The History Behind The Reenactment

The History Behind The Reenactment

Missouri During the Civil War

Bleeding Kansas -- A prelude to war:

The 1820 Missouri Compromise admitted Maine to the Union as a free state and Missouri as a slave state, maintaining a balance in Congress of 12 states each, and prohibited slavery north of latitude 36'30". However, when the Kansas - Nebraska act was passed on May 30, 1854, it effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise. The act opened the Kansas and Nebraska territories to legal settlement and gave the settlers the right to choose whether they would enter the Union as free or slave states.

At that time the population of Missouri was fairly evenly divided between pro-slavery settlers with Southern roots and free-thinking, pro-abolition immigrants, mostly German. As it happened, the greatest concentration of pro-slavery Missourians lived in the southwest corner of the state, on the Kansas border. With no natural border between the states to serve as a deterrent, confrontations between the two factions were common, fierce, and frequently deadly.

Federal Cavalryman

Federal Cavalryman
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-B8184-10164 DLC

At the Library of Congress website you can view the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

For a more in-depth look at the time known as "Bleeding Kansas", check out the Fort Scott National Historic Site homepage.

Wikipedia has an article on Bleeding Kansas here.

The Missouri - Kansas Border War Network has another great site on the subject.

A State Divided:

At the beginning of the Civil War Missouri had a newly-elected governor named Claiborne Jackson, who was an ardent rebel. In May of 1861 he assembled the Missouri State Guard in St. Louis, ostensibly for training but in reality with a view to capturing the St. Louis Arsenal. The plan was foiled when Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon captured the State Guard camp.

Jackson then refused Lincoln's order for Missouri to supply troops for Union forces. Lyon then marched on Jefferson City. In July the pro-Union Missouri State Convention declared the governor's office vacated and Jackson, with his loyal State Guard units, fled to the southern part of the state. After Confederate victories at Wilson's Creek on August 10, 1861 and at Lexington (the "Battle of the Hemp Bales") on September 18-20, 1861, Jackson met with pro-rebel state congressmen at Neosho to sign articles of confederacy. Though not technically legal, as there was not a majority of the state congress present, the CSA accepted Missouri as a member on November 28, 1861. For the duration of the war Missouri had two governments, with representation in both congresses and armed forces supporting both sides.

Missouri Civil War has a great site, though it can be frustrating. The biography section has a wonderful selection of period portrait photographs that you can click on for biographies, but there's nothing to tell you who is who until you click the picture!

Visit the Missouri Civil War Museum for more pictures, maps and articles.

The National Park Service offers a lot of information. Check out their Wilson's Creek Battlefield site and their biography of Claiborne Fox Jackson.

The Missouri Park Board has a lot of information on the Battle of the Hemp Bales.

This MOMOLLUS site has a lot of general information on the war and a good selection of links, though it hasn't been updated for years so don't expect them all to work! (MOLLUS stands for Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. It is a military heritage organization like Daughters of the American Revolution.)

Guerilla Warfare:

Missouri is probably best known, among Civil War enthusiasts, for the guerilla warfare that occurred along the Missouri-Kansas border. William Quantrell was a former schoolteacher, a brilliant tactician and probably a psychopath. He commanded a band of pro-South fighters that included the infamous Bloody Bill Anderson, Cole Younger, and Frank and a very young Jesse James.

Early in the war, in an attempt to curtail guerilla activities, Federal forces began arresting the families of known guerillas and imprisoning them. When the Union Prison in Kansas City collapsed, killing or maiming the female relatives of several of Quantrell's Raiders, they determined to avenge them by attacking Lawrence, Kansas, which Quantrell believed to be a stronghold of Union sympathizers. On August 21, 1863 Quantrell led a force of roughly 450 men into Lawrence. Meeting no resistance, the guerillas slaughtered over 150 men, most of whom were unarmed.

In the aftermath of the massacre General Jim Lane (who would become a Kansas state senator after the war, but would commit suicide before taking office) gathered a large contingent of Union sympathizers on the Missouri - Kansas border with the intention of crossing into Missouri to search for the killers. Union officials in Missouri saw this as the build up to a retaliatory bloodbath and ordered Lane to back off. At this point Union forces very nearly came to blows with one another.

The standoff ended when General Thomas Ewing issued General Order No. 11, forcing residents of a three-and-a-half county stretch of Missouri along the border to leave their homes and relocate, either within designated, Federally-fortified towns or outside the area. This order was issued on August 25, 1863. Painter George Caleb Bingham, a stout Unionist, vocally protested the order, which was approved with reservations by Lincoln. After the war he made it the subject of one of his most famous paintings. At one time, nearly every Missouri home had a print of the painting.

