Bloody Dawn (2 page)

The problem might have been simple were Jennison's men the only Kansans on the border. But they were not alone. There was James Montgomery, a Bible-toting evangelist whose easy philosophy on war—to “keep the Missourians from our doors … give them something to do at home”—translated into men rebuilding what he and his raiders had destroyed and trying to recover goods they had stolen. Later there was also George Hoyt, a handsome, educated, “whole souled New England boy,” leader of a group known as Red Legs because of their bright leather gaiters. Ostensibly organized to scout and defend the Kansas border, Hoyt's murderous gang was in fact engaged in a lucrative horse-stealing operation. Other jayhawkers banded together and joined the treasure hunt. Indeed, the sport of plundering western Missouri became so popular that, weather and crops permitting, even more Kansans slipped across the state line in twos and threes and jayhawked “on their own hook.”
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There was also a rise in the number of men such as Marshall Cleveland, men who dropped the mask of patriotism altogether and randomly robbed and murdered on both sides of the line. “Like all other good institutions,” lamented one Kansas editor on jayhawking, “it is liable to abuse.” And as the “abuse” of Unionists in Kansas, as well as in Missouri, became more blatant each day, enthusiasm for jayhawking quickly vanished.
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A few of the sworn free-booters like Cleveland and his gang were driven off or killed. James Montgomery soon took his jayhawking skills to the swamps of Florida. And shortly even Jennison was leashed and jerked from the border. But all this came much too late to help Missouri. By the winter of 1861 the depredations of the Kansas jayhawkers had proven so thorough that the region was little better than a waste, inhabited by herds of hogs and cattle running wild through fields idle and overgrown with weeds. Homes still standing were rare. The entire countryside was a burned-out shell of its former self, and along with it many a grave had been added in a brief summer and winter of war. “If I had to sentence a man to solitude I should send him into one of the border counties of Missouri,” wrote a Kansas soldier.
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Not all Missourians took it lying down, however. During the summer and autumn of 1861 a number of small raiding parties crossed into Kansas to pillage and burn. But these forays were by and large
pathetic attempts at revenge, and when contrasted with the efficient rape of western Missouri they were of no consequence.
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Kansans were hardly put out. What little anxiety they did feel was more than offset by the knowledge that their old territorial foe had been brought to its knees and its wealth redistributed west.

“Old scores are all settled,” laughed one jayhawker, “and with a tolerable fair interest.”
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But the war on the border was far from over. Although it did seem to end that winter, the fact that it had not became abundantly clear when a storm broke over Kansas in 1862. With the small Southern army under former governor Sterling Price driven from the state by superior Union forces, a few defiant Rebels—“bushwhackers”—chose to remain in Missouri, take to the woods, and continue the fight from there. As the struggle between the guerrillas and Federal soldiers progressed, the partisans not only hung on and survived but became daring as well. Many recent victims of Jennison and other jayhawkers took heart and joined until the bands grew considerably in strength and boldness. By late that summer, as one Kansas town after another was seized and plundered, those west of the line began to appreciate amply the trials Missourians had endured during the previous year.

At various times after 1861 it did seem to some hopeful observers as if the guerrilla war against Kansas had peaked and that Union arms were at last gaining the peace and security demanded. But then, and often preceded by weeks of quiet, the hammer would again fall. At length, angry Yankee commanders responded with a series of violent acts and measures. Unable to deal militarily with the bushwhackers themselves, they struck for the root of Rebel support—civilians. One such measure began in midsummer 1863.

With little warning friends and relatives of known or suspected guerrillas were located by squads of Federal soldiers, roughed up, arrested, then led off to detention at Kansas City. As the sweep progressed and the jails filled, accommodations soon became inadequate. Finally, toward the first of August, a small number of prisoners were lodged in a makeshift guardhouse at the edge of town. The inmates were treated well enough there, but the choice of buildings was unfortunate.

