Part 12

That is the only black flag that I knew anything about in connection with the Lawrence raid.

Lawrence was followed by a feverish demand from the North for vengeance. Quantrell was to be hanged, drawn and quartered, his band annihilated; nothing was too terrible for his punishment.

Four days after the raid, Gen. Thomas Ewing at St. Louis issued his celebrated General Order No. 11. This required that all persons living in Jackson, Cass and Bates counties, except one township, or within one mile of a military post, should remove within fifteen days. Those establishing their loyalty were permitted to go within the lines of any military post, or to Kansas, but all others were to remove without the bounds of the military district. All grain and hay in the proscribed district was to be turned into the military post before Sept. 9, and any grain or hay not so turned in was to be destroyed.

It was the depopulation of western Missouri. Any citizen not within the limits of the military post after Sept. 9 was regarded as an outlaw.

Pursued by 6,000 soldiers, the Confederates in that vicinity must ultimately rejoin their army farther south, but they harassed their pursuers for weeks in little bands rarely exceeding ten.

The horrors of guerrilla warfare before the raid at Lawrence, were eclipsed after it. Scalping, for the first time, was resorted to.

Andy Blunt found Ab. Haller’s body, so mutilated, in the woods near Texas Prairie on the eastern edge of Jackson county.

“We had something to learn yet,” said Blunt to his companions, “and we have learned it. Scalp for scalp hereafter.”

Among the brave fighters who were participants in the fight at Lawrence were Tom Maupin, Dick Yager, Payne Jones, Frank Shepherd, Harrison Trow, Dick Burns, Andy McGuire and Ben Broomfield.

15. CHASING COTTON THIEVES

In the fall of 1863, in the absence of Capt. Jarrette, who had rejoined Shelby’s command, I became, at 19, captain of the company. Joe Lea was first lieutenant and Lon Railey second lieutenant.

When Capt. Jarrette came north again, I again became lieutenant, but when Capts. Jarrette and Poole reported to Gen. Shelby on the Red river, they were sent into Louisiana, and I again became captain of the company, so reporting to Gen. Henry E. McCulloch in command of Northern Texas at Bonham. All my orders on the commissary and quartermaster’s departments were signed by me as Capt. C.S.A. and duly honored.

Around Bonham I did scout service for Gen. McCulloch, and in November he sent me with a very flattering letter to report to Gen. E. Kirby Smith, at Shreveport, Louisiana, the headquarters of the Trans-Mississippi department. Capts. Jarrette and Poole were at Shreveport and Gen. Smith gave us minute orders for a campaign against the cotton thieves and speculators who infested the Mississippi river bottom. An expedition to get rid of these was planned by Gen. Smith with Capt. Poole commanding one company, myself the other, and Capt. Jarrette over us both.

Five miles from Tester’s ferry on Bayou Macon we met a cotton train convoyed by 50 cavalry. We charged them on sight. The convoy got away with ten survivors, but every driver was shot, and four cotton buyers who were close behind in an ambulance were hung in a cotton gin near at hand. They had $180,000 on them, which, with the cotton and wagons, was sent back to Bastrop in charge of Lieut. Greenwood.

A more exciting experience was mine at Bayou Monticello, a stream that was deeper than it looked. Observing a cotton train on a plantation across the bayou, I called to my men to follow me and plunged in.

Seeing me floundering in the deep water, however, they went higher up to a bridge, and when I landed I found myself alone. I was hard pressed for a time, till they came up and relieved me. There were 52 soldiers killed here. Other charges near Goodrich’s Landing and at Omega put an end to the cotton speculation in that locality.

The Confederate army in that section was not well armed, and our company, each man with a pair of dragoon pistols and a Sharpe’s rifle, was the envy of the Southern army. Gen. Kirby Smith told me he had not seen during the war a band so well armed. Consequently when, in February, 1864, Gen. Marmaduke sent to Gen. Shelby for an officer and 40 of the best mounted and best armed men he had, it was but natural that Shelby’s adjutant-general, John N. Edwards, should recommend a part of the Missouri boys, and told me to select my men and report to Gen. Shelby, who in turn ordered me to report for special service to Gen. Marmaduke at Warren, Ark.

Only twenty, and a beardless boy, Gen. Marmaduke looked me over rather dubiously, as I thought, but finally told me what he wanted—to find out whether or not it was true that Gen. Steele, at Little Rock, was preparing to move against Price at Camden, and to make the grand round of the picket posts from Warren to the Mississippi river, up the Arkansas to Pine Bluff and Little Rock, and returning by way of the western outpost at Hot Springs.

We were to intercept all messages between Price and Marmaduke, and govern our movements by their contents.

About half way between Pine Bluff and Little Rock we came up with a train of wagons, followed by an ambulance carrying several women and accompanied by mounted Federal soldiers. The soldiers got away into Pine Bluff, but we captured the wagons and ambulance, but finding nothing of importance let them proceed.

We made a thorough examination of the interior of Little Rock, and satisfied ourselves that no movement on Price was imminent, and were on our way out before we became involved in a little shooting match with the patrol, from which no harm resulted to our side, however, except a shot in my leg.

Years afterward, in prison, I learned from Senator Cushman Kellogg Davis, of Minnesota, that he was one of the officers who galloped into Pine Bluff ahead of us that day. He was at that time on the staff of the judge advocate general, and they were on their way into Pine Bluff to hold a court-martial. The women were, as they had said, the wives of some of the officers.

Senator Davis was among the prominent Minnesotans who worked for our parole, although he did not live to see it accomplished.

16. A CLASH WITH APACHES

In May, 1864, Col. George S. Jackson and a force of about 300, myself among the number, were sent across the staked plains into Colorado to intercept some wagon trains, and to cut the transcontinental telegraph line from Leavenworth to San Francisco. We cut the line and found the trains, but empty, and on our return were met at the Rio Grande by orders to detail a party to cross the continent on a secret mission for the Confederate states.

Two vessels of the Alabama type, built in British waters, were to be delivered at Victoria, B.C., and a secret service officer named Kennedy, who was entrusted with the papers, was given an escort of twenty men, including myself, Capt. Jarrette and other veteran scouts.

While on this expedition we had a brief tilt with Comanches, but in the country which Gen. Crook afterward fought over inch by inch, we had a real Indian fight with Apache Mojaves which lasted through two days and the night between practically without cessation.

We had a considerable advantage in weapons, but the reds were pestiferous in spite of that, and they kept us busy for fully 36 hours plugging them at every opportunity. How many Indians we killed I do not know, as we had no time or curiosity to stop and count them. They wounded some of our horses and we had to abandon one wagon, but we did not lose a man.