Bloody Dawn

by Thomas Goodrich

  “It is a very strange thing,” grumbled John Speer of the Lawrence Republican, “that … a few companies cannot be stationed along the border, to defend the wives and children of our soldiers from such raids.”14

  “Place that force there and then we can retire to rest at night,” echoed a correspondent from Olathe, a witness to the raid. “Men of Lawrence,” he warned, “your turn may come next.… Join with us in getting a protection for our common border. Ask for that protection from the commander of the department.”15

  Then during the next month Shawnee, a dozen miles southwest of Kansas City, was looted and burned. As Kansans once more ran for cover, James Blunt, the man most accountable, was cudgeled as an incompetent, a fool, a “knave,” an officer whose “dabbling in politics” had allowed the cities in his district to go up in flames while at the same time his troops were “rusting out with inaction.”16

  The pulse quickened at Lawrence, where the drills and watching of hundreds of militiamen had never really ceased.17 Shops closed, meals were missed, sleep was lost, and although it was unnecessary for Speer to remind his readers yet again, he did anyway: “Unless we are well prepared, these fellows may make a desperate push some night, and pay us a visit of a most disastrous nature.”18

  Throughout the last weeks of October 1862 and into November each sundown in Lawrence kindled fear and fresh rumors of attack—some tales were as nebulous as the minds that inspired them, yet all were sufficient to keep the town in a habitual, weary state of alarm. It was in this climate, when every ominous report and every destroyed town seemed yet another signpost on the road to Lawrence, that an “extra stirring up” came and flung the city into the wildest panic ever.

  At 10:00 P.M. on November 2, the mayor received information from a “most reliable source” stating that for some time now spies had been nosing about the town looking for weaknesses in the city’s defense; supposedly upon finding them, they quickly relayed the word to Missouri bushwhackers. At that very moment, the informant added, the Rebels were on the move. A general alarm was sounded, and instantly the darkened town sprang to life. Within an hour thirteen militia companies replete with cannon, bayonets, and Sharp’s carbines, plus every other excited man or boy who could wield a weapon, were in their places. For early warning three cordons of pickets were looped around the city, the farthest fifteen miles out. On into the night and following day the people waited anxiously for the first shot that would signal the attack—but it never came. And although later in the week George Hoyt and his boys rode into town and agreed that the report was true, it proved in the end, like all the others, just another false alarm.19

  Finally, the harsh Western winter, as it had the year before, shut the door on the border war, easing tensions throughout the state. Although the holiday season carried on much as it always had and the war seemed at times far removed from Lawrence, the failure of Federal arms had an awful way of breaking through even the most tranquil surroundings. After Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville—national disasters both—a gloom blanketed the North, and hopes of peace and a restored Union appeared more elusive than ever. And Kansans looked upon the coming summer with a dread unequalled at any time in the past. For after the fury of 1862, an adage had been coined along the border: As the grass commences growing the guerrillas will be raising. It was a phrase truer than most would care to admit.

  “There are mysterious movements all about us,” whispered Hovey Lowman’s Journal in early May 1863, as around the state spring burst to maturity. For several days residents along the route had noticed small knots of tough-looking, well-armed strangers drifting down the Santa Fe Road, less than a dozen miles south of Lawrence. Concern mounted and citizens stood nightly guard at the towns along the trail.

  “Are they guerrillas?” asked the uneasy editor.20 A few days later Lowman’s answer was in the headlines:

  GUERRILLAS!

  THE BOLDEST RAID YET!!21

  As Dick Yager and his gang worked their destructive way back to Missouri from Diamond Springs, news spread outward like cracks from a fissure. And suddenly it was 1862 all over again. Once more Lawrence men sprang from homes and businesses to patrol the outskirts of town, to march and drill and target practice. An independent company of pursuit scouts was urged, two score daring horsemen to strike as lightning when the next Rebel force neared Lawrence.22 But although attention might be riveted momentarily on immediate threats, no one really lost sight of the big picture, and through all the fear and rage the same old complaint surfaced again and again: Why was Kansas allowed to suffer from raids such as this when the remedy was simple? A border guard!

  “A small force permanently located along the border … will be all sufficient to make inhabitants safe in their property and persons,” pleaded the Journal. And once the military realized this and acted upon it, said Lowman, “no band of Missouri cut-throats … will risk their skins on the Kansas side of the line.”23

  Some hope was raised when Gov. Thomas Carney received permission to organize a body of militia to watch the state line. Although well intentioned, the inadequacies of the gesture quickly became evident: without state or federal aid the governor was forced to dig into his own pocket. How long one man could support the guard was questionable. Then, to the dismay of Kansans, the unit itself was grossly undermanned—not the regiment asked for but a mere one hundred and fifty men strung out to cover an area requiring a force ten times that number.24

  In early June 1863, when word reached Lawrence that Shawnee had once more been sacked and four men killed, the alarm was again sounded. And with this grim news came the even grimmer understanding that only the people themselves could ensure their own safety, and to rely on the military would prove the greatest of follies. At this moment, not only did the summer of 1863 appear a reflection of the previous year, but all signs pointed to an even more disastrous time ahead as well. By June the wearied town had become so accustomed to rumors and alarms as to be “almost unaffected” by them.25 The pickets simply kept the same monotonous watch on the same roads and horizons they had watched for the past two years, and the tired militia marched and drilled and performed their same old duty, a duty which seemed to have no end.