Caught between guerillas on the one hand and armed Kansans on the other, Ewing was in a bad spot. He could not prevent guerillas from sheltering with the residents of the four counties affected, nor could he protect the innocent residents who lived in rural areas. In retrospect, General Order No. 11 was probably the only real solution to the problem. Ewing was hated for it, though, by Union and Rebel sympathizers alike, and it completely destroyed his chances of a political career after the war.

In September, 1864, Bloody Bill Anderson led a 400-man force of guerillas in the Centralia Massacre. It began when a train carrying 22 unarmed Union soldiers, who were on leave, pulled into Centralia, MO, while the guerillas were looting it. They took the men off, stripped them and shot them dead. Then they set up an ambush for the force of 150 Union soldiers who set off in pursuit. They killed every last man of them, torturing those who weren't killed outright and mutilating the bodies. It was possibly the worse atrocity of the war.

By the end of the war both Quantrell and Anderson had been killed. Afterwards the James and Younger boys became notorious outlaws. Today both Civil War guerillas and post-war bandits tend to be romanticized.

Here is a biographical sketch of William C. Quantrell from About.com. (You will sometimes see that name as Quantrill, by the way.)

Here is a good article about the Lawrence Massacre.

Civil War St. Louis has an article by an historian named Albert Castel regarding General Order no. 11.

Wikipedia also has an article on General Order No. 11.

There is a roundtable discussion with a panel of experts from PBS on the Centralia Massacre with special focus on the effect it would have had on sixteen-year-old Jesse James, who was one of the participants.

Years ago I found a letter quoted in an old history book wherein a Missouri-based Union officer told a Kansas official that if Kansas-based Union troops crossed the Platte River they would be met "with red hands". Sadly, I misplaced the notes I originally took and now I can't find the letter. If anyone knows of this letter, I'd love to hear from you!

Contact Loretta

Missouri's Importance During the War:

Missouri's importance during the Civil war is often overlooked. With over a thousand small battles and skirmishes, Missouri was the third most fought-over state. She supplied more soldiers per capita than any other state.

Ulysses S. Grant's first battle of the war was the Battle of Belmont, Missouri, Nov. 7, 1861, and he was commissioned as a brigadier general in 1861 at Ironton, Missouri.

At the Battle of Wilson's Creek, August 10, 1861, Nathaniel Lyon became the first Union General to die in action. This battle was the second major Confederate victory of the war.

St. Louis contractor James B. Eads built the first ironclad ships for the Union Navy. He was also the architect of Eads Bridge, which is still in use in St. Louis.

The Battle of Westport was the largest battle fought west of the Mississippi River. It was nicknamed the "Gettysburg of the West" and, like Gettysburg, was a failed Confederate attempt to sever Union supply lines. It was the last big battle in the state and ended the Civil War in Missouri.

In December of 1865, Missouri abolished slavery within her borders before the 13th amendment of the Constitution abolished it everywhere in the United States.

The National Cemetery in Springfield is the only cemetery where both Union and Confederate forces are buried side by side.

"Eads Bridge"

For more information on Missouri during the Civil War check out American Memory at the Library of Congress, where you can view some of Matthew Brady's civil war photographs online, as well as look at original historic documents.

The Making of America project is another goldmine of online information. Among other things, it includes the complete text of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies.

The Missouriana collection at the University of Missouri's online library is another of my favorite resources, with many of the late 1800s-era county histories and many other books on Missouri history, all with searchable text! Also, check out the library's collection of books on the Civil War in Missouri.

Crime in 19th Century Missouri

General Joseph Bailey

The handsome fellow in the picture to the right 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.

"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.)

Here is a link for a book about Bailey, Hero Of The Red River Campaign.

The Army Corps of Engineers has the story of Bailey's dam, too. This is a good account. It says that Bailey was brevetted to major-general before leaving the army. I had not seen that before!

James Hayden "Hade" Brown

In Randolph County, in 1876, the son of a murdered outlaw eloped with the daughter of a justice of the peace. In June of 1880 they were buried in one another's arms.

This is not a love story.

James Hayden Brown, son of the notorious "Wild Bill" Brown, was a handsome blond man with a taste for alcohol and a vicious temper. He was only 19 when he eloped with Susan "Sue" Parrish, daughter of Joseph Parrish, a Union veteran who owned cattle, sold his own patented medicines and served as a Justice of the Peace. At first the Browns lived in Macon County, where Hade had family, but in the spring of 1877 they returned to Randolph County, entered into an uneasy reconciliation with Sue's parents and moved into a house on the Parrish's property.

