed, the spirit and culture of our time forbid. What huge volumes it would take to contain descriptions of the bloody and ghastly steps of the Guerrilla chief- tains ! But will we call all these individual crimes, for whom the perpetrators should have suffered ? Should the unqualified outrages committed by all persons, of whatever name or sympathies, be traced to the guilty hand, and it be made to feel the vengeance of a violated law? Were such the case, many of the best and most respectable citizens in the county and surrounding country, would be

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made to tremble; many of our best and most religious mothers, who are now in- stilling the strictest piety into their growing up children, would be shown to have wished, anxiously brooded over the shrine, that death and destruction might sweep over the homes of their next door neighbors. Were they culpable? per- haps, will be the debatable question in a few generations to come. If so, the guilty could, undoubtedly, have been found in every regiment and army in the field ; in every cast of party, and, to a qualified extent, every home to be found in the thickest of the trouble. Oh, the horrors of a civil war! May we all drink such Lethean draughts that we might never have aught against our neigh- bor. Then, it seems, as for the crimes of individuals, they have all vanished into the clouds of the war. The county records, of course, contain a great deal about outraged justice during those years of our history, but, to say the least, they must be very incomplete. Then it was the times and the occasions, and not the men, to a wonderful degree. The crimes, however, that these times inaugurated did not terminate with the war; but they are continuing on till this day (1881), and perhaps will grow for years to come. But for all later crimes, the law endeavors, and justly, too, to apprehend and bring the offenders to justice ; in some degree it has been successful, but there are to-day, running at large, many highwaymen, who almost put the law at defiance. They had their start in this career of crime in Jackson county, and are, therefore, to some extent, connected with its history. The bloody and destructive attack upon Lawrence, Kansas, could almost be in- corporated into the history of Jackson county, for the identical leaders of that bond of death, and the most of its two hundred privates, lived formerly in Jack- son county, Missouri. When Quantrell and his blood-guilty men returned from that raid of annihilation, they mysteriously disappeared somewhere in the county. Recent revelations seem to indicate that that wily chief, in association with Cole Younger, had a cavern in which they could conceal themselves, with several men and their horses and booty. Whenever, in the' desperate years of 1861-4, they did mischief, either upon the Federal soldiers or upon citizens around in the coun- try, they could be traced into certain localities in the county, and suddenly disap- pear as though the earth would swallow them up.

Imagine, if you can, the terrible condition a community would be in when they would be situated between the galling fires of Federals and guerrillas; not very often at once, but where one party would go killing and burning persons and things of the other party, the soldiers and scouts of that party would come in a few days and do worse. And it is well to notice and record the burning shame upon our history, that many crimes, individual crimes, were committed, but, per- haps, not one in a score was brought before the courts. Why were not those un- controllable soldiers that murdered several innocent men, some few cases women, and fewer children, made to pay the debt of their guilt? Why was not that most terrible of all devils, Bill Anderson and his accomplices, that stabbed so many hearts and cut so many throats, brought to the bar of a most completely violated law and made to answer for his crimes? The answers to the preceding might be many and various, but the simplest and best would be, perhaps, that it was not able under such disorganized circumstances. The depredations of the guer- rillas ; their almost certain escape with valuable spoils; the soldiers pursuit out into the country districts of the county inaugurated a species of retaliatory vengence that did not subside for several years after the war. In fact, crimes and misdoings that resulted from those times have reached down to a very few years since ; a full history of which, however, will be found in other parts of this volume.

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CHAPTER XIV.

JACKSON COUNTY DURING THE WAR.

Sacking of the United States Arsenal, at Liberty-Confederate Camp on Rock Creek-Death of Capt. Halloway-Confederates enter Independence in 1861-Burning of Property-Capt. Fuller takes Independence and Hangs a man on the Public Square-Quantrell comes into In- dependence- Campaign in 1862-Battle of Lone Jack-Ft. Pennock-Order Number Eleven -Price's March through this Section-Organization of the Home Guards-The Iron- Clad Oath-Etc., etc.

The secession of several of the Southern States in the spring of 1861, precip- itated the strife in Jackson county, and especially in and around Independence, and men began to express their opinions openly and boldly, with the cause that had their sympathies, whether it gave offense or not to their neighbors. The first immediate attack it seems between the two sections-the North and South- in these parts had anything to do, was the sacking of the United States Arsenal in Clay county.

