Chapter 5
It took Will Brown and Floyd Burkley a week to get back to Kansas City and another day to get to Leavenworth. Blunt’s aide, Capt. Thomas Anderson, laid out papers and explained the General’s list of scouts and spies, and when Brown was introduced to Hoyt, the Colonel offered to compare notes.
“Colonel, I don’t have much to offer except a bunch of questions about how everything works. General Dodge has taken us to school, as it were, but we’re still ignorant. Floyd and me we got lists and maps and notes and we agree that none of it adds up to a comprehensible system. I can tell you, it makes no sense. The more we learn, the more confused it gets.”
“That, Mr. Brown, is what Socrates would say is the beginning of understanding. And it holds especially true of where you are going. St. Louis is the crucible of Missouri, the best example of the worst of the war. It’s all there. Every force and fragment of the war has its representatives fighting by proxy there, pimps and preachers all. We are sending into that den of iniquity a member of the fairer sex. I hope you can keep her under your wing. Her name is Elizabeth Stiles.” The Colonel waxed rhapsodic about her beauty and her virtues and told her story.
He ended with Jim Lane’s letter of recommendation. “She’s our best link to Lafayette Baker. From what she told me, he was quite taken with her. He has set her up with bona fides as a rebel facilitator and she is our link to many of the seditious groups in St. Louis. Be good to her.”
“What can you tell me about your operation here? Anderson in Blunt’s office suggested this place was a nest of vipers, Redlegs and jayhawkers all.”
“But our money’s still good, as the saying goes,” Hoyt said. “Blunt got orders to either bring us under control or disperse us last spring. They ran Jennison off, transferred the Seventh Cavalry to Corinth and put them under Grant. When they did that, many of the men just up and quit. Some of them went to the bush, and some came back here and hired back on with Blunt as scouts. You see, Blunt knows that the Redlegs can do things he can’t do. While we’re a thorn in his side, we’re also the saber on his hip. We’re good at what we do and we’re quick about it.
The core of our company had been riding with Jennison’s jayhawkers off and on during the border wars, and the Colonel brought us into the official service of the Union Oct. 28, 1861. We were mustered in to the Department of Kansas, Army of the Mississippi and served there until September last. I was in Company K from the first. Under Col. Jennison we prided ourselves in our abilities as horsemen, as a self-sustaining cavalry unit independent of a larger parent force. Col. Jennison got us Colt revolving rifles and .44 caliber army revolvers. We saw ourselves as the scourge of the bushwackers, and we were successful in that we burned them out of their nests and rode them down and killed them. We stole their horses and mules and freed their slaves. We didn’t touch their women and children.
What ultimately destroyed us as a regiment was the politics. The politics of Missouri, the politics of the military, and the politics of Honest Abe, who wanted to save the union and end the war at all costs. Eventually the generals tried to bring us under control by moving us out of Missouri and down into Mississippi and Tennessee, and then they made us part of Sheridan’s army, but that came later.
We started to come apart as a fighting cavalry when Jennison resigned. Daniel Read Anthony was brought in to replace him and if the politicians thought they were getting control over the Seventh by bringing him in, they were quickly proved wrong.
Read Anthony gave up newspapering and joined the Union Army to free slaves and punish their masters, pure and simple. He was an excellent leader, a good horseman, and our champion. He was angry that Missouri still held slaves and he got tired of slave hunters being given free passes through our lines to chase runaways. He knew, we all knew, that the hawks were scouts, spies, sometimes even sharp shooters. You can’t run an army and let the enemy get behind you.
So in June, Anthony issued Order No. 26. It got picked up in the papers and everybody got talking. That was the big problem, the newspapers. Again, it gets back to politics. If Anthony had just told his men to stop allowing people through the lines instead of issuing an official order, he might still be in command. But that’s not Daniel Read Anthony’s way. General Mitchell told him to countermand the order and Anthony refused, so Mitchell had him arrested and thrown in the guardhouse. Then the senate got involved and when they got finished investigating and arguing, Halleck released Anthony from prison, reinstated him to duty, but didn’t give his command back. Anthony resigned and became postmaster. I took over Company K while Anthony was in the guardhouse and I held it together for a few months. The politicians didn’t like my history of jayhawking. They pulled me and put Albert Lee in charge and moved the Seventh down to Corinth, and from what I understand he’s doing fine.”
“And the men who stayed here, the men who didn’t go down to Corinth…”
“They’re here with me, aren’t they?
“As their commander.”
“I prefer to say that I’m their leader. The men I ride with don’t take commands. They only look to me for leadership, and I’m proud to do that. They don’t need me. If I go down, they will continue to be The Seventh Cavalry Volunteers.”
“And they are down on the books as scouts. You see, I’m interested because part of my assignment is to organize a strategic information system in Missouri and I’d like to know what you can do for me. What I can do for you.”
“That, Mr. Brown, is yet to be discovered, isn’t it?
Quinn's War Page 5