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I originally posted this information for Marmaduke's Raid. I believe it is illustrative of the situation in Missouri and will make for good reading as folks develop their impressions and build backgrounds.
Holler and others have stressed the importance of first-person. That's not just being a shopkeeper, soldier, bushwhacker, etc. It's knowing who you are and what you believe. It's knowing what shapes you and drives you. For many, hate and vengeance and the opportunity to use war as a cover for savage acts, defined who they were. For others, terror and fear, caused by the war and particularly by the irregulars that fought under both flags, defined who they were.
Holler said it best- this ain't the event for candy-arsed types. Come prepared to get a real sense of the time, place, and setting.
Enjoy:
My intent to is help give some background to the general situation in Missouri, information on the warring parties, and hopefully give folks some material to use for first-person and their general approach to the event.
One can quickly grasp that the war on this side of the river, and particuarly in this stretch of Missouri, was not at all similar to the confilct in other parts of the country.
Oct of 1861
"There will be trouble in Missouri until the Secesh are subjugated and made to know that they are not only powerless, but that any attempts to make trouble here will bring upon them certain destruction and this...must not be confined to soldiers and fighting men, but must be extended to non-combatant men and women."
Property of the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis
Freelance vigilante patriots, fighting under the guise of the 15th Missouri Cavalry (also known as Reeve's Scouts) raised constant hell on the Federal occupiers as well as pro-Union civilians. The Federal response was to fight fire with fire.
"Oct 29, 1864
Dear Wife and Children,
I take my pen with trembling hand to inform you that I have to be shot between 2 and 4 o'clock this evening. I have but a few hours to remain in this unfriendly world. There are 6 of us sentenced to die in retaliation of 6 Union soldiers that was shot by Reeves men. My dear wife don't grieve after me. I want to meet you in heaven. I want you to teach the children piety, so that they may meet me at the right hand of God... I don't want you to let this bear on your mind any more than you can help, for you are now left to take care of my dear children. Tell them to remember their dear father. I want you to tell all my friends that I have gone home to rest."
"Sixty-nine years gao last week [September 1863] the people of Shannon County [southeastern Missouri Ozarks] were thrown into grief over the murder of John West, Mrs. Sam West, Louis Conway, James Henry Galvon, Wm. Chilton, Henry Smith, Sam Herring, Jack Herrign, John Huddleston, John Story, and Joshua Chilton... As the story is told by relatives of the victims... a company of Federal soldiers came over from Rolla to the vicinity where the Chiltons lived and the drive on various homes was made in the dead of night... [The Federals; i.e. Union Militia] started their raid going for the Chiltons... Joe Butler and Alex Chilton were at the home of the latter's mother, and just as they were mounting to leave, eight Federal soldiers came in sight. The soldiers dashed in pursuit, but Mrs. Susan Orchard, sister of Alex Chilton, stepped into the road in front of the oncoming soldiers and flaunted her apron in front of the horses of the soldiers, until the stopped, and by the time the pursuers got around her the fleeing pair were too far gone to be caught."
From- The Civil War in Carter and Shannon Counties
"But in general, and whenever they wished, Union troops shot or hanged their prisoners, as did their guerilla foes. Many soldiers alluded to this wide-spread practice, but few so matter-of-factly as Private Edward Hanses... who had joined the Union Second Missouri Light Artillery. On July 19, 1864, near Patterson [southeastern] Missouri, Hansen noted in his diary 'Up to this day we had done but little skirmishing and catched several fellows, very mistrusting figures, which we had orders to take with us as prisoners, but no sooner did we find one in arms we just hung them to the next best tree.'"
From- Inside War: The Guerilla Conflict in Missouri
________________________________________
"A give-and-take war developed between Reeves' 15th Missouri Cavalry, CSA, and the Missouri Union Militia units in the area. Many families were forced to refugee, some as far north as St. Lous."
A History of the 15th Missouri Cavalry Regiment, CSA by Jerry Ponder
"Diary of Private Timothy Phillips, 19th Iowa Infantry Regiment, Ozark Mountains, February 25th; 'Refugees continue flocking to us and dare not return to their homes.' February 28th; 'Plenty of women in camp begging for rations.' March 19; 'We have now here some two dozen women and not less than a hundred children- more or less- varying in age from two weeks to fifteen years.' March 5; 'Refugees are coming in daily. An order has been given to build a stockade around the court house... every two or three days we find a body floating in the river.'
In April, receiving orders to join the Vicksburg campaign, the 19th pulled out of Forsyth, burning the town, stockade, courthouse and all. Phillips made no more mention of the refugees."
