T. J. Stiles

by Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War

  32. A. J. McRoberts quoted in Fellman, 45. Many militia officers in Clay and elsewhere testified to being slaveowners; see Militia Report, 380, 392, 398.

  33. In Missouri’s Confederate, Christopher Phillips argues that Missourians did not have a sense of themselves as Southerners, even at the outbreak of the war. I argue, however, that his thesis does not apply equally to all areas of the state; a Southern identity had definitely taken hold in Clay County by 1861. See also Fellman, 44–52.

  34. History of Clay, 266; James A. Mulligan, “The Siege of Lexington, Mo.,” Battles and Leaders, 1: 307–13; John C. Fréemont, “In Command in Missouri,” in Buel and Johnson, 1: 278–88; Parrish, Turbulent Partnership, 49–67; Castel, 49–57.

  35. O. R. 1: III: 193–4; History of Clay, 207–19; McPherson, 325.

  36. Snead, in Buel and Johnson, 274; Mulligan, in Buel and Johnson, 311; Castel, 49–60; History III, 34–46; Parrish, Turbulent Partnership, 66–8; O.R. 1: III: 639, 719, 722; History of Clay, 220; Phillips, Missouri’s Confederate, 268–9. McPherson, 353, astutely notes, “Since capturing Lexington, Price had learned the difference between an invasion and a raid. He lacked the manpower and logistical capacity to turn his raid into a successful occupation of captured territory.”

  37. History of Clay, 266–7; Hurt, 301; Miles W. Eaton, “The Development and Later Decline of the Hemp Industry in Missouri,” MHR 43, no. 4 (July 1949): 344–59; Harrison A. Trexler, “The Value and Sale of the Missouri Slave,” MHR 8, no. 1 (January 1914): 69–85.

  38. Parrish, Turbulent Partnership, 49–50. The two-thirds figure given here is admittedly impressionistic, but reflects the proportion of men who joined Union versus Confederate forces.

  39. Parrish, Turbulent Partnership, 57; Mexico citizens’ quote in Fellman, 44; see also 44–7.

  40. Parrish, Turbulent Partnership, 49–75; O. R. 1: III: 466–7; Brownlee, 26–7. My discussion of martial law, trials of civilians, and Lincoln’s policies relies heavily on Mark E. Neely’s important study, The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (New York: Oxford University Press, 199O, 34–5. Many writers mistakenly claim that Frémont declared all slaves free; those of loyal slaveholders were not.

  41. Parrish, Turbulent Partnership, 63, 67–8, 108; Brownlee, 149–51; Neely, 40–2, 129, 168; History III, 65–6; O. R. 1: VIII: 405–6; the existing provost marshal network was formalized by General Order No. 4, on June 27, 1862, O. R. 1: XIII: 453.

  42. Brownlee, 160–3; Neely, 44–6.

  43. Parrish, Turbulent Partnership, 54–5, 75–84; Neely, 36–9; Westover, 140–9; James A. Hamilton, “The Enrolled Missouri Militia: Its Creation and Controversial History,” MHR 69, no. 4 (July 1975): 415. O. R. 1: VIII, 476–8, 834; 1: XIII: 7–21; and 1: XXII, part 2: 43–5, 48. A regiment consisted of ten to twelve companies (usually ten for infantry, twelve for cavalry); a full-strength company had eighty-three men. Initially 13,800 men enrolled; Congress soon limited the force to 10,000. The various militia organizations have often been lumped together, a rather serious error; see, for example, Leslie, 154, 180; Brownlee, 51, 104; Castel, “Quantrill’s Bushwhackers,” 137, 141; Albert Castel, William Clarke Quantrill: His Life and Times (New York: Frederick Fell, 1962), 114, 173.

  44. Parrish, Turbulent Partnership, 88–9; O. R. 1: VIII: 557, 832; Brownlee, 145–51.

  45. History III, 65–7, 77; Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant (Cleveland: 1885; reprinted by Da Capo Press, New York, 1982), 132.