  Then, just when the clouds were darkest and most forbidding, the skies began to clear and the first faint glimmers of light shone through. To the applause of all, the “amiable imbecile,” James Blunt, was removed, and in his place came one of the brightest young stars of Kansas, Tom Ewing. Hope soared just as it always had when a change was made, but in this instance the feeling was naturally more pronounced. As he seemed able to do almost everywhere, Ewing hailed Lawrence on a positive note, for when appeals were made for troops to relieve the citizens of their nightly watch, a squad under Lt. T. J. Hadley was promptly sent over.26 Into the last weeks of June anxious citizens watched intently while Ewing’s rugged soldiers smoothly and swiftly went about their jobs. Old doubters began to take heart and smile once again.

  “In justice to General Ewing,” commented Lowman’s Journal, “we must say that the bushwhackers are now unusually quiet on the border.”27

  It remained to be seen how his policies would affect the future of Kansas, but as they had with his predecessor, Lowman and all Lawrence men were quick to remind the general that even if Missouri Rebels were killed by the wagon load, Kansas would never be completely safe until Federal troops held the line. “It is by far the best way to protect our borders,” argued the editor. “We must have troops continually there.… Kansas soldiers can be trusted there.”28

  Most Kansans, although optimistic, held a wait-and-see attitude. In the meanwhile, Lawrence militiamen continued to march, drill, and keep their powder dry.

  Even in Kansas, however, no amount of local news could shade the fateful drama being acted out in Mississippi and Pennsylvania. Although the stranglehold applied by U. S. Grant was tightening, the Rebel defenders of Vicksburg yet bid defiance from their river fortress. Even more ominous, Robert E. Lee was taking th
e sting of war to the untouched North, driving for the heartland of Pennsylvania. Anxiously, the people awaited the results and prayed for the sounds of victory.

  Those sounds came on July 4, 1863, when with a mighty roar the tide turned against the South. Lee, beaten and lame, retreated south from Gettysburg never to return. And when Vicksburg fell not only had Grant split the Confederacy in twain but he had once and for all secured the vital Mississippi Valley. Where token triumphs would have been most welcome and brought a shout to a troubled North, real, sweeping victories now came in a rush. After a grinding, futile two years of conflict, men were stunned that the course of war could change so swiftly and with such portentious results. From that day forward nevermore did thinking men doubt the outcome.

  Throughout the North the summer war news brought one cheer after another. And news less earthshaking but fully as joyous, at least in Kansas, was confirmation that the border guard, so long desired, so long denied, had finally been established. With that, Kansans knew they at last had a man who saw the situation exactly as they did, the “live” man all had prayed for. As the days passed and no new calamity rippled the calm, it soon became obvious that all the earlier predictions were correct—the border guard was the answer and Ewing the general to put it through.

  “The war is ending,” cheered an elated Hovey Lowman.29 Even the wheat and oat harvest had proven bounteous this summer. But best of all, since Thomas Ewing had taken charge, not one alarm had shattered the peace of Lawrence. Then, while the hurrahs continued and while Lawrence men were still congratulating one another on seeing the war through to the end, something happened.

  During the last days of July, young Lieutenant Hadley met with Mayor George Collamore and spoke of an urgent message just received from Kansas City. Word had leaked out from the woods of western Missouri, warning that a desperate push against Lawrence was in the making, set to coincide, as the spies learned, when the moon was at its brightest, an advantage the raiders would use on their march through Kansas. The two men discussed the message, considered the source highly reliable, then debated a course of action. The plan proposed by Mayor Collamore was finally adopted.30

  Thus, at midnight on July 31, when the moon was reaching its crest, the bell at the armory was sounded.31 Startled, half stupid with sleep, militiamen came tumbling from their beds once more, throwing on clothes and hats and rushing for the door. Lamps began to dot the darkened town again as shouting, panting men raced through the streets to their stations. No one actually knew the cause of the excitement, but it spread the more for a want of it, from one to the next until the entire city was caught in the crush. The cannon was wheeled into place and shotted, and soon, with weapons leveled, several hundred militiamen were in their positions. Without knowing particulars, baffled citizens could only guess, but with the moon full and the land lit like a beacon the logic behind an attack was frightening. But the night slipped to morning and no one came to Lawrence.

  The next day reinforcements from the country arrived, nearly one hundred extra men. A squad of soldiers and cannon crossed the river from Fort Leavenworth and joined the defenders. As the hours ticked slowly by, another night of nervous watch came. At dawn, however, when Hadley’s scouts returned, their report was the same as the night before—no sign of the enemy. Try as they might, most still had no idea what the basis for the alarm was, and mysteriously, when questioned, Collamore and Hadley remained evasive.32 On Sunday more help arrived and a company of soldiers passing down the valley stopped to aid the town. Tensions began to ease somewhat. Loafers and doubters, many of whom had little or no property to lose even if Lawrence were sacked, laughed at the clumsy spectacle of marching militia. While the light from the moon began to wane, suspense also started to fade; as another night passed with no unusual occurrences, townsmen, gaining in boldness, actually spoiled for a fight and loudly hoped the Rebels would indeed appear.

