T. J. Stiles
Page 59
7. On August 7, 1863, the Liberty Tribune reported that Frank and two companions had robbed a man west of Liberty; most likely, this was on his return from Clay to Jackson County; Louisville Courier-Journal, September 29, 1901; William Gregg, “A Little Dab of History Without Embellishment” (unpub. man., written in 1906), coll. 1113, fold. 1, 127, WHMC. Yeatman, 35, suggests rather incredibly that Frank James rowed across the Missouri in May 1863, joined Quantrill, then rowed back to join Scott. The confusion may result from the mistaken idea that Quantrill was somehow Scott’s superior officer. Quantrill was perhaps five feet nine or ten inches, though most remembered him being tall; see Leslie, 185.
8. Gregg manuscript, 128; John McCorkle, as told to O. S. Barton, Three Years with Quantrell: A True Story (Armstrong, Mo.: Armstrong Herald Print, n.d.), 65–9; Albert Castel and Thomas Goodrich, Bloody Bill Anderson: The Short, Savage Life of a Civil War Guerrilla (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1998), 23; for Cole Younger’s exploits, see O.R. 1: XXII, part 2: 72–82. The spelling of David Pool’s surname, like so many in the mid-nineteenth century, had variant spellings. This book uses “Pool” consistently. David Pool’s close relative, James M. Pool, spelled his name without a final “e” in a letter to Governor Charles H. Hardin, March 28, 1876, Charles H. Hardin Papers, MSA.
9. Liberty Tribune, August 7, 1863.
10. Christopher Phillips, Missouri’s Confederate: Claiborne Fox Jackson and the Creation of a Southern Identity in the Border West (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 283.
11. Albert Castel, William Clarke Quantrill: His Life and Times (New York: Frederick Fell, 1962), 122–43; Leslie, 193–237; see also Ann Davis Niepman, “General Orders No. 11 and Border Warfare During the Civil War,” MHR 66, no. 2 (January 1972): 185–210. Leslie, 237n, summarizes the case for a minimum death count of about 200. The customary count of 450 guerrillas is probably far too high; see McCorkle, 79, and Frank James’s comment that no more than “350 or 400 from one end of the war to the other” rode with Quantrill or his successors, Columbia Herald, September 24, 1897. General Ewing, who had good reason to exaggerate the enemy’s numbers, put the tally at 300, O.R. 1: XXII, part 1: 579–85. The higher count of 450 has been used as a device for lessening the raiders’ moral culpability; see especially Yeatman, 44. John N. Edwards, Noted Guerrillas, or the Warfare of the Border (St. Louis: H. W. Brand, 1879), 194, incorrectly claimed that Jesse James was at Lawrence, leading astray many later writers.
12. Quote from Leslie, 209.
13. O.R. 1: XXII, part 2: 472–3, 1: XXII, part 1: 574–5. The best analysis of General Order No. 11 is by Albert Castel, “Order No. 11.” A common version of these events attributes the order to pressure from Jim Lane (see, for example, Castel, Quantrill, 144), but the quote from Schofield shows that no such pressure was necessary. Mark E. Neely, Jr., has shown that Lincoln conveyed to Schofield, through the medium of Frank Blair, that he would tacitly accept judicious depopulation measures; Mark E. Neely, Jr., “ ‘Unbeknownst’ to Lincoln: A Note on Radical Pacification in Missouri During the Civil War,” CWH 44, no. 3 (September 1998): 212–16.
14. Bazel F. Lazear to Dear Wife, September 10, 1863, coll. 1014, Bazel F. Lazear Papers, WHMC.
15. Niepman, 185–210; History of Clay, 238; Thomas Goodrich, Black Flag: Guerrilla Warfare on the Western Border, 1861–1865 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 100 (this book fails as a work of history, and is cited here purely for the primary sources it quotes). The effectiveness of General Order No. 11 was swiftly undermined by successive resettlement orders, first issued by Ewing himself on November 20, 1863, then by the new commander for the region, Brigadier General Egbert B. Brown, on January 14; see Castel, “Order No. 11,” 367.
16. Bazel F. Lazear to Dear Wife, September 10, 1863, and Bazel F. Lazear to Dear Wife, September 24, 1863, coll. 1014, Bazel F. Lazear Papers, WHMC. As in all quotes from primary sources, I have corrected the spelling except where mistakes seem pertinent. See also O.R. 1: XXII, part 1: 579–85.
17. Quotations from Goodrich, Black Flag, 102–5. The original diary is in the collection of the Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas.
18. Kate Watkins to Miss Josephine Hollingsworth, September 1, 1863, Watkins Mill. For reports of armed black patrols, see James H. Moss to Col. A. W. Doniphan, October 3, 1863, Hamilton R. Gamble Papers, MHS, and testimony of Colonel John F. Williams, January 27, 1864, Militia Report, 373.