Prior to its use as a prison, authorities were cautioned that the brick structure was unfit for habitation. Originally but two floors high, it was only in afterthought that the burden of a third story was added. And with little or no planning, the rear of the place had been clumsily built over a ravine. As the days passed the steady deterioration of the building became quite evident to all. Thus, early on the morning of August 13 an inspector was called in. The officer examined the structure, took note of the definite signs of shifting—walls cracked, dust and mortar along the foundation—then turned in his report to superiors. This, however, prompted a further inspection of the building, which quickly but quietly overruled the verdict of the first; the structure was deemed safe and the issue was dropped. The prisoners remained.

Later that day, shortly after lunch, a soldier on the third floor of the jail heard a creaking sound; glancing up he saw the walls slowly separating from the ceiling. Swiftly the man dove to safety, shouting for everyone to jump. But there was no time. Within seconds the walls fell inward; moments later only dust and debris remained. A huge crowd gathered. Muffled cries and moans drifted up from the wreckage as rescue efforts began. Pulled from the rubble, bloody and broken, survivors became hysterical, screaming that the Federals were murderers, that the building had been a death trap. The crowd became angry and loud. With bayonets fixed, troops soon arrived. They were jeered and threatened by the mob.
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The following day, on the third page of the Unionist Kansas City newspaper, a small article under “Local Matters” made passing note of the incident:

That day another woman did succumb to injuries and two others remained horribly crushed.
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Few Kansans heard the roar of these crashing bricks or the screams that soon followed, but in the deep, dark woods of western Missouri, the sounds were both terrible and utterly deafening.

Although born and bred in Missouri, Bill Anderson considered himself a Kansan. He'd spent five years there. Heeding the irresistible call of the West, Anderson's father had picked the family up one day in 1857 and then set it down again on the virgin plains of Kansas. The old man passed along the Santa Fe Road, ignoring the more populated, troubled eastern counties, opting for the peace and quiet and plentiful land of the Council Grove area. They were a hardworking, law-abiding family, the Andersons—the father and mother, the three brothers, the three sisters.
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And the land of their adoption,
a wilderness of rolling prairie and endless sky, was in many ways similar to the old home in Missouri, two hundred miles away. There was an important difference, however: although they were Southerners, most of their new neighbors were not. When war came in 1861, the Andersons refused to take up arms against the South.

In early May 1862, a local judge accused the Andersons of horse stealing. Hard words were exchanged, tempers flared, and a short time later a showdown occurred between the elder Anderson and his accuser. When the shooting stopped and the smoke had finally cleared, Bill Anderson's father lay in a pool of blood, cold and still. In turn, the son delivered himself into custody, and although he was soon set free on bail, an angry mob snatched another man also charged with stealing horses and quickly hanged him. Young Anderson didn't linger near Council Grove long, and after abandoning the farm, he and his family fled to the border.

Two months later, accompanied by several others, Bill Anderson returned. The judge, at home with his wife and her brother, also ran a small grocery by the wayside; thus when a stranger came one night seeking whiskey, the Kansan grabbed his gun and led the way. Just as he was about to leave the cellar of his store, two shadowy figures stepped from the dark and opened fire. When the brother-in-law appeared, he too was shot and, along with the judge, was stuffed into the cellar. As the wounded men struggled desperately to escape, the store was set ablaze over their heads. Finally, after torching the other buildings and herding in the victims' horses, Anderson and his companions rode back up the trail to the woods of western Missouri.
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Following the Council Grove affair and his escape from Kansas, Bill Anderson did surprisingly little for the next twelve months. True, his father was gone—“murdered,” Bill said—and this wound would remain deep and open. But the rest of his family was yet together and safe, and at the time there seemed no reason to suppose that they would not always be. He did fall in with the bushwhackers and was in a few small actions. But Anderson was not a leader of men; he was a follower. And it suited his tastes to keep things just that way. He was partial to the lighter side of life. He also favored a bottle now and again. Then, on July 31, 1863, Bill Anderson's world began to change.