Men were in that action from the counties of Clay, Jackson, Platte and Lafayette. They supplied themselves with muskets, holster pistols, sabers, am- munition, etc., and then quietly returned to their several counties and homes and awaited the course of events. It was not long afterward when a similar occurrence took place at Lexington, Missouri ; as these things had been done it was evident to any one that there were serious apprehensions of trouble. So, early in the summer of 1861, there was a camp formed of Confederates, on Rock Creek, a few miles west of Independence ; as ascertained, many of these were citizens of Independence. A short while after they had struck their camp, perhaps a day or two, there was a reconnoitering party sent out from Kansas City; the two companies met under truce-and it so turned out that the Captains were very nearly dressed alike, and were acquainted with each other, and each one advanced and both were talking upon the circumstance of their thus meeting, when the Confederates fired upon the Federal soldiers, which precipitated a fight, in which Captain Holloway, of the Confederates, was killed. This created no little excitement in Independence; the gravest and most unexcitable men of the town of both parties felt that a portentous crisis was just ahead.

A short time afterward Lowe & Jennison's cavalry from Kansas attacked In- dependence, placed several citizens under guard care at the grocery store of Porter & Fraser, and the hardware store of Moss & Co. and carried away a great deal of property such as carriages, horses, harness, wagons and cattle, As they were returning, it seems, to Kansas City they burnt Pitcher's mill, as well as his and Reuben Johnson's residence. This was in the fall of 1861 ; and during the win- ter Capt. Oliver was sent into the county with five companies of the seventh Missouri-the bloody seventh they called themselves. He and his command were charged by the people of Independence with many oppressive acts and needless cruelties.

In the spring of 1862, Capt Fuller was sent from Kansas City to Independ- ence, soon after the bridge over the Big Blue had been burned by Quantrell. In the neighborhood of the burned bridge he captured a man whom he had reason to believe was a member of Quantrell's band, and he took him to Independence and hanged him publicly on the public square. This same Capt. Fuller also captured the town and gathered many of the citizens on the public square, where they were more or less questioned concerning their political predilections. Fuller did not re-

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main in Independence very long, before Lieutenant-Colonel Brown, in the spring of 1862, with a detachment of soldiers came down from Kansas City; there were then in town several companies of infantry and cavalry. About this time when the Federal soldiers were making, or beginning to make, Independence a kind of headquarters for these parts, Quantrell, with his desperate scouts, who had been causing the Federals some trouble for some time, was known to be hov- ering around the neighborhood. They made one of their intrepid dashes upon the town, and before the Federals had time to array themselves, the Confederates were on the public square. Imagine the confusion, Three or four dozen men in the center of perhaps a thousand well armed soldiers. From the actions of Quantrell, it appears that he did not intend to hazard an engagement at this time, that it was not his wish to measure strength with a thousand soldiers ; but rather to charge in, capture some important equipments, some five prisoners from whom to receive all the information that could be had, concerning the anticipated movements of the opposing side. Reports of persons who were living in the town at that time, say that there was one of Quantrell's men killed and two of the Federals, besides what were wounded on both sides.

Quantrell's men took a young man prisoner, unarmed him and were marching him off with them, as they were going out on the east side of the square, the young man was ordered to ride faster but he refused to do so, and he was shot, it is said on good authority, somewhere about the head. But the result of the shoot- ing was not fatal The young man, either on foot or on horseback, broke and ran away, the Confederates after him. It appears, however, that he left his horse, and by dashing through alleys, over fences and through houses, he got away; perhaps, they were being too hotly pursued by the Federal soldiers and had to get out of town to save their lives.

As they were leaving Independence by way of the Spring Branch road, Quantrell's horse was either shot from under him, or stumbled and fell, and he had to take it afoot; such might have been a little unusual to Quantrell at that early day of the war, but at a later date it was quite ordinary for him to have to escape in that and similar ways. This little retreat of Quantrell's was nothing more than he expected, if we receive the best and most authenticated accounts of that transaction. The Federals stationed in the town took a little more precau- tion and consequently increased their assurances of future safety-but they "should have taken heed least they fall."