From "Inside War"
"The Federals came to our home two or three days later and began trying to persuade Mother to have Father come in and surrender and go to Pilot Knob [referred to by locals as Iron Mountain] and take the oath of allegiance. Meantime, while mother was discussing the matter with them, two of them took me up on a hill west of the house and out of sight of mother, and one of them took a belt from around his pants and buckled it around my neck, then bent a small sappling over and tied the end of the belt around it and hung me up for a minute or so. I had told them where father was, as mother had told them, and when they let me down I told them he was down in the field, which they knew was not so for they had come by the field. The hanging hurt my throat so that it was sore for several days. I was seven years old at the time."
JJ Chilton from "Current Local" reprinted in The Civil War in Carter and Shannon Counties
"October 1, 1864
Some fifteen or twenty women and children were brought in this afternoon, and are now quartered in a building opposite Gratiot [military prison in St. Louis]. I do not know whether they are prisoners or refugees, but one thing I am certain of- they are the raggedest and dirtiest set I ever saw; some of them have not sufficient clothing to hide their nakedness. They were picked up in the southwest (part of the state). Some of the women would be really goodlooking if they were properly dressed, but they are a pitiful looking crowd in their present condition."
Giffin Frost from "Camp and Prison Journal"
"We would frequently see a squad of Union Militia start out after the Smiths [Confederate bushwhackers] and possibly the next day would hear that the Federals had dined at a farmhouse and in less than an hour the Smiths dined at the same house. The houses of these men were burned and their wives taken prisoner, but by threats of retaliation [that the Smiths would] burn the homes of Union men, forced the release of the women."
"Reminiscences of Mrs. C. C. Rainwater, from 1861 to 1865"
Special Collection, Duke Library
In June, 1864, Major Jeremiah Hackett reported the arrest of a Mrs. Gibson and her daughter, caught while tearing down telegraph lines."
From "Inside War"
"As Missouri came under [Union] martial law, the Union military operated as the law enforcement agency during much of the war in most of the state, in effect superseding whatever civil legal structures remained in place. In such a position, the military had enormous discretionary power over civilians in the areas they controlled, unchecked by any truly effective appeals system."
From "Inside War"
"In 1860 about one Missouri family in eight (as opposed to one in five in the lower south) held slaves, nearly three-fourths of those holding fewer than five, and only 38 holding more than fifty... Ninety per cent of Missourians lived on farms or in villages of less than 2,000 people. With the exception of St. Louis, there were no cities in Missouri... statistically, the average Missourian was a Methodist from Kentucky who owned a 215-acre family farm, owned no slaves, and produced most of the family's subsistence."
From "Inside War"
"Good Heavens, my blood boils- women in this hole of filth and blasphemy! I could scarcely believe it until I saw it with my own eyes, Mrs. Mitchell, who is here with a little daughter five or six years old. She is charged with smuggling goods through to the Confederacy."
Griffin Frost, "Camp and Prison Journal"
"Now I have two very pretty rebel girls on my hands as prisoners and what the devil to do with them I don't know, as I don't like to put them in the guard house. I expect I will have to take them into my room and let them sleep with me."
Bazel F. Lazar Joint Collection, Missouri Historical Society, quoted in "Inside War."
"Headquarters District of Central Missouri
Warrensburg, MO., September 10, 1864
To: Lt. Col B. F. Lazear [Lazar, quoted in passage above], Commanding Union Militia, Second Sub-district, Lexington, MO.
Colonel: The commanding general is informed by Major-General Rosecrans that your troops are causing a reign of terror in LaFayette and Saline Counties and that it should receive your attention. He is also further informed that their officers are permitting them to rob the people of their property for their own benefit, to murder peaceable citizens, and committ other outrages upon the people while the pursuit of the bushwhackers is abandoned by loading the troops with plunder from the country...He directs you will report fully in relation to these complaints.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
J.H. Steger, Assistant Adjutant-General"
Official Records, Ch LIII, Page 145
"[Missouri Union Militia] troops frequently upset the security of the civilians they were supposed to be protecting. Federal officers themselves often reported being driven frantic by the mob-like activities of the troops ostensibly under their command. The Lieutenant Colonel who had just taken command at the [Union] garrison of Warsaw [Missouri] in August 1863, wrote his commander that 'our soldiery' had committed 'six murders within the last ten or twelve days... There is a feeling of insecurity universally prevailing with the peaceable citizens... all in this place that can get conveyances express an intention of leaving. There is no discipline whatever exercised over the soldiers here, which, added to the indiscriminate sale of liquor, renders the soldiers fiends rather than soldiers. The best citizens here have been menaced with death by the soldiers.'"
