Wild Bill

by Tom Clavin

  By this time, Lane and his former bodyguard Bill Hickok had lost most of their connection to each other, though their paths would sometimes cross during the Civil War in eastern Kansas military operations. During the conflict, Lane acquired the nicknames “the Grim Chieftain” and the simpler “Bloody Jim.” The war afforded him the opportunity to become a brigadier general in command of the Kansas Brigade, consisting of the Third through Seventh Kansas Volunteers. Acting further on his abolitionist outlook, Lane formed the First Kansas Colored Volunteers, the first regiment of black troops to taste battle on the Union side in the war. In the summer of 1861, he led the brigade in numerous actions against the army of General Price and other Confederate forces. And, demonstrating there was a very thin line between him and Quantrill, there was the Osceola Massacre.

  That September, Lane was told that hidden in Osceola, Missouri, were Confederate supplies and cash. He led his men into the town and ransacked it, stealing possessions from victims no matter what their political persuasion. Nine residents were accused of refusing to reveal where the Confederate material was—if indeed it was there, it was never found—and were immediately tried, found guilty, and shot. The looters became drunk, with some having to be loaded into wagons as Lane’s brigade departed. They left behind several fires they had set, which destroyed the town, killing more of its citizens. Lane’s personal wagon trundled out of town bearing a piano and a rack of silk dresses. Though his actions were widely condemned, even by senior Union commanders, Lane continued to lead Kansas troops in the war.

  Considering how many enemies he had made and how many men had vowed revenge for their cutthroat activities, it is startling that both James Lane and William Quantrill survived the Civil War. With the latter, it was just barely. Blithely ignoring what was happening back east, in May 1865, Quantrill led the most recent edition of a band of guerrillas into western Kentucky. Union troops had been tipped off that Quantrill was on his way, and an ambush was set up. During it, Quantrill was shot in the back, paralyzing him from the chest down. He died on June 6, not having reached age twenty-eight.

  In 1865, Bloody Jim Lane was reelected to the U.S. Senate. However, the mental instability that had been somewhat obscured by a general’s uniform during the war became more apparent in civilian life. Almost as soon as Lane took his seat in the Senate, there were investigations into his finances, which of course included what he had plundered for years. Lane grew increasingly paranoid and morose, perhaps missing the glory days of guerrilla warfare. On July 1, 1866, while back in Leavenworth, he leaped from a moving carriage. To give the seeming suicide attempt a better chance at success, while doing so, he shot himself in the head. Lane died from his wound ten days later.

  The newly christened Wild Bill Hickok was not wild enough to keep running with Lane as the war continued, and he was kept busy as a wagon master and Union army scout. Then he added espionage to his activities. More than a few writers and historians have attributed this aspect of Hickok’s Civil War service to being part of his legend more than being factual. However, according to Joseph Rosa and his investigation, “Wild Bill graduated from sharpshooting to scouting and spying. Soon after the Pea Ridge battle he is alleged to have wangled himself on to Curtis’s headquarters staff … it is probable that he was attached to the Eighth Missouri State Militia as a scout or spy. The regiment was organized in 1861 and saw active service until 1865. One of its roles was to provide scouts and spies to infiltrate Confederate-held territory.”

  This does seem to be what Hickok did from late 1862 into 1864—spy for the Union army, with many of his missions placing him behind rebel lines. The first major mission brought him into contact with Susannah Moore, another of his romantic partners.

  Hickok was a member of a party of men who had gathered information and ridden back roads looking for the Union line. They came upon a cabin in a clearing, and a black man working outside told them there were four guerrillas inside holding two women. Guns drawn, Hickok entered the cabin. The men inside must have been thoroughly surprised, hungover, or just unaccustomed to facing a man with pistols because Hickok was able to disarm all four. One of the two women was Moore, who “seemed much impressed by Hickok’s appearance and by his early mastery of the four guerillas,” according to one account.

