On July 12, 1855, a large proslavery convention gathered at Lexington, across the river in Lafayette County. The 205 delegates included David Atchison, Claiborne Jackson, and Governor Sterling Price. The meeting endorsed a set of resolutions that carefully papered over the split between the extremists and moderates, between standard-bearers of the South and those of the border West. But the division could be seen by all who cared to look for it. “Let us … save the Union if possible from the vandal assaults of abolitionist traitors,” declared secessionist James Shannon on the second day. “If a dissolution is forced upon us by domestic traitors,” he added grimly, “then I, for one, say … we will stand to our arms.”62
Through all this angry rhetoric, Whigs and some of the more moderate Democrats could be seen nervously edging away from the fire-eaters (as secessionists were called). Of course, there was far more to Missouri politics than the tension between revolver-waving border ruffians and their Union-minded neighbors. The public life of the state can be compared to a frozen river, seamed with dozens of cracks—but this was the one that would split open the sheet of ice and send everyone plunging into the torrent below. And once the drowning were submerged in its chilling waters, they would claw each other without pity.
Out of those waters, Jesse James would emerge transformed, baptized in horrors that had their origins in these tumultuous years of his childhood. As time would soon show, his mother held decided opinions about the crisis enveloping the nation and dividing her neighbors. Sharp-tongued, intelligent, outspoken, she sided with the large and active community of proslavery militants in Clay County—the men who drilled and marched and went off to fight the abolitionists, who returned and hounded those who doubted Missouri’s sisterhood with the South. The crisis struck close to the hearth of Zerelda’s own home: slaves were her most valuable property, and free-state jayhawkers were not very far away. Through both the headline-grabbing Kansas struggle and pure self-interest, a Southern identity rooted itself firmly in her household.
From the age of eight, Jesse lived a life imbued with a cause, immersed in a militant air of defiance that rang from dinner-table conversation to churchyard talk to the tramp of border ruffian squads riding through the countryside. They would be ready, the people assured each other; they would fight for their rights and their property. But even here, in fire-eating Clay County, the population was not unanimous; the harder the proslavery extremists pushed, the greater the determination of some residents to preserve the Union at all costs. Already some could hear the ice cracking beneath their feet.63
PART TWO
Fire
1861–1865
How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people; how is she become a widow! She that was great among nations, a princess among the provinces, how is she become a tributary! … The Lord hath accomplished his fury; he hath poured out his fierce anger, and hath kindled a fire in Zion, and it hath devoured its foundations.
—Lamentations 1: 1–2, 4: 11
Each day I live proves to me the total depravity of man.
—Sarah P. Harlan
Haynesville, Missouri
June 9, 1865
CHAPTER FOUR
Rebels
IN EARLY MAY 1861, as the days swelled into the cool fullness of spring, Frank James slid into a saddle or mounted a wagon seat and set out on the short ride into the village of Centerville. The slender, long-faced eighteen-year-old would have ridden with his quiet stepfather and probably his forceful mother. It would not have been strange if they took his thirteen-year-old brother Jesse as well, for this was a great and memorable occasion. Frank was going to war.
The people of Missouri traditionally relied on mass meetings to express their opinions. They gathered in courthouses, churches, and town squares to speak on matters great and small, from unruly slaves to demands for a local railroad (like the one planned for Clay County). But as the members of the Samuel family joined their neighbors at a rally in Centerville, there was only one issue to be discussed. Days before, on April 12, 1861, rebel troops in South Carolina had fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. On April 14, the bastion’s Federal garrison had surrendered. On April 15, President Abraham Lincoln had called for seventy-five thousand troops to suppress the Southern insurrection. And on April 20, the conflict had come to Clay County, when a group of local secessionists seized the U. S. arsenal in Liberty. Now citizens were gathering in every village and crossroads in the county to voice their feelings on the war erupting around them.
So Frank and Reuben and perhaps Zerelda and Jesse joined their fellow farmers and merchants in Centerville, where conversations turned from hemp prices, tobacco shipments, and the latest marriage to a set of resolutions, prepared by a committee over the previous week.