-Lieutenant Colonel T. A. Switzler to Brigadier General E. B. Brown,
Warsaw, Missouri, August 11, 1863, OR, Quoted in "Inside War"
"Union Correspondence
Headquarters District of Southeastern Missouri
Pilot Knob, Mo., October 25, 1863
Capt. W. T. Leeper, Patterson:
On Tues. evening, the 27th instant, 150 well-appointed troops will arrive at Greenville from Cape Girardeau. You will join them with all the men you can spare from post duty and during their stay in that region, give old Tim [Reeves] and his rascally gang such a hunt and extermination as they never yet had.
You will summon all the wives of the bushwhackers you can reach to come to Doniphan, and give them plainly to understand that either their husbands must come in and surrender themselves voluntarily and stop their villainous conduct, or their houses, stock, and &c. will be given to the flames, and the families all sent down the Mississippi River to be imprisoned at Napoleon, Ark... be firm, but discreet. I shall look for some good work in the lower counties during the next twenty days.
Clinton B. Fisk, Brigadier General"
-OR, Ch. XXXIV, P. 678
"Dave Maberry had come home from the Rebel army and stayed at home and round about home. He was standing in his yard when the Federals came. They arrested him and took him with them. They dashed on and caught Akins. They went on down the valley and crossing the river at House's ford, they saw Frank Wheeler... he ran across the field going north and had reached the top of the field when they caught him. He had two pistols with him but a bullet from the enemy had shattered his right wrist so he could not use the weapons. He cursed them until they shot him in the mouth with his own pistol. Next the leader signalled some of his men to shoot Akins. Mr. Akins, divining their intentions, ran into some woods and got about two hundred yards when they shot and disabled him. They placed him on his feet and tied him fast to a tree and tortured him by shooting him sixteen times, making slight wounds in his flesh. Bud House, then fifteen years old, stood in his yard nearly a mile away and heard him scream many times."
-J.J. Chilton, from the "Current Local," February 3, 1932, reprinted in "The Civil War in Carter and Shannon Counties"
I originally posted this information for Marmaduke's Raid. I believe it is illustrative of the situation in Missouri and will make for good reading as folks develop their impressions and build backgrounds.
Holler and others have stressed the importance of first-person. That's not just being a shopkeeper, soldier, bushwhacker, etc. It's knowing who you are and what you believe. It's knowing what shapes you and drives you. For many, hate and vengeance and the opportunity to use war as a cover for savage acts, defined who they were. For others, terror and fear, caused by the war and particularly by the irregulars that fought under both flags, defined who they were.
Holler said it best- this ain't the event for candy-arsed types. Come prepared to get a real sense of the time, place, and setting.
Enjoy:
My intent to is help give some background to the general situation in Missouri, information on the warring parties, and hopefully give folks some material to use for first-person and their general approach to the event.
One can quickly grasp that the war on this side of the river, and particuarly in this stretch of Missouri, was not at all similar to the confilct in other parts of the country.
Oct of 1861
"There will be trouble in Missouri until the Secesh are subjugated and made to know that they are not only powerless, but that any attempts to make trouble here will bring upon them certain destruction and this...must not be confined to soldiers and fighting men, but must be extended to non-combatant men and women."
Property of the Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis
Freelance vigilante patriots, fighting under the guise of the 15th Missouri Cavalry (also known as Reeve's Scouts) raised constant hell on the Federal occupiers as well as pro-Union civilians. The Federal response was to fight fire with fire.
"Oct 29, 1864
Dear Wife and Children,
I take my pen with trembling hand to inform you that I have to be shot between 2 and 4 o'clock this evening. I have but a few hours to remain in this unfriendly world. There are 6 of us sentenced to die in retaliation of 6 Union soldiers that was shot by Reeves men. My dear wife don't grieve after me. I want to meet you in heaven. I want you to teach the children piety, so that they may meet me at the right hand of God... I don't want you to let this bear on your mind any more than you can help, for you are now left to take care of my dear children. Tell them to remember their dear father. I want you to tell all my friends that I have gone home to rest."