  46. O. R. 1: VIII: 381.

  47. O. R. 1: VIII: 426, 462–3, 818; Parrish, Turbulent Partnership, 53; Brownlee, 24–7; History of Clay, 221, puts the incursion on Sunday, December 8, 1861; E. M. Samuel testified that twenty-five hundred men marched in and stayed for three or four days, Militia Report, 382.

  48. History of Clay, 222–3; Grimsley, 38–9.

  49. Fellman, 67, 251, demonstrates beyond doubt how guerrilla warfare pervaded the state, despite the special attention given (by this book, among others) to the western border. See also Mark J. Crawford, “An Eye for an Eye,” Columbiad 2, no. 3 (fall 1998): 118–36. The best place to begin any investigation of this subject is Daniel E. Sutherland, “Sideshow No Longer: A Historiographical Review of the Guerrilla War,” CWH 46, no. 1 (March 2000): 5–23.

  50. Starr, 82–107; quote on 86; see also 111–13.

  51. Quote in Fellman, 76–7; see also 35, 66–8; Mary to Dear Friend, January 5, 1862, Watkins Mill; Albert Castel, “Kansas Jayhawking Raids into Western Missouri in 1861,” MHR 54, no. 1 (October 1959): 1–11; Starr, 88–90, 110–17; Parrish, Turbulent Partnership, 85–6.

  52. Starr, 23, 96–7, Lane quote on 48; O.R. 1: VIII: 507.

  53. Snead, in Buel and Johnson, 274; Mulligan, in Buel and Johnson, 311; Castel, Price, 49–60; History III, 34–46; Parrish, Turbulent Partnership, 66–8; O.R. 1: III: 639, 719, 722; History of Clay, 220; Phillips, Missouri’s Confederate, 268–9.

  54. History III, 46–8; Castel, Price, 65–8; Westover, 135–7; History of Clay, 266.

  CHAPTER FIVE: Neighbors

  1. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 392–405; for a description of Clay County, see Kate Watkins to Uncle and Aunt, June 9, 1862, Watkins Mill.

  2. Kate Watkins to Uncle and Aunt, June 9, 1862, Watkins Mill; Militia Report, 378–82; History of Clay, 223–5. Union commanders banned Kansan forays into Missouri in January 1862; by April, three companies of troops patrolled the border; William E. Parrish, Turbulent Partnership: Missouri and the Union, 1861–1865 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1963), 85–6.

  3. Anna Slayback to M. Blythe, May 9, 1862, Anna Slayback to M. Blythe, April 8, 1862, Watkins Mill.

  4. Kate Watkins to Uncle and Aunt, June 9, 1862, Watkins Mill.

  5. Edward E. Leslie, The Devil Knows How to Ride: The True Story of William Clarke Quantrill and His Confederate Raiders (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998), 95–7, 185; O.R. 1: VIII: 57–8. The spelling of Quantrill’s name (often rendered “Quantrell”) is corrected in most quotations.

  6. Leslie, 97–119; Richard S. Brownlee, Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy: Guerilla Warfare in the West, 1861–1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1958), 58–69; Kansas City Journal of Commerce, April 18, 1862. The abilities of Quantrill and his guerrillas have often been overstated; see, for example, Albert Castel, “Quantrill’s Bushwhackers: A Case Study in Partisan Warfare,” Winning and Losing the Civil War: Essays and Stories (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 133–4, and Fellman, 251. Castel praises the guerrillas’ prowess, but fails to note that they suffered a critical failing: They lacked any strategic plan. Quantrill claimed to be from Maryland, and lied to his followers that free-state Kansans had killed his brother; see John McCorkle to W. W. Scott, May 6, 1881, W. W. Scott Papers, Duke.

  7. Yeatman, 33; Settle, 20; History III, 65–7; O.R. 1: XIII: 361; Liberty Tribune, May 2, 1862; Kansas City Times, April 7, 1882.