“WHEREAS,” the preamble began, “civil war has been inaugurated in the United States by the extreme men of the North and the South, and whereas Missouri occupies a central position between the two extremes, and has hitherto earnestly opposed all hostile demonstrations …”
It was a good beginning, neatly capturing the crowd’s mixed emotions in these worrisome days. Some of them, like most Missourians, hoped to stay out of the impending war. They honestly felt themselves to be part of a distinct section of the country, the western border, that was caught in the middle. But Clay County was also home to many of the state’s most militant proslavery partisans, who had come to strongly identify with the South during the Kansas conflict. Their influence would soon be seen as the resolutions proceeded.
“Resolved,” the document continued, “That the true policy at present is to maintain an independent position within the Union, holding her soil and institutions [i. e., slavery] sacred against invasion … from any quarter whatever.” To the audience, this was a modest statement of border-state neutrality. The proslavery fire-eaters may even have seen it as a concession to the moderates in the crowd. But it was no Unionism. The entire thrust of this assertion was directed against the federal government; certainly the South was not threatening to invade, let alone undo slavery. Indeed, the resolutions grew more militant as they progressed. “Resolved,” that Missouri should supply no troops for the Federal army. “Resolved,” that, if forced to fight, they should stand with the South. “Resolved,” that they should form an independent military company to that end. The crowd gave its unanimous assent. After the briefest nod toward moderation, the people had pledged their sons and husbands to war.
Forty men stood to be sworn into the company, from the newly minted captain down to the twenty-eight privates—including that sober eighteen-year-old, Frank James. Jesse’s feelings, as his brother became a soldier, were never recorded. Perhaps he was happy for Frank, but he also might have been a bit jealous. According to conventional wisdom, the war would be over by his fourteenth birthday, and Jesse himself would never have a chance to fight.1
ON THE PRINTED page, the Civil War can seem a sudden thing. Bracketed by those tidy dates, 1861 and 1865, it appears as a self-contained story, beginning with a bombardment and ending in surrender. To young Jesse and his family, however, it was a murky experience, lacking the clarity of hindsight. As they had moved forward toward 1861, war loomed ahead, anticipated but not certain. In 1858, Republican William H. Seward called the struggle between North and South the “irrepressible conflict”; but no one could tell if the two sides would actually resort to arms.2
As Jesse approached and passed into adolescence, the air was heavy with this paradoxical sense of inevitability and uncertainty. Even though the fighting in Kansas died down after 1857, the territory’s fate continued to cloud the public debate. “If Kansas is driven out of the Union for being a Slave State,” demanded Senator James Hammond of South Carolina, “can any Slave State remain in it with honor?” The tension ran so high that a wild fistfight broke out in Congress, involving some fifty representatives. “All things here,” commented Georgia congressman Alexander Stephens, “are tending my mind to the conclusion that the Union cannot
and will not last long.” In the end, Kansas moved toward becoming a free state in 1861, David Atchison retired to his farm in Missouri, and the white South seethed.3
But the lingering ghost of the border war continued to haunt Missouri. In May 1858, a border ruffian band gunned down nine freesoil farmers in Kansas, killing five. On December 20, John Brown led a raid into Vernon County (the eighth such foray into Missouri), freeing eleven slaves and killing one slaveowner. Less than a year later, he struck against the Slave Power for the last time, at Harper’s Ferry. In November 1860, Charles “Doc” Jennison led his band of freesoil jayhawkers on another strike from Kansas. More than six hundred militiamen marched from St. Louis to protect the western border, adding to the sense that the state was already—or still—at war.4
By then, the hazy mirage of a much bigger war—the long-feared war between North and South—had finally appeared on the horizon. In April 1860, the Democratic Party’s national convention had broken apart over the extension of slavery into the territories. After the Republicans, old Whig centrists, and Southern fire-eaters finished their work, a total of four serious candidates ended up on the ballot for president in 1860.5