  “Lawrence has ready for any emergency over five hundred fighting men,” threatened the Journal, “every one of whom would like to see [them].”33

  Finally, after three sleepless nights the alert was called off—the greatest of the war—and like all the rest, it too passed peacefully. Friends relaxed and joked among themselves once more and pointed in fun at their own fears and weaknesses. In retrospect, it all seemed so absurd. The likelihood that a hundred bushwhackers would dare risk the fifty-mile ride through an armed and aroused land only to take on a city the size of Lawrence suddenly struck many as not only remote but ridiculous. “It would be impossible,” laughed one man.34 And should any Rebel force be foolish enough to try, it could never slip past the blue wall protecting Kansas “without detection” and hence advance warning to the interior. If some people had responded to the alarm in a wild, irresponsible manner, the sum could be waved off as little more than a reflex from the days of uncertainty—the days before Gettysburg and Vicksburg and impending victory, and more especially, the awful, agonizing days before Thomas Ewing and the border guard.

  While the Lawrence companies stacked weapons and wheeled the cannon back to its place, the country militia tramped home to thresh wheat, cut hay, and serve as the brunt of mirth and laughter by their neighbors. Hadley and Mayor Collamore, because of their secrecy, were themselves the target of sarcasm. “All the excitement,” some laughed, “was engineered by the upstart of a young lieutenant, who wanted to make a noise in the world.” And Collamore, still silent on the matter, henceforth wore the albatross of “our nervous mayor.” Handsome George Hoyt, romantic in buckskins and his brace of ivory-handled revolvers, rode into town and snorted at the whole idea.35 Kansas editors joined the sport, poking fun and offering Lawrence sage advice on how to avoid any future “scares.” After all, they insisted, and as Hovey Lowman himself had admitted, “the war is ending.”

  “Thus the beginning of the end unmistakably appears,” intoned the Reverend George Paddock from the pulpit of the Methodist Church. “Hope begins to smile again over the land.”36

  And townspeople longed to smile again and enjoy the pleasant side of life, free of worry, doubt, and fear. There were outdoor band concerts to attend, performed at dusk each week beneath the liberty pole. Excitement was growing over the Pacific Railroad and the telegraph that would soon link Lawrence to the world, and there was a lively interest in the coming visit of abolitionist and “Pathfinder” John Charles Frémont. Grand times were ahead, and there simply was no room for a flickering, faraway war.

  Just after the full moon scare, the squad of artillerymen and their cannon returned to Fort Leavenworth. A week later, the company of troops continued their march down the valley. Even Lieutenant Hadley and his scouts were ordered elsewhere.37 And not a soul raised a voice against it for as the last soldier left town that day there was a conscious, desperate effort among the people to begin the long journey back to peace and growth and business as usual. Then too, that night, for the first time in the war, Lawrence didn’t bother to send out guards to the edge of town, nor the next night, nor the next.

  As the melodies from the concert drifted sweetly over the city on a warm evening in August and folks sat drowsily on their porches sipping lemonade, reading the papers, and swatting gnats and flies, no one paid any mind to the strangers. There were always new faces passing through—immigrants, travelers, peddlers. But these strangers were different. They had been watching everything all along, with a veiled but sharper interest than most—the panic, the watch, the confidence, and finally, the laughter. When they had seen enough they quietly left, and no one noticed their going.

  The days of August slipped slowly by and life along the border continued calm and unbroken. At Lawrence “the people never felt more secure” as the moon waxed and waned and the night sky grew darker.38

  Although the column of horsemen was well behaved, more than a few residents of Gardner became suspicious after they had disappeared down the Santa Fe Road.

  First, over a dozen hungry riders had dropped from the line and suddenly turned b
ack to the village hotel. After bolting down a scratch supper the men then went to the stable and selected two fresh horses. In their place, a couple of jaded mounts were left with a promise that the others would be returned the following day. This in itself would have been no cause for concern, for such things commonly happened. What was strange, however, occurred when a few more stopped at a well. As the thirsty men drank they talked with a citizen and revealed that they were members of the Sixth Kansas Cavalry bound for Lexington, Missouri. The troopers had left without further ado, but their words hung perplexingly in the night air. To catch up with the column, the men rode west. Lexington was east!39

  5

  THE FAIREST CITY

  By 1:00 A.M. on Friday, August 21, Capts. Coleman and Pike had located the trail of the invaders and were tracking it west. Even without moonlight the path was plainly marked by trampled grass, twenty feet wide. When only three miles along, however, the trail came to a sudden and unexpected halt. Here, to stymie pursuit, the guerrillas had split and scattered over the prairie.

  Crouching low to the ground, often striking matches, straining their eyes for flattened grass, hoofprints, and fresh droppings, Coleman’s force moved west through the black, still night. Unlike the first few miles, however, the pace now was painfully slow, and as the ploy had intended, the already wide gap between the two columns grew even wider.1