| General Joseph Bailey: Death of a Hero |
"Brigadier General Joseph Bailey"
(I got this photo from wikipedia but have seen it numerous places. As far as I can determine it is in the public domain.)
| The handsome fellow in the
picture above is Brigadier General Joseph Bailey. A
talented engineer who was mostly self-taught, he received a vote of
thanks from Congress and was brevetted to the rank of Brigadier General
for his work building wing dams, which saved the Union Fleet on the
ill-fated Red River Expedition. After the war he settled in
Vernon County, Missouri, in the town of Nevada (pronounced Ne-vay-duh),
and was elected as the county's first post-war sheriff.
Unfortunately Bailey, though a brilliant engineer, was too trusting to
make for a good lawman. In March of 1867 he was shot in the back
by one of two brothers he was arresting for stealing a hog. The
brothers, Lewis and Perry Pixley, escaped and were never
captured. A former bushwacker, Thomas Ingram, was arrested as an
accessory, taken from the jail by a mob and lynched. In later years, Bailey's son claimed that the official story of his father's death was a cover up and that his father had been set up by a Southern sympathizer. Given that Bailey was a former Union officer in a position of authority in a former Rebel stronghold, this was certainly possible. During the war, Nevada was actually burned by Union troops after several Union officers were ambushed there. Before destroying the larger homes and all public buildings, the soldiers helped the women who lived in those homes to remove much of their furniture and possessions. By the end of the war there were few men remaining. Also, the northern end of the county was emptied and burned under General Order 11. The Pixley brothers were known Southern sympathizers and Ingram was said to have had connections to Quantrell's Raiders. In any case, the conspiracy claims were never either proven nor disproven and nearly a century and a half later General Bailey's murder remains officially unsolved. |
Here is a Wikipedia article about the Red River Campaign.
Here's a nice site that includes official records.
Here is a link for a book about Bailey, Hero Of The Red River Campaign| Back to History |
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