"Sixty-nine years gao last week [September 1863] the people of Shannon County [southeastern Missouri Ozarks] were thrown into grief over the murder of John West, Mrs. Sam West, Louis Conway, James Henry Galvon, Wm. Chilton, Henry Smith, Sam Herring, Jack Herrign, John Huddleston, John Story, and Joshua Chilton... As the story is told by relatives of the victims... a company of Federal soldiers came over from Rolla to the vicinity where the Chiltons lived and the drive on various homes was made in the dead of night... [The Federals; i.e. Union Militia] started their raid going for the Chiltons... Joe Butler and Alex Chilton were at the home of the latter's mother, and just as they were mounting to leave, eight Federal soldiers came in sight. The soldiers dashed in pursuit, but Mrs. Susan Orchard, sister of Alex Chilton, stepped into the road in front of the oncoming soldiers and flaunted her apron in front of the horses of the soldiers, until the stopped, and by the time the pursuers got around her the fleeing pair were too far gone to be caught."
From- The Civil War in Carter and Shannon Counties
"But in general, and whenever they wished, Union troops shot or hanged their prisoners, as did their guerilla foes. Many soldiers alluded to this wide-spread practice, but few so matter-of-factly as Private Edward Hanses... who had joined the Union Second Missouri Light Artillery. On July 19, 1864, near Patterson [southeastern] Missouri, Hansen noted in his diary 'Up to this day we had done but little skirmishing and catched several fellows, very mistrusting figures, which we had orders to take with us as prisoners, but no sooner did we find one in arms we just hung them to the next best tree.'"
From- Inside War: The Guerilla Conflict in Missouri
________________________________________
"A give-and-take war developed between Reeves' 15th Missouri Cavalry, CSA, and the Missouri Union Militia units in the area. Many families were forced to refugee, some as far north as St. Lous."
A History of the 15th Missouri Cavalry Regiment, CSA by Jerry Ponder
"Diary of Private Timothy Phillips, 19th Iowa Infantry Regiment, Ozark Mountains, February 25th; 'Refugees continue flocking to us and dare not return to their homes.' February 28th; 'Plenty of women in camp begging for rations.' March 19; 'We have now here some two dozen women and not less than a hundred children- more or less- varying in age from two weeks to fifteen years.' March 5; 'Refugees are coming in daily. An order has been given to build a stockade around the court house... every two or three days we find a body floating in the river.'
In April, receiving orders to join the Vicksburg campaign, the 19th pulled out of Forsyth, burning the town, stockade, courthouse and all. Phillips made no more mention of the refugees."
From "Inside War"
"The Federals came to our home two or three days later and began trying to persuade Mother to have Father come in and surrender and go to Pilot Knob [referred to by locals as Iron Mountain] and take the oath of allegiance. Meantime, while mother was discussing the matter with them, two of them took me up on a hill west of the house and out of sight of mother, and one of them took a belt from around his pants and buckled it around my neck, then bent a small sappling over and tied the end of the belt around it and hung me up for a minute or so. I had told them where father was, as mother had told them, and when they let me down I told them he was down in the field, which they knew was not so for they had come by the field. The hanging hurt my throat so that it was sore for several days. I was seven years old at the time."
JJ Chilton from "Current Local" reprinted in The Civil War in Carter and Shannon Counties
"October 1, 1864
Some fifteen or twenty women and children were brought in this afternoon, and are now quartered in a building opposite Gratiot [military prison in St. Louis]. I do not know whether they are prisoners or refugees, but one thing I am certain of- they are the raggedest and dirtiest set I ever saw; some of them have not sufficient clothing to hide their nakedness. They were picked up in the southwest (part of the state). Some of the women would be really goodlooking if they were properly dressed, but they are a pitiful looking crowd in their present condition."
Giffin Frost from "Camp and Prison Journal"
"We would frequently see a squad of Union Militia start out after the Smiths [Confederate bushwhackers] and possibly the next day would hear that the Federals had dined at a farmhouse and in less than an hour the Smiths dined at the same house. The houses of these men were burned and their wives taken prisoner, but by threats of retaliation [that the Smiths would] burn the homes of Union men, forced the release of the women."
"Reminiscences of Mrs. C. C. Rainwater, from 1861 to 1865"
Special Collection, Duke Library
In June, 1864, Major Jeremiah Hackett reported the arrest of a Mrs. Gibson and her daughter, caught while tearing down telegraph lines."
From "Inside War"
"As Missouri came under [Union] martial law, the Union military operated as the law enforcement agency during much of the war in most of the state, in effect superseding whatever civil legal structures remained in place. In such a position, the military had enormous discretionary power over civilians in the areas they controlled, unchecked by any truly effective appeals system."