Jesse was just twelve that summer. He may well have worried about the drought that crisped Clay County’s fields more than he worried about the presidential election. “Jesse is light-hearted, reckless, devil-may-care,” a close friend wrote more than a decade later; Frank, on the other hand, was “sober, sedate.” Even at this early age, the distinction between the exuberant younger brother and his studious senior would have been apparent. “Jesse laughs at everything—Frank at nothing at all,” the friend observed. But Jesse was also thoughtful, he added; he “discusses the whys and wherefores” of things. Even at age twelve, he would have noticed the splash and rush of the tide of events.6
Missouri voters followed the national trend, splitting into secession-ready Democrats, regular (Unionist) Democrats, and Whig/Know-Nothings (now gathered in the Constitutional Union Party). Only St. Louis, with its many antislavery Germans, offered the Republicans a foothold. White Missourians referred to Abraham Lincoln and his supporters as “Black Republicans,” a racist twist on the term for Europe’s revolutionaries of 1848, the “Red Republicans.” Southern fire-eaters made clear that secession would be the consequence of a Lincoln victory. Senator Robert Toombs of Georgia had openly declared that the South could “never permit this Federal government to pass into the traitorous hands of the Black Republican party.” South Carolina Congressman Laurence M. Keitt believed that slaves would rebel if Lincoln won. “I see poison in the wells of Texas—and fire for the houses in Alabama,” he fretted. “It is enough to risk disunion on.”7
Missourians lined up to cast ballots for governor in August and narrowly elected the regular Democratic candidate, Claiborne F. Jackson. But Democrats felt grim as they looked ahead to the national election in November. “I think the future prospects look gloomy,” wrote T. M. Scruggs from Clay County. Indeed, Lincoln swept the North, giving him the presidency despite his loss of every slave state. South Carolina promptly seceded from the Union, on December 20, 1860. The dissolution of the republic, long predicted, long feared, perhaps never quite believed, had finally come true. Mississippi seceded on January 9, 1861, followed by Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and finally Texas, on February 1. On February 4, all these states sent delegates to Montgomery, Alabama, to organize the Confederate States of America.8
What to do? If Missouri seceded, it would have no Fugitive Slave Act to help retrieve its runaways. “Howard County is true to the Union,” wrote Whig leader Abiel Leonard. “Our slaveholders think it is the sure bulwark of our slave property.” Ironically, slavery was leading many in Missouri, especially old Whigs, to cling more tightly to the Union.9
The situation was volatile, and opinions in Clay County seemed to shift every day. Because of the mobilization of border ruffians over the Kansas struggle and their campaign of harassment against dissenters within the county, there now existed a hard core of militants on either side who struggled to capture the public mind. Four days after South Carolina seceded, a group of secessionists in Liberty organized an armed company of “minute men.” On January 28, 1861, a group of loyalists (or “unconditional Unionists”) responded with a rally at the county courthouse. On February 1, a mass meeting for “Southern Rights” gathered at the same place. But Whig politician James H. Moss interrupted the proceedings, spoke eloquently for the Union, and persuaded the crowd to pass resolutions condemning secession. The political crisis brought business to a halt. Starting in December 1860, almost all the banks in Missouri had stopped redeeming their notes in gold.10
When the new governor, Claiborne F. Jackson, took the oath of office in Jefferson City, on January 3, he sought to seize control of these chaotic events. In his inaugural address, the former border ruffian and sponsor of the extremist Jackson Resolutions refused to offer “submission to a [federal] government on terms of inequality and subordination.” The very morning of Jackson’s inaugural, Lieutenant Governor Thomas Caute Reynolds secretly met with Southern congressmen in Washington to plan for Missouri’s secession; among other things, Reynolds agreed to seize the large Federal arsenal in St. Louis, which housed some sixty thousand firearms. In Jefferson City, Jackson convinced the General Assembly (as the legislature was called) to take control of the militia and constabulary of St. Louis away from its antislavery citizens and put it in the hands of a police board appointed by the governor. The legislators also set February 18, 1861, as the date for a special election for a statewide convention that would decide the question of secession.11
In the Unionist camp, Congressman Frank Blair worked frantically to keep the state in the Union. A personal enemy of David Atchison, Blair had founded the Republican Party in the state, relying heavily on the support of German immigrants. Now he armed Home Guard units of his “Dutch” allies in order to defend St. Louis in the event of a crisis. Calling in favors from the outgoing administration, he arranged for additional troops to protect the arsenal; they arrived under the command of a combative Connecticut Yankee, Captain Nathaniel Lyon.