  Suddenly, a squad of Confederate cavalry arrived at the cabin, and a firefight began. After the Union scouts wounded three of the enemy, the remaining rebel riders took off. Hickok and another scout gave chase. His horse was shot dead, but Moore, who had been following them, stopped and gave Hickok her horse. Off he went again, but he and the other scouts were by then too far behind. They returned to the cabin, picking Moore up along the way. It was too dangerous to stay there, so with directions from Moore as to where the Union forces were, they rode away.

  She and Hickok would see each other again. Indeed, William Connelley reports that the scouts did not ride away; instead, they and Hickok remained with Moore and her companion overnight. The next morning, he and his men were attacked by a fresh contingent of Confederates. They held out in a small fort against an assault for two hours. During it, Moore stood by Hickok’s side, and she “proved one of the most savage and reckless fighters on the Union side,” reports Connelley.

  The truth about some of the tales told about Hickok’s spying exploits will never be fully known. It is clear from collections like J. W. Buel’s Heroes of the Plains (which falsely claimed that Hickok kept a journal of his daily activities, even while a captive) that stories were fabricated, turning them into dime-store novel fodder that would be gobbled up by gullible readers back east. Still, between what can be documented and a few experiences as Hickok himself related them after the war (before he became careless with facts), it appears that he was frequently on espionage missions, and he was a productive spy.

  One reason was Hickok was by this point in his life a battle-tested man with steel nerves. He rode into dangerous situations—not just riding far afield from his own troops and behind enemy lines but dressing as a Confederate officer to more directly glean information. Of course, this meant execution if caught. He did not panic under pressure, and he survived a couple of narrow escapes.

  Hickok told an interviewer after the war that one of his adventures had him spend five months traveling with General Price’s army of rebels. He knew of a Confederate soldier named Barnes who had been killed at Pea Ridge, and he presented himself to a regiment of rebel mounted rangers as the dead man’s brother. They believed Hickok, and he enlisted. During the months riding with them, Hickok collected information “until I knew every regiment and its strength; how much cavalry there was and how many guns the artillery had.”

  One account has Hickok finagling his way to being a scout directly under the command of General Price, and thus there would be times when he would be near the Confederate commander and eavesdropping on his conversations with subordinates and messengers giving him reports, gaining valuable information at the very top level. Getting that intelligence to General Curtis would be more difficult: “You see ’twas time for me to go, but it wasn’t easy to git out, for the river was close picketed on both sides,” Hickok told the postwar interviewer.

  There is more than one story about Hickok barely escaping from the Confederate side. A version has it that he concocted a ruse to fight a sergeant in his regiment who claimed that there wasn’t a man whom he could not beat, and Hickok suggested they go down to the river and let the Yankees across the way watch the fisticuffs. Somehow, the Union troops would know the rebel scout was Hickok, and perhaps he planned to outlast the sergeant and get a head start across the river. The plan went awry, though, when a Union soldier cried out, “Bully for Wild Bill!” He was heard loud and clear.

  “Then the sargent suspicioned me, for he turned on me and growled, ‘By God, I believe yer a Yank!’ And he at onst drew his revolver; but he was too late, for the minute he drew his pistol I put a ball through him.”

  Hickok and his horse dove into the r
iver. Bullets flew over his head as the Union troops provided covering fire. He held on to his horse’s tail as they fought their way through deep water. The Confederate troops who had followed to watch the fistfight opened up, too, and “bullets zitted and skipped on the water. I thought I was hit again and again.” Hickok survived to be personally thanked by General Curtis.

  Another narrow escape was observed by young Bill Cody. There are actually at least three stories of Hickok making a dash for Union lines with a companion who was killed, and in each story, the unfortunate man has a different name. In one case, when one of the escape stories was published after the war, the companion supposedly killed read about it in the newspaper.