In the summer of 1862, Colonel Buell was placed in command of the forces at Independence; though a good soldier and splendid commander, he did not thoroughly understand the kind of men he was expecting to meet. If he had and studied their modes of warfare, it probably would have saved him an inglori- ous defeat. About fifteen hundred men under Hughs and other com- manders, atatcked Independence and after hard fight defeated Colonel Buell and took about 350 prisoners, all of whom they paroled. But the Federal soldiers came into town in such numbers that the Confederates could not hold the place. But as it seems from their general mode of warfare in these parts, they had done mostly what they had desired to do, namely, to show their power, to obtain arms and large stores of ammunition, all of which they got in abundance in that engagement. They also dislodged many offensive persons and restored as well as took off some considerable property. In no State of the Union was the horrors of the war more visible, or more severely felt than in Missouri; especially was Missouri more deeply and severely scourged with the evils and evil conse- quences of guerrilla warefare than any other. No county of Missouri suffered as much from that species of warfare as did the County of Jackson; and no town- ship, perhaps, in the county had greater reason to complain of those evils than Van Buren. The Sni Hills in this and adjoining townships came to be consid- ered but another name for bush-whacking exploits, and barbarities on one side, and

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Federal retaliation and revenge on the other. Every southern State had its battle- fields, gory with blood and ghastly with the dead; some of them surpassing in ghastliness anything in modern times, but none of them surpassing in stubborn courage, determined resistance, and heroic valor that scene which was wit- nesssd in the little village christened for the lone tree of the township.

The citizens of that village had been accustomed to alarms and scenes of bloodshed and cruelty. Scarcely a week passed without some exciting occur- rence, or some violent death. But it was reserved for the 16th of August, 1862, to witness the grim monsters, war and death, and carnage, in all their horrors. It is the battle then of Lone Jack that the historian of the township will have to record as the bloodiest of all the bloody scenes in the township during all of that long and crual war.

For months the guerrilla, Quantrell, and others had been carrying on their system of bush-whacking warfare from their hiding places in the Sni Hills and other parts of the county; while the Union soldiers held and garrisoned the principal towns, and sent out scouting parties to chastise the troublesome bush- whackers; and too often the chastisement fell upon the innocent in place of the guilty. During the first week in August, 1862, a strong effort was made to strengthen the Confederate force in the county, and recruiting officers were busy swelling their ranks. A very large majority of the citizens were in sympathy with the South, and many of them who were opposed to a guerrilla warfare, and had managed to stay at home, by hiding in the woods when ever a Federal scout was in the vicinity, were persuaded then to enter the regular Confederate service, as the surest means of safety; and Col. John T. Hughes, a regular Confederate officer, on recruiting service, was prepared to enlist and swear them into service, as honorable soldiers. While others, who were not at all averse to the bush-whack- ing mode of warfare, were at the same time swelling the ranks of Quantrell. Hughes, Quantrell and Hays having mustered and united their forces, on the roth of August made an attack on Independence ; garrisoned by a Federal force under Col. Buell; which place and force they captured, with all its stores of arms and ammunition; which circumstance still further aided and stimulated the Con- federates in the work of recruiting. Col. Hughes was killed at the taking of In- dependence, and his command devolved on Col. Gideon Thompson, of Clay county, and Col. Upton Hays. The Confederate officers, with their regiments, battalions and companies, were hurrying up from the South, recruiting and swel -- ling their ranks as they came; and it was given out, that Lexington and other Federal posts would soon fall, as Independence had done. In the forenoon of August 15th, those regiments, battalions and companies began to arrive in Lone Jack, and continued to arrive during the day, under the command of Cols. Cockrell, Tracy, Hunter, Jackman and Lewis. Col. Totten, commanding the Federal post at Lexington, after the battle at Independence, having learned that Thompson and Hays were somewhere between Independence and Lone Jack, in compliance with orders from General Schofield, sent out Major Emory Foster, with eight hundred men to cut them off from the reinforcements coming from the south, before those reinforcements could arrive. At the same time Col. Fitz Henry Warren, 15th Iowa cavalry, was ordered from Clinton to co-operate with Major Foster, having left Lexington early in the morning of Friday, August 15th ; sent out two small flanking parties to make inquiries, and hunt up the enemy he was after ; posted on with his main force, over seven hundred strong, and arrived at Lone Jack at 8 o'clock in the night. His force consisted mostly of Missouri militia, mustered into the United States, drawn from the 6th, the 7th and 8th, Catherwood's, Phillips' and McClurg's regiments, and Nugent's battalion. He also had some Illinois and Indiana soldiers and the 7th Missouri cavalry, with two field pieces of Babb's Indiana battery. Foster had been told before reaching town that Confederates to the number of four thousand were there; but, as he

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The History of Jackson county, Missouri, containing a history of the county, its cities, towns, etc., biographical sketches of its citizens, Jackson county in the late warhistory of Missouri, map of Jackson county, Part 37

Author: Union Historical Company Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Kansas City, Mo. : Union historical company Number of Pages: 1068

Author: Union Historical Company
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Kansas City, Mo. : Union historical company
Number of Pages: 1068