  8. O.R. 1: XIII: 234, 793 (the Masonic superior was Major General Samuel L. Curtis); Militia Report, 382, 385, 386, 389.

  9. O.R. 1: XIII: 7–11, 506; John Glendower Westover, “The Evolution of the Missouri Militia, 1804–1919” (Ph.D. diss., University of Missouri, 1948), 151–61; James A. Hamilton, “The Enrolled Missouri Militia: Its Creation and Controversial History,” MHR 69, no. 4 (July 1975): 416–32; Brownlee, 71–91. Halleck organized the Military District of Missouri with Schofield as commander on June 5, 1862.

  10. O.R. 1: XIII: 11, 522–3, 534–5; Parrish, Turbulent Partnership, 92; History III, 51–5; Liberty Tribune, September 12, 1862. For an example of the panic about the order, see Dorothy Brown Thompson, “A Young Girl in the Missouri Border War,” MHR 58, no. 1 (October 1963): 63; W. Wayne Smith, “An Experiment in Counterinsurgency: The Assessment of Confederate Sympathizers in Missouri,” Journal of Southern History 35, no. 3 (August 1969): 362–80. Frank was not asked to fight against his friends, as sometimes suggested (e.g., Yeatman
, 34–5).

  11. History of Clay, 228; Militia Report, 364, 367, 378.

  12. Militia Report 392, 398, 400.

  13. Militia Report 382, 391, 393, 402; see excerpts from Elvira Scott’s diary, July 9, 1862, in Hardship and Hope: Missouri Women Writing About Their Lives, 1820–1920, ed. Barbara Oliver and Carla Waal (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997), 92–3.

  14. Militia Report, 379; Westover, 154–6 (the federal government did not issue food, forage, and equipment to the EMM until June 1863); Sue Carter to Margaret Blythe, November 14, 1862, Watkins Mill. Hamilton, 423–6, notes that the EMM was not under federal control, unlike the MSM, and that zero funding was the price for such a state force.

  15. O.R. 1: XIII: 7–11, 506; Westover, 151–61; Hamilton, 416–32; Brownlee, 71–91.

  16. William E. Parrish, “Reconstruction Politics in Missouri, 1865–1870,” in Radicalism, Racism, and Party Realignment: The Border States During Reconstruction, ed. Richard O. Curry (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969), 1–35. The role of militiamen in creating the Radical Party in Clay County will be discussed later; for a roll of the founding members, see Republican Central Committee Meeting, Clay County, January 1, 1866, coll. 970, fold. 161, Clarence W. Alvord and Idress Head Collection, WHMC; and Republican Central Committee of Clay County to Governor Thomas C. Fletcher, January 3, 1866, Thomas C. Fletcher Papers, MSA. For this critique of Jesse James’s claim to Confederate loyalties, see William H. Wallace, Speeches and Writings of Wm. H. Wallace, with Autobiography (Kansas City, Mo.: Western Baptist Publishing Co., 1914), 269.

  17. Sue Carter to Cousins Kate and Mat, March 22, 1863, Watkins Mill; History of Clay, 228; Militia Report, 115, 364, 367, 378–9; Westover, 151–3. The role of Colonel Moss in catching slaves was a matter of intense controversy, and fills many pages of the Militia Report. A full study of the death of slavery in Missouri has yet to be written. Michael Fellman’s writing (“Emancipation in Missouri,” MHR 83, no. 1 [October 1988]: 36–56, and Inside War, 65–73) includes important observations, but has no chronological framework. For primary sources and historical insights, see Ira Berlin, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds., Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation: 1861–1867 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), ser. 1, vol. 1, chap. 7. For an excellent brief discussion of the conflicting Union attitudes, authorities, and policies regarding slaveholding in the state, see vol. 2, chap. 5, especially 553–6.

  18. William E. Parrish, Missouri Under Radical Rule, 1865–1870 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1965), 1–5; Kate Watkins to Uncle & Aunt, June 9, 1862, Watkins Mill.