  For a time during his spying activities, Hickok reunited with Cody. The latter was seventeen when his mother died in November 1863. Up to that point in the war, Cody had worked as a freight hauler and ridden with the Red Legs as they attacked settlements in Missouri. The reasoning of his unit, commanded by a man named Chandler, was that this pursuit was justified; since “the government was waging war against the South, it was perfectly square and honest, and we had a good right to do it,” Cody recalled. “So we didn’t let our consciences trouble us very much.” His military status changed after his mother’s death. He “continued my dissipation about two months,” and then “one day, after having been under the influence of bad whisky, I awoke to find myself a soldier in the Seventh Kansas.” Apparently, in a blackout, he had enlisted in the regiment—also known as Jennison’s Jayhawkers—and he went off to war.

  The Seventh Kansas fought in Tennessee and Mississippi in 1864 and then was sent to Missouri as part of the final campaign against General Price’s army. By then, Cody was a corporal or sergeant and serving as a scout. One day, he was riding well ahead when he arrived at a farmhouse and found a man there wearing gray clothes, sitting at a table eating bread and milk, who addressed him with “You little rascal.”

  Cody recalled in his first autobiography, “Judge my surprise when I recognized in the stranger my old friend and partner, Wild Bill, disguised as a Confederate officer.” Hickok informed him that he was disguised as an officer from Texas attached to General Marmaduke’s division of Price’s army. He gave to Cody what information he had collected in recent weeks and letters to bring back to Union commanders. Cody hoped he would return with him, but Hickok said, “I am getting so much valuable information that I propose to stay a little while longer in this disguise.” And off he rode—perhaps on Black Nell. A piece of the Hickok legend that has little or no factual evidence is that he rode this magnificent mare who helped him get out of one scrape after another.

  Cody claims to have witnessed one of Hickok’s dashing escapes. The Union and Confederate forces were drawn up in a skirmish line near Fort Scott, Kansas, when Cody observed two men take off on horses away from the rebel position. Improbably, “some five hundred shots were fired at the flying men” with only one man—another of Hickok’s unfortunate sidekicks—being felled. With Union troops returning fire, he made it safely to report to General Alfred Pleasonton that Price’s force was weaker than it appeared. Based on this intelligence, an attack was ordered, and it was successful in driving Price back.

  Hickok and Cody scouted together for a time during the campaign, then went to Springfield, Missouri. “Wild Bill and myself spent two weeks there ‘having a jolly good time,’ as some people would express it.”

  During this bacchanal, Cody may have been told of Hickok’s close shave with being executed. While with Marmaduke’s forces, a corporal recognized him as Union loyalist Bill Hickok. There was an immediate court-martial, and the prisoner was sentenced to die at dawn. Hickok was kept in a small cabin, guarded by six men, overnight until his appointment with the firing squad.

  With something like divine intervention—or Connelley’s invention, though Hickok later contended this happened—“a terrific storm rose.” The flashes of lightning allowed the prisoner to scan the interior, and he spotted an old knife used to unlock the door. Hickok used the knife to laboriously cut through the rope binding his wrists. After whetting the knife against his boot sole, Hickok approached the door and spoke to the guard, who we can believe was pretty soaked and miserable by now. Maybe the prospect of shelter prompted him to enter the cabin. His harsh reality was having his throat cut. Hickok’s “action was as quick as the lightning which was still flashing.”

  He exchanged clothes with the guard and took his place outside. The other guards were attempting to stay dry in a shed thirty or forty feet away. Hickok remained at his post until he thought the rebels were asleep; then he slipped away into the dark. All night he walked in the direction of where he thought the Union army was, moving more cautiously during the day, and found it the next evening.

  Before the conclusion of 1864, Hickok left off being a Union spy in favor of being a military policeman with some detours to being a scout again. He was paid sixty dollars a month. The reduction from an earlier salary reflects less on Hickok’s abilities than on the financial depletion of the U.S. treasury after three years of incessant war. At that time, he reported to General John Sanborn, who the previous October had been appointed commander of the District of Southwestern Missouri. Sanborn had distinguished himself during Grant’s Vicksburg campaign, and after the war, he would team up with Kit Carson to negotiate peace treaties with several Indian tribes.