By this time they had been married for about a year and had an infant son. The marriage was not a happy one, though. Later Sue's twin sister, Sarah, would tell of witnessing a fight during which Hade broke furniture, struck Sue with a chair leg, then took the baby from her and chased her out of the house at gunpoint. Shortly after this, Sue determined to leave her husband and went to her parents for help. At first they refused -- marriage was taken very seriously in the 1800s -- but finally, while Hade was at a church picnic on Saturday, July 21, 1877, Joseph Parrish went around with a cart, helped Sue load up her belongings and drove her to her half-brother's house in Howard county.

On Monday, July 23, as Parrish was returning home with Sarah in the cart, he met Hade Brown on the road in front of the home of a family named Bennet. The Bennets were a large family. Their house was a local gathering point and at that time over a dozen men were there helping to cut hay. Brown ordered Sarah out of the cart, then emptied both barrels of a double-barrelled shotgun filled with birdshot into Parrish and rode away.

The Bennets took Parrish in and sent their grandson to get Mrs. Parrish. In the meantime Brown returned with a pistol, determined to finish off his father-in-law. He was standing in the Bennet's front yard, arguing with the men there, when he saw the wagon with Mrs. Parrish approaching. He rode down to meet it, ordered the old woman out of the wagon, then shot her down in cold blood

After the murder Brown rode off and made good his escape; however, fifteen months later he was apprehended in Minnesota after being spotted by a casual acquaintance.

When Brown was returned to Missouri to stand trial his wife went back to him, much to the disgust of the local populace. The first trial, in the spring of 1879, ended in a hung jury amid accusations of jury tampering. Fearing that the prisoner would be lynched, Sheriff Matlock sent him to the St. Louis prison to await a re-trial in the fall.

On the way back to Randolph County to once more stand trial, Susan slipped Brown a packet filled with arsenic. He swallowed it and became very ill but didn't die. A physician told the paper at the time that, had Brown only swallowed a few grains of the poison it would have been fatal, but he took so much that it irritated his stomach and caused him to throw it all back up. The trial was delayed while they waited for Brown to recover. When he had and they attempted to resume they discovered that one juror had been severely injured in a farming accident. A second juror, suffering from pneumonia, collapsed in court and the judge declared a mistrial.

The third trial got underway in January and Brown was convicted and sentenced to hang. When the judge read the death penalty Susan fainted. The paper noted that not one woman in the courtroom went to her aid.

Brown's appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court was denied and he was scheduled to be hanged on June 24, 1880. He was now in prison in Kansas City, since he had begun having "fits" and the St. Louis jail determined that they would have to charge extra to keep him. Susan followed him to Kansas City and four days before the hanging she slipped him a packet filled with morphine. Then she went back to where she was staying, sent her little boy next door to play and shot herself in the head.

Sue's suicide note asked the woman she was staying with to go to the jail and "tell Hade that Sue is dead". Suspicious, jail officials immediately searched Brown and confiscated the morphine, which he was going to use to carry out his half of the suicide pact. With her sudden death, Sue went from being an object of derision in the media to a sort of tragic heroine. The coroner announced that, while plain of face, Sue had the most perfect body he had ever seen. Small wonder that over 1,000 people turned up at the morgue hoping to view her!

On June 24, 1880, Hayden Brown was hanged at Huntsville, MO, according to schedule. The citizens of Huntsville and of Moberly took up a collection to buy a double coffin and on June 25th Hayden and Sue were buried in one another's arms.

After the Civil War a vigilance committe known as "The Reign of Terror" operated in Johnston County, Missouri. Between February and August of 1865 they were responsible for the murders of more than a dozen men. This company of vigilantes is notable because, immediately after the war, it included both Union and Confederate veterans, church leaders from both the Southern Baptist and Northern Episcopal churches, teachers, a librarian, and a bevy of civil leaders. One of the men credited with co-founding the committee was F.M. Cockrell, a former Confederate general who would rise to political prominence during the tenure of Teddy Roosevelt.

Go here to read about the Reign of Terror at The University of Missouri's Online Library. This account was written within living memory of the events portrayed. It begins on the page that will come up on the pageviewer. Use the drop box on the right above the viewer to go through the rest of the story.

Here is Cockrell's biography at the official site of the U.S. Senate. Oddly, it doesn't mention his credentials as a vigilante.