  19. A total of nine Provisional regiments went on duty in early 1863; the Forty-eighth EMM had already dwindled to less than half its size, as its members paid the exemption fee or joined full-time units; Westover, 162–3; Militia Report, 364, 367, 373, 382, and especially 216–33.

  20. Militia Report, 386; for a description of the bitterness of the Unionists in Andrew County, and the reasons for it, see John R. Carter’s testimony, 409, and Walter Williams, ed., A History of Northwest Missouri (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1915), 1: 319–21. For examples of the multiplying slave escapes, see Mary and M. Blythe to Son, May 9, 1863, and Kate Watkins to Miss Josephine Hollingsworth, September 1, 1863, Watkins Mill. Note that, since the Provisionals were selected from the standard EMM, they were often (confusingly) identified by their old EMM units, which were still subject to call-up for active duty.

  21. History of Clay, 266; Yeatman, 35.

  22. This town is cited as “Richfield” in the O.R. and other reports; in 1859, Richfield had been incorporated into Missouri City, along with the village of St. Bernard; Nathan H. Parker, Missouri as it is in 1867 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1867), 230.

  23. O.R. 1: XXII, part 1: 335–6; Liberty Tribune, May 22, 1863. Yeatman, 36, claims that Frank had been jailed with Moses McCoy, another member of the squad, and that both had been freed by McCoy’s wife; Albert Castel, William Clarke Quantrill: His Life and Times (New York: Frederick Fell, 1962), misdates this skirmish, 109. Gravenstein’s name was spelled differently everywhere it appeared, from “Gravenstein” in the Liberty Tribune to “Grafenstein” in the O.R. A fanciful version of these events can be read in John N. Edwards, Noted Guerrillas, or the Warfare of the Border (St. Louis: H. W. Brand & Co., 1879), 168–72.

  24. Frank later disparaged Wilson’s Creek, Columbia Herald, September 24, 1897.

  25. Liberty Tribune, May 29, 1863; affidavits of David M. Bivens, July 1, 1863, and James W. Griffith, August 18, 1863, record 21428, Provost-1. Bivens incorrectly dated the incident on May 25; both his statement and the Tribune place it on a Sunday, which was the twenty-fourth.

  26. Liberty Tribune, May 22, 1863, June 5, 1863; O.R. 1: XXII, part 1: 335–6; Militia Report, 228.

  27. History of Clay, 267; Yeatman, 41. Edwards provides elaborate details of spying by Jesse and his mother, which probably reflect some truth, 168–72. Castel, Quantrill, 113, and Leslie, 179–80, offer useful discussions of revolvers. See also Robert M. Utley, Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 196–7; as Utley notes, Colt handguns were referred to as “Colt’s” in the nineteenth century. The Navy earned its name from an engraving on the original model; it was supplemented by the 1860 Army model, a popular .44 caliber weapon. The revolver did not catch on after it was patented in 1835; Samuel Colt’s first company failed in the 1840s, but mass production began in the 1850s, and vastly expanded during the war; see Bill Barol, “American Made: The Army Colt,” American Heritage Civil War Chronicles (New York: Forbes, Inc., 1992), 56; Michael A. Bellesiles’s flawed Arming America: The Origins of the National Gun Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 377–81; and Castel, “Quantrill’s Bushwhackers,” 141. Numerous stories have circulated about how Jesse lost his fingertip; the one given here follows Yeatman’s account. For an early report that Jesse was turned away for being too young, see Kansas City Times, April 4, 1882.

  28. Yeatman, 41; R. Douglas Hurt, Agriculture and Slavery in Missouri’s Little Dixie (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992), 100.