  Transporting prisoners and chasing deserters probably was not too riveting an occupation, so Hickok may have welcomed participating in several battles that year. General Pleasonton had become commander of the District of Central Missouri, and his mandate was to finish off General Price’s army as a plausible threat once and for all. Pleasonton had come up the ranks as a cavalry officer and had been part of several major battles, including Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. He led the Union force against J. E. B. Stuart’s troopers in the Battle of Brandy Station, the largest cavalry battle of the war. In Missouri, he got right to work.

  The beginning of the end for Price occurred on October 21, 1864, at the Battle of Little Blue River in Jackson County, Missouri. Though Price had suffered one defeat after another, the Confederate general Edmund Kirby Smith ordered him to seize St. Louis. This quickly proved impossible, as the city and the route to it were too well defended. Plan B was to burst out of Missouri and into Kansas, even as far as Indian Territory in Oklahoma, capturing or if necessary destroying Union supplies. This plan looked less far-fetched when Price, still in Missouri, scored a minor victory at the Battle of Glasgow. Encouraged, Price headed toward Fort Leavenworth, which had become the headquarters of the Federal Department of Kansas.

  On paper, the Battle of Little Blue River was another minor victory for Price, who succeeded in pushing Union troops (many of them militia) back through the streets of Independence. But the Yankees made the rebs pay dearly for every inch, allowing more Union forces to consolidate under the command of General Curtis—and setting up the decisive Battle of Westport, which many historians have regarded as the “Gettysburg of the West.”

  On October 23, General Curtis and his Union troops faced off against General Price outside Kansas City for what would be their last decisive confrontation and the defeat of the final major Confederate offensive west of the Mississippi River. Curtis had learned of Price’s move on what was then called the Town of Kansas from several spies, including Hickok. An attack was launched against Marmaduke’s division at 8 A.M. By the early afternoon, other attacks had been made, and Price’s army was being hit from three different directions. Price was forced to set fire to prairie grass to set up a smoke screen to cover the withdrawal of his forces.

  The rebels would continue to retreat out of Kansas. Another blow, which occurred before Price crossed into Missouri, was the Battle of Mine Creek, when two of his cavalry divisions were routed by Union brigades commanded by Colonels John Finis Philips and Frederick Benteen.3 The remnants of Price’s army would find some refuge in Texas, but they would have no further imp
act on events in the South.

  When the Civil War ended, the scout and spy known as Wild Bill Hickok had one more message to deliver. On April 9, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant, and the news of the momentous event spread as fast as the communications networks of 1865 would allow. Eventually, even those on the frontier heard of it. An elated Hickok could not contain himself. William Darnell was a young man who was part of a wagon train approaching Fort Zarah in Barton County, Kansas, near Great Bend, in mid-April. Decades later, he would recall that a rider went dashing by, shouting, “Lee’s surrendered!” It was Hickok, and he kept calling that out until he had passed the wagon train, then he continued on to the fort—and beyond that, to the event that would define his life.

  Chapter Five

  THE GUNFIGHTER

  Most of the time during the months after the war ended found Wild Bill Hickok in a bustling Independence, Missouri. There he was reunited with Lorenzo, who was still busy hauling freight. And there was plenty of it, with the fighting over and interest in the American frontier being rekindled, especially among the young and the restless. That July, the editor Horace Greeley advised in the New-York Tribune, “Go west, young man, and grow up with the country,” borrowing the phrase that John Babsone Lane Soule had written in The Terre Haute Express in 1851: “Go west, young man, go west.”

  Hickok was thinking about it. In Independence, he had found an opportunity to work with his brother in a business that could only grow in the expected postwar expansion of the frontier. The Bill Hickok of a few years earlier would have been tempted, tugged by family loyalty and a more nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic. But he was a twenty-eight-year-old Civil War veteran now.