19. James H. Moss to Col. A. W. Doniphan, October 3, 1863, Hamilton R. Gamble Papers, MHS; Militia Report, 364–8, 381, 388, 391; Loyalty oaths of John S. Thomason and George S. Story, coll. 970, fold. 305, Clarence W. Alvord and Idress Head Collection, WHMC.
20. Militia Report, 382, 388–9, 395
21. O.R. 1: XXII, part 2: 584, 587, 591, 1143, and 1: XXXIV, part 2: 382–4; Todd North Gentry, “General Odon Guitar,” MHR 22, no. 4 (July 1928): 419–45; Stephen B. Oates, Confederate Cavalry West of the River (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961), 131–40; Militia Report, 383, 391–2; Howard V. Canan, “The Missouri Paw-Paw Militia of 1863–1864,” MHR 62, no. 4 (July 1968): 431–48. Jon W. Blassingame, “The Recruitment of Negro Troops in Missouri During the Civil War,” MHR 57, no. 3 (April 1964): 326–38, notes that conservative militia officers hampered recruiting across the state, which furnished only 8,344 black troops directly (though many enlisted after escaping to neighboring states). Only 40 were recruited in Clay County. See Lorenzo J. Greene, Gary R. Kremer, and Antonio F. Holland, Missouri’s Black Heritage, rev. ed. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993), 80–1. For a discussion of Clay County’s polarization, see History of Clay, 246–7. Confusion reigns in historical works about the Paw Paws. Castel, Quantrill, 173, mistakenly says “most” Union troops in Missouri in early 1864 consisted of Paw Paws; Castel and Goodrich, 53, write in error of secessionists being “pressed” into the Paw Paws, and of them fighting Bill Anderson in July 1864. In fact, only the Eighty-first and Eighty-second EMM Regiments—voluntarily enlisted and stationed strictly in Clay and Platte Counties—qualified as Paw Paws, and neither served after July 10, 1864.
22. Wife to My own dear Husband, January 27, 1864, Phineas Messenger Savery Papers, Duke.
23. History of Clay, 245, states eighteen citizens of Clay had been murdered as of January 1, 1864—four by bushwhackers, fourteen by Union Volunteers and militia.
24. Quote cited by George S. Park, March 28, 1864; O.R. 1: XXXIV, part 2: 759–61. Canan, 442; O.R. 1: XLI, part 1: 56–9, and part 2: 216, 293. Price had sent Winston and Thornton to determine if such an invasion was feasible; see Fellman, 108–9. The Union command took the notion of a conspiracy quite seriously; O.R. 2: VII: 228–39. As winter ended, Unionists grew nervous; on March 4, 1864, Edward M. Samuel wrote to the commander in St. Louis that the “Unconditional Union men” in Clay were “relying upon you to sustain and stand by us if we are wrongfully treated”; E. M. Samuel to Major General William Rosecrans, March 4, 1864, Provost-1.
25. Leslie, 268–301; Castel, Quantrill, 149–71; Frank James’s presence in Sherman in the winter of 1863–64 is confirmed by a comment he made about riding back from Texas with a comrade who died in September 1864, Columbia Herald, September 24, 1897. See also William B. Geise, “Missouri’s Confederate Capital in Marshall, Texas,” MHR 58, no. 1 (October 1963): 37–54.
26. Leslie, 190, 192, 289, 296–7; Castel, Quantrill, 123, 158–72, 178; Brownlee, 138–41. Clement is best known as Bill Anderson’s lieutenant, but two sources put him in Clay County with Fletcher: the very reliable History of Clay, 247, and the far less dependable Edwards, Noted Guerrillas, 237. Extensive circumstantial evidence suggests a close friendship between Jesse and Clement; see, for example, Jesse’s letter to the Kansas City Times, August 23, 1876, Frank James’s comments in the Columbia Herald, September 24, 1897, and a photo that may show the two posing together, Phillip W. Steele and George Warfel, The Many Faces of Jesse James (Gretna, La.: Pelican Publishing, 1995), 10.
27. Bodwell
quoted in Fellman, 191; Frank James quoted in the Columbia Herald, September 24, 1897; Sergeant Colby quoted by Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War (New York: Ballantine, 1977), 137.
28. A photograph taken in Platte City in July 1864 shows Jesse James in a guerrilla shirt with three revolvers; see plate 10.
29. Leslie, 178–9; for uncontroversial information on revolver production in an otherwise flawed and controversial book, see Michael A. Bellesiles, Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 406–35, The Union command struggled to confiscate private arms and limit weapons sales in Missouri, while simultaneously confronting the inadequate weaponry of many EMM companies, which had to equip themselves.