The state convention on secession met in St. Louis on March 4, the day of Lincoln’s inaugural, in a thickening atmosphere of crisis. Secessionist forces in the city were organizing their own companies of minute men. Blair narrowly survived an assassination attempt. Intrigue bubbled on both sides. But there was no doubt about what the convention would decide. The delegates’ sentiments could be seen in the decor: oversized U. S. flags and stars-and-stripes bunting. Even Clay County had elected a Unionist slate of delegates, headed by James H. Moss. When a commissioner from the new Confederate States of America made his plea to the convention, he had to raise his voice to be heard above the hisses. Before adjourning on March 22, the assembly voted ninety-eight to one against secession.12
Governor Jackson, it seemed, had been checkmated. Then came news of the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s call for seventy-five thousand soldiers to put down the rebellion. The breathtaking impact of those events can scarcely be imagined. Thousands of Missourians who had hesitated to secede themselves angrily rejected the idea of going to war against the South. In Clay County, crowds cheered for South Carolina and waved rebel flags. On April 20, secessionist Henry L. Routt gathered a company of two hundred men and captured the small Federal arsenal in Liberty. The mayor of St. Joseph, M. Jeff Thompson, drafted a confident letter to Confederate president Jefferson Davis. “I … have reasonable expectations now,” he wrote on May 6, “that Missouri will soon wheel into line with her Southern sisters.”13
Both sides prepared for open war. The state militia established Camp Jackson in St. Louis, where 890 men trained for combat. At Governor Jackson’s request, Jefferson Davis sent siege artillery for an attack on the federal arsenal in the city. Lyon mustered Frank Blair’s Home Guards into the U. S. Army and smuggled the arsenal’s weapons to safety in Illinois. Blair, meanwhile, secured a comm
ission for Lyon as a brigadier general of U. S. Volunteers. All across the state, the countryside buzzed with military activity as amateurs on both sides raised homegrown companies. In Clay County, Frank James and his fellow recruits learned the rudiments of military drill under equally inexperienced officers. Paper money was now virtually worthless, hemp markets in the South were closed off, hog and tobacco shipments to St. Louis were thrown into doubt. Neighbors eyed each other suspiciously in the streets of Liberty; outspoken Unionists found themselves shunned by old friends.14
Who would strike first? Lyon knew of the plans for an attack on the arsenal, but he had already removed its valuable supply of arms; he also had more than enough troops to stand off any assault. Politically, he had every reason to wait. As long as the secessionist militia chief, Daniel Frost, made no hostile moves, his encampment was entirely legal. Moreover, a first strike by Frost would unleash a Unionist wave of indignation in Missouri.
On May 10, Lyon’s combativeness and patriotic indignation got the best of him. Moving swiftly, he surrounded Camp Jackson with his German volunteers and forced the surrender of the militiamen there. Then he marched his prisoners back to the arsenal through the St. Louis streets, which were lined with onlookers. A shot rang out; the inexperienced soldiers fired back; twenty-eight civilians died in the mayhem.15
The capture of Frost’s camp removed any secessionist threat to St. Louis, but it was little short of a catastrophe for the Federal cause. Lyon was seen as launching an unprovoked attack, and when his troops opened fire on a civilian crowd, he was seen as a ruthless butcher. The shock of it turned borderline Unionists into secessionists, and brought rebellion to the fore. The legislature abruptly reorganized the militia as the Missouri State Guard and gave the governor sweeping emergency powers. The president of the convention on secession, former governor (and Mexican War general) Sterling Price, rushed to Jefferson City, where Jackson made him the guard’s commander. In Liberty, a delegation of Clay County women presented secessionist leader Henry L. Routt with a flag of Missouri as he prepared to lead a company to help defend Jefferson City.16
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