  29. Yeatman, 39–41, has done pioneering work in uncovering new sources on this incident; St. Joseph Morning Herald, May 29, 1863; Kansas City Journal, April6, 1882; History of Clay, 267; Militia Report, 228. I place this raid on Monday, May 25, because the Liberty Tribune of May 29, 1863, reported that the militia had attacked and scattered the bushwhackers on that day. The men of the deactivated Forty-eighth EMM were ordered to report for service in Liberty on the morning of the twenty-fifth, which freed the Provisionals for this large operation (Liberty Tribune, May 22, 1863); on June 5, the Tribune reported that three companies of the Twenty-fifth Missouri were on duty in the county, and that O. P. Moss’s company remained in arms. As Yeatman illustrates, this incident was later embellished, most often by Zerelda herself, but none of these retellings admitted that Reuben Samuel had given information; see, for example, Edwards, 167, and John N. Edwards, “A Terrible Quintet,” special supplement to the St. Louis Dispatch, November 23, 1873, Walter B. Stevens Scrap-book, vol. 34, coll. 1424, WHMC. Rogers described Samuel as old, but he was only thirty-five.

  30. Liberty Tribune, June 5, 1863.

  31. Mrs. Z. Samuel, Parole and Oath of Allegiance, June 5, 1863; Reuben Samuel, Parole, June 24, 1863; A. C. Courtney, L. J. Larkin, and Alvah Maret to Maj. J. M. Bassett, July 6, 1863, Provost-1. Edward M. Samuel attached an endorsement of their appeal.

  32. Kansas City Journal of Commerce, August 13, 1876; Settle, 9; W. B. Kemper, Assistant Provost Marshal, to Col. Joseph Dann, Acting Provost Marshal General, December 2, 1864, Record 13681, Provost-2.

  CHAPTER SIX: Terror

  1. Gorgas quoted in James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 665; see also 626–65.

  2. Smith quoted in Fellman, 73; History of Clay, 236–7; Liberty Tribune, Jul
y 24, 1863.

  3. Militia Report, 373, 382, 383.

  4. Militia Report, 383; Richard S. Brownlee, Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy: Guerilla Warfare in the West, 1861–1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1958), 113–15; Edward E. Leslie, The Devil Knows How to Ride: The True Story of William Clarke Quantrill and His Confederate Raiders (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998), 173–8; O.R. 1: XXII, part 1: 574–5, and 1: XXII, part 2: 315, 428–9, 450; Albert Castel, A Frontier State at War: Kansas, 1861–1865 (Lawrence: Kansas Heritage Press, 1958), 25–6; Albert Castel, “Order No. 11 and the Civil War on the Border,” MHR 57, no. 4 (October 1962): 357–68. Ewing complained that he had insufficient troops to put down the guerrillas, and he seems to have been right. A military rule of thumb, developed by the British in Malaysia in the 1950s, is that ten soldiers are required to defeat each partisan insurgent; in August 1863, Ewing reported 3, 187 officers and men present for duty, probably less than the necessary ten-to-one ratio; O.R. 1: XXII, part 2: 503–5, 579–85. The Union army, of course, lacked such advantages as air support and radio communication, making the ten-to-one figure conservative indeed for the Civil War.

  5. Archer Jones, The Art of War in the Western World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 418–19. In the controversy around Ewing’s actions, his military logic has largely been forgotten; see Castel, “Order No. 11,” 365. As harsh as Ewing’s orders were, they were not as ferocious as the depopulation carried out by the guerrillas, who employed murder rather than legal measures.

  6. Charles F. Harris, “Catalyst for Terror: The Collapse of the Women’s Prison in Kansas City,” MHR 89, no. 3 (April 1995): 290–306; Brownlee, 115–20; Leslie, 196–9; Castel, “Order No. 11,” 357–68; O.R. 1: XXII, part2: 460–1. Harris corrects the often-mistaken address of the building, and Leslie offers solid evidence that it had been inadvertently undermined by Union soldiers who secretly visited another set of prisoners, women “of bad character and diseased.” Yeatman, 43, incorrectly states that the parole given to Zerelda and Reuben Samuel protected them from these orders; they simply lived outside of Ewing’s jurisdiction.