30. O.R. 1: XXXIV, part 3: 351; McPherson, 671–6, 744.
31. James E. Kirby, Jr., “How to Become a Union General Without Military Experience,” MHR 66, no. 3 (April 1972): 360–76.
32. O.R. 1: XXXIV, part 3: 366, 613, and part 4: 34; Canan, 431–48.
33. History of Clay, 247–8; Edwards, 364–5; Yeatman, 50–1; Castel, Quantrill, 135; O.R. 1: XLI, part 2: 252; F. Y. Hedley, “Clay County,” in Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri, ed. Howard L. Conard (St. Louis: Southern History Company, 1901), 2: 22. Yeatman gives Bond’s name as “Brantley,” but both Hedley and the History of Clay call him “Bradley.” The estate of a Brantley Bond was still being administered in October 1869, a rather late date for a man who died in 1864; see the Liberty Tribune, October 1, 1869. It is not clear that Jesse took part in those first two killings. Significantly, Captain Kemper believed that he had been in the brush as early as March 1864, which is possible if he first joined Colonel Thornton; see W. B. Kemper to Col. Joseph Dann, December 2, 1864, record 13681, Provost-2, and the undependable memoirs of a fellow bushwhacker, Jim Cummins, Jim Cummins the Guerrilla (Excelsior Springs, Mo.: Daily Journal, 1908), 49; see also Jim Cummins, Jim Cummins’ Book Written by Himself (Denver: Reed Publishing, 1903), 60, and his claim that he and Jesse James were among the first to join Fletch Taylor, 86.
34. Lonnie Athens, The Creation of Dangerous Violent Criminals (London: Routledge, 1989). For the applicability of Athens’s work to a military setting, see Richard Rhodes, Why They Kill: The Discoveries of a Maverick Criminologist (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 286–312. Athens’s emphasis on social interactions does not preclude a biological explanation of violent behavior. Recent research has revealed how traumatic experience can permanently change brain chemistry; see, for example, Debra Niehoff, The Biology of Violence: How Understanding the Brain, Behavior, and Environment Can Break the Vicious Circle of Aggression (New York: Free Press, 1999), 115–49, especially 121. Scientists William R. Clark and Michael Grunstein argue that genetics contribute about 50 percent of behavior, though the exact contribution to particular behaviors is difficult to identify; see Are We Hardwired? The Role of Genetics in Human Behavior (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). An important essay on atrocities in the guerrilla war in Missouri is Michael Fellman’s “At the Nihilist Edge: Reflections on Guerrilla Warfare During the American Civil War,” in On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861–1871, ed. Stig Forster and Jorg Nagler (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 519–40.
35. The quote was supposedly from William “Bloody Bill” Anderson; see Settle, 27, 32. Zerelda commended guerrilla atrocities; see W. B. Kemper, Assistant Provost Marshal, to Col. Joseph Dann, Acting Provost Marshal General, December 2, 1864, record 13681, Provost-2, discussed below. Violentization describes Jesse James’s evolving behavior far better than posttraumatic stress disorder. Though it is impossible to diagnose a mental disorder given the distance in time and scarcity of evidence, nothing indicates that Jesse suffered the symptoms associated with PTSD, such as flashbacks, nightmares, panic, or depression. See Eric T. Dean, Jr., “ ‘We Will All Be Lost and Destroyed’: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the Civil War,” CWH 37, no. 2 (June 1991): 138–53.
36. Yeatman, 50–1, insists that Bond and Dagley hanged Reuben Samuel, which agrees with Edwards’s account, 364–5 (Edwards was later close to the James brothers, so his account, though factually unreliable, may reflect their views); see also Edwards’s “A Terrible Quintet,” special supplement to the St. Louis Dispatch, November 23, 1873, vol. 34, coll. 1424, Walter B. Stevens Scrap-book, WHMC.
37. James M. McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), shows how social pressure and small-unit bonding can coexist with ideological motivations. Jesse James’s many letters to the newspapers in later years reflect his self-justification.
38. George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant,” The Orwell Reader (San Francisco: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1956), 3–9.
39. Anna Slayback to M. Blythe, April 8, 1862, Watkins Mill.
40. O.R. 1: XXXIV, part 4: 93–5, 301–2, 320, 399–400, 434, 523; History of Clay, 250–1; Canan, 436.
41. O.R. 1: XXXIV, part 4: 399–400, and 1: XLI, part2: 62–3.
42. Statement of Captain W. B. Kemper, file 21428, Provost-2. Kemper gave no date, but placed the event in June. Edwards, 339, describes a similar incident.