From "Inside War"
"In 1860 about one Missouri family in eight (as opposed to one in five in the lower south) held slaves, nearly three-fourths of those holding fewer than five, and only 38 holding more than fifty... Ninety per cent of Missourians lived on farms or in villages of less than 2,000 people. With the exception of St. Louis, there were no cities in Missouri... statistically, the average Missourian was a Methodist from Kentucky who owned a 215-acre family farm, owned no slaves, and produced most of the family's subsistence."
From "Inside War"
"Good Heavens, my blood boils- women in this hole of filth and blasphemy! I could scarcely believe it until I saw it with my own eyes, Mrs. Mitchell, who is here with a little daughter five or six years old. She is charged with smuggling goods through to the Confederacy."
Griffin Frost, "Camp and Prison Journal"
"Now I have two very pretty rebel girls on my hands as prisoners and what the devil to do with them I don't know, as I don't like to put them in the guard house. I expect I will have to take them into my room and let them sleep with me."
Bazel F. Lazar Joint Collection, Missouri Historical Society, quoted in "Inside War."
"Headquarters District of Central Missouri
Warrensburg, MO., September 10, 1864
To: Lt. Col B. F. Lazear [Lazar, quoted in passage above], Commanding Union Militia, Second Sub-district, Lexington, MO.
Colonel: The commanding general is informed by Major-General Rosecrans that your troops are causing a reign of terror in LaFayette and Saline Counties and that it should receive your attention. He is also further informed that their officers are permitting them to rob the people of their property for their own benefit, to murder peaceable citizens, and committ other outrages upon the people while the pursuit of the bushwhackers is abandoned by loading the troops with plunder from the country...He directs you will report fully in relation to these complaints.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
J.H. Steger, Assistant Adjutant-General"
Official Records, Ch LIII, Page 145
"[Missouri Union Militia] troops frequently upset the security of the civilians they were supposed to be protecting. Federal officers themselves often reported being driven frantic by the mob-like activities of the troops ostensibly under their command. The Lieutenant Colonel who had just taken command at the [Union] garrison of Warsaw [Missouri] in August 1863, wrote his commander that 'our soldiery' had committed 'six murders within the last ten or twelve days... There is a feeling of insecurity universally prevailing with the peaceable citizens... all in this place that can get conveyances express an intention of leaving. There is no discipline whatever exercised over the soldiers here, which, added to the indiscriminate sale of liquor, renders the soldiers fiends rather than soldiers. The best citizens here have been menaced with death by the soldiers.'"
-Lieutenant Colonel T. A. Switzler to Brigadier General E. B. Brown,
Warsaw, Missouri, August 11, 1863, OR, Quoted in "Inside War"
"Union Correspondence
Headquarters District of Southeastern Missouri
Pilot Knob, Mo., October 25, 1863
Capt. W. T. Leeper, Patterson:
On Tues. evening, the 27th instant, 150 well-appointed troops will arrive at Greenville from Cape Girardeau. You will join them with all the men you can spare from post duty and during their stay in that region, give old Tim [Reeves] and his rascally gang such a hunt and extermination as they never yet had.
You will summon all the wives of the bushwhackers you can reach to come to Doniphan, and give them plainly to understand that either their husbands must come in and surrender themselves voluntarily and stop their villainous conduct, or their houses, stock, and &c. will be given to the flames, and the families all sent down the Mississippi River to be imprisoned at Napoleon, Ark... be firm, but discreet. I shall look for some good work in the lower counties during the next twenty days.
Clinton B. Fisk, Brigadier General"
-OR, Ch. XXXIV, P. 678
"Dave Maberry had come home from the Rebel army and stayed at home and round about home. He was standing in his yard when the Federals came. They arrested him and took him with them. They dashed on and caught Akins. They went on down the valley and crossing the river at House's ford, they saw Frank Wheeler... he ran across the field going north and had reached the top of the field when they caught him. He had two pistols with him but a bullet from the enemy had shattered his right wrist so he could not use the weapons. He cursed them until they shot him in the mouth with his own pistol. Next the leader signalled some of his men to shoot Akins. Mr. Akins, divining their intentions, ran into some woods and got about two hundred yards when they shot and disabled him. They placed him on his feet and tied him fast to a tree and tortured him by shooting him sixteen times, making slight wounds in his flesh. Bud House, then fifteen years old, stood in his yard nearly a mile away and heard him scream many times."
-J.J. Chilton, from the "Current Local," February 3, 1932, reprinted in "The Civil War in Carter and Shannon Counties"
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