Corlew the Ravisher

At the same time he was dealing with the Hayden Brown case (see above), Randolph County Sheriff Matlock also had another of the most hated men in the state in his custody. A man known as Corlew the Ravisher was accused of luring a young mother into his hotel room and then raping her at gunpoint in front of her children.

Corlew's real name may have been Charles Burton. The victim was a Mrs. Crump. According to her story, he had approached her as she was waiting in the train station and told her that the train would not run that night, but that his mother owned the hotel across the street and he could arrange a room for her and her two small children. He left for a few minutes, going to the hotel and registering them as husband and wife, then returned and showed her up to the room, where he drew a gun and raped her.

At that time rape was seen as being as bad as, or even worse than, murder. Feelings ran high against the accused and Matlock had to foil at least one attempted lynching to get him to trial. Unfortunately, he only got him as far as the courthouse steps.

The victim's husband was waiting on the steps with several friends. Crump produced a self-cocking revolver. His friends also drew guns and they quickly got the drop on the lawmen escorting Corlew. Seeing that he was about to be killed, Corlew broke free and ran into the courthouse, pursued by the husband, who was firing at him. Corlew ran back outside and down the street, taking one bullet in the back in full view of everyone who was out that morning. The chase led through an alley and into and out of several stores before winding up in a storage room over a tavern.

When officials arrived they found Corlew alone and unconscious, suffering from numerous gunshot wounds. Several of the wounds, including the one in his back, would have been fatal by themselves. The last shot was point-blank behind the ear. Corlew died without regaining consciousness and a coroner's jury was accordingly convened.

After hearing all the evidence they returned a verdict that Corlew died of gunshot wounds at the hands of "a person or persons unknown to the jury"!

I don't really have anything to put in this section, so how would you like to see some neat pictures I came across? I was searching the Library of Congress for pictures of law officers or historic badges and this is what I found. I saved them because I thought some of these men were really handsome.

These gentlemen, above and below, were with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show.

Captain George Sword

This gentleman was John A. Kennedy, late 1800s Superintendent of the New York City Metropolitan Police.

Genealogy

In my book, the character Acie Luney McBride is a professional genealogist. Genealogy is the study of ancestry and family history. If you are interested in your family's genealogy you can hire a professional like Acie or you can tackle the job of putting together your family tree yourself.

Genealogy can be a daunting passtime, especially for a beginner, but there are a lot of resources available to help you. Check out the links to the right for useful advice and free downloadable forms that can help you assemble and keep track of the information and documents you'll acquire during the course of your research.

If you are just beginning your family history, start with what you already know. Write down your name, date and place of birth and date and place of marriage. Below that write down your parents' names, dates and places of birth, date and place of marriage and, if applicable, dates and places of death. Below that fill in their parents' information. Go back as far as you can. If there are blanks in the record that's okay -- filling those blanks is what genealogy is all about.

When you've written down all the information you know there are two things you need to do. One is to get documentation for all the information you've assembled. This could be marriage licenses, death certificates, obituary notices, birth certificates, birth announcements, copies of information from family Bibles or any number of different kinds of records.

Not only do these records document the information you've assembled, they can help you to fill in the blanks in your family tree, which is the second thing you need to do. Also, as you expand your family tree you'll begin to include information on siblings of all the people on your primary ancestor chart, and on descendants of all of these people.

Other sources for information include census records, deeds, wills probated, tax records and passenger lists for sailing ships coming to America.

Does it sound intimidating? Don't worry. Start slow and before you know it you'll be charting your family tree like an expert.

"Ralph Waldo Emerson"

Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-98114 (b&w film copy neg.)

My own family tree includes nuts and squirrels and . . . a famous poet! My mother was an Emerson and Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Father of Transcendentalism", was my great-great-grandfather's cousin.

Your best first stop, if you're just beginning a family tree, is Family Tree Magazine. At their website you can download several different free forms, in text or PDF format, to help organize your search. They even have a nifty Soundex Code generator! Soundex is the method used to organize the US Census records phonetically, and you'll need to know the codes for all the surnames on your list before you can hope to find them on the census.

If you'd rather not use the code generator, you can find instructions to convert your names to their proper codes manually here.

Ross, incidentally, comes up as R-200. Quackenbozo (it's a real name! I swear!) is Q-250.

Important!

Before you subscribe to anything or give anyone your bank account or credit card information, go read this web page about scams in genealogy!

In addition to Family Tree Magazine (see links above) there are a lot of websites that offer information and advice for beginning genealogists. For starters, check out this page at about.com.