43. History of Clay, 230, 248–50; Edwards, 338; O.R. 1: XLI, part 2: 42–5, 62–3; Liberty Tribune, July 8, 1864. Both the unreliable Edwards and the dependable History of Clay describe Jesse as wounded in this fight (the History placing the loss of his fingertip in this incident, not in 1863).
44. O.R. 1: XLI, part 2: 42–5, 62–3; History of Clay, 250.
45. Liberty Tribune, July 8, 1864; History of Clay, 249; Fellman, 138, draws a few lines out of context to mistakenly suggest that Taylor was offering to duel with Kemper, like medieval champions. As Fellman tellingly notes, however, guerrillas concocted ranks for political legitimacy, 136.
46. O.R. 1: XLI, part 2: 163–4; History of Clay, 248, 251. Yeatman, 53, writes that the mass meeting was a protest against the Union troops; in fact, it was called at the urging of Colonel James H. Ford, the Union commander. See O.R. 1: XLI, part 2: 246.
47. History of Clay, 41; W. M. Paxton, Annals of Platte County, Missouri (Kansas City: Hudson-Kimberly Publishing, 1897), 367; Steele and Warfel, 25; see also plate 10, photo insert 1.
48. Canan, 440–8; Paxton, 367–9; Castel, Quantrill, 178; O.R. 1: XLI, part 1, 52–5, XLI, part 2: 152–3, 158–9, 179.
49. Edwards, 238; O.R. 1: XLI, part 2: 163–4. Clement is commonly thought to have been with Bill Anderson on July 11, 1864; see, for example, Castel and Goodrich, 44.
50. Mailiss to My Dear Kate, July 24, 1864, Watkins Mill. Colonel Ford had nearly five hundred Colorado and MSM cavalrymen, though the Kansas troops withdrew on July 18; O.R. 1: XLI, part 2: 246, 249–50.
51. O.R. 1: XLI, part 1, 52–5, and part 2: 252.
52. Militia Report, 386–7; W. B. Kemper, Assistant Provost Marshal, to Col. Joseph Dann, Acting Provost Marshal General, December 2, 1864, file 14504, Provost-2. See also Fellman, 23–65. He notes that “terror was both a method and goal”; however, his achronological, cultural approach, though rich in examples, lacks a systematic analysis of the guerrilla program of depopulation, and may overemphasize the centrality of personal revenge.
CHAPTER SEVEN: Horror
1. Albert Castel and Thomas Goodrich, Bloody Bill Anderson: The Short, Savage Life of a Civil War Guerrilla (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1998), 12, 26–44; O.R. 1: XLI, part 2: 75–7.
2. Castel and Goodrich, 44–7; Edward E. Leslie, The Devil Knows How to Ride: The True Story of William Clarke Quantrill and His Confederate Raiders (New York: Da Capo, 1998), 308–12, writes that Anderson rendezvoused with Fletch Taylor’s band in Carroll County in late July. “Most of rebels have left Platte and Clay Counties,” Ford reported on July 18, “and, from best information I can get, have gone into Ray”; O.R. 1: XLI, part 2: 246. Anderson did hit one military target, burning down a bridge on the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad at Shelbina; see O.R. 1: XLI, part 2: 421–3.
4. Liberty Tribune, June 19, 1863; E. M. Samuel to Genl. Wm. Bassett, August 9, 1864, Provost-1.
5. E. C. Catherwood to General, August 16, 1864; Clinton B. Fisk endorsement, August 23, 1864; J. M. Burnett to Genl. Fisk, August 30, 1864; file 11277, Provost-2.
6. Jim Cummins, Jim Cummins, the Guerrilla (Excelsior Springs, Mo.: Daily Journal, 1908), 32; Thomas M. Goodman, A Thrilling Record (Des Moines: Mills & Co., 1868), 30.
7. Liberty Tribune, August 12 and 26, 1864; O.R. 1: XLI, part 1: 249–50, and part 2: 622–3; Leslie, 314; Castel and Goodrich, 54.
8. Amanda Savery to Dear Mother, August 28, 1864, Phineas Messenger Savery Papers, Duke.
9. History of Clay, 252–3; Columbia Herald, September 24, 1897.
10. Liberty Tribune, August 12 and 19, 1864; O.R. 1: XLI, part 1: 249–51, and part 2: 622–3, 640, 748, 762; History of Clay, 253; Leslie, 314.
11. Report of Brigadier General J. B. Douglass, December 15, 1864, Missouri Militia Papers, Duke. Catherwood kept up a steady pursuit, but suffered from worn-out horses; O.R. 1: XLI, part 1: 249–51; Edwards, 240.