On that night Anderson led a small band of bushwhackers on a raid through eastern Kansas. After murdering two men and burning several homes along the way, the marauders slipped up the Kaw Valley to a home in which the Anderson family was staying. Throughout
the region the military roundup of guerrilla relatives was in progress, and it was for this reason that the Kansan had come—to hustle his family away to safety. And so, early next morning the mother and her children left with the eldest son. Crossing back to a point just over the state line, the family pulled up; here Anderson quietly hid them among a group of friends.

Whatever his hope, Anderson's plan was a failure. The effort postponed his family's arrest by only hours, for hardly had they settled when a squad of soldiers arrived and herded them off to Kansas City and to prison. Legend has it that two weeks later, on August 13, Bill Anderson began toting a silk cord with him wherever he went and that generally, no matter where his shadow fell after that day, a new knot or two was tied. That was the day the building collapsed, crippling one sister for life and crushing another to death.
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One of the Yankee officers who had helped run the Todds from town the year before reflected on the matter with a riding companion in early August 1863. The son, George, he concluded, was a “blood thirsty cuss.” And it was true. Since his family's banishment from Kansas City Todd had lived up to that label, and he had every intention of living up to it even more.
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One dark morning in March 1863, near Sibley, Missouri, Todd and a gang of guerrillas forced a steamer to land as it was passing close to shore. The Rebels rushed aboard, rifled the clerk's safe, robbed the male passengers, and then compelled them to dump boxes of government supplies into the river. A further search of the boat turned up a handful of Yankee militiamen and eighty frightened blacks. Except for two who were shot and killed, the remaining Federals either escaped or were given paroles. As for the slaves, contrabands going west to resettlement and freedom, all were ordered ashore. The man in charge of finding homes for these bondsmen, their sponsor, was searched for several times but not found. With that the bushwhackers prepared to leave the boat. When asked by the edgy captain what he intended to do with the blacks, Todd didn't even have to think. “Blow their brains out!” came his simple reply. Although most wisely escaped earlier, nine of them had not, and as the boat's mate held the lantern Todd shot them dead, one after the other.
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Three months later, on a warm evening just before dusk, a company of Kansas cavalry entered the long, wooded lane south of Westport, Missouri. That day the weary outfit had ridden up over a dusty trail under a fierce sun. They planned to camp for the night at the
military post in Westport, and many of the men, with the captain's consent, had strapped their unwieldy carbines to the saddle. A short time before, another outfit had passed the same way.

When one mile from Westport, George Todd and sixty bushwhackers rose up from behind a stone wall and fired into the ranks. The Yankees toppled off in a row. Before the stunned survivors could free their guns, the guerrillas fired again, then charged. Panicked, the troopers broke and fled back down the lane followed by riderless horses and screaming Rebels. Later, when a relief column arrived, they found fourteen bodies sprawled in the road. Most were stripped clean of clothing, and many had numerous wounds. But all, it was noticed, had fatal shots to the head and heart—a little something extra, just to make sure.

The next morning a party of Federal scouts located a fresh trail. They followed it for several hours, then dismounted and entered a thick undergrowth. Moving softly, the squad approached to within a few yards of a clearing in which four men were discovered asleep. Someone made a slight noise and one of the figures rose up on an arm, rubbed his eyes, then fell back again with a hole blown through his chest. Two others were also killed, but although wounded, the fourth escaped.

Some days later, another group of scouts successfully ambushed a band of guerrillas, and in this fight the soldiers triumphantly announced that, indeed, George Todd was among the slain. Word spread rapidly and loyalists rejoiced.
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Few men in western Missouri commanded more respect than did Henry Younger of Harrisonville. Colonel Younger was a pleasant, likable man, honored and admired by all fortunate enough to have his acquaintance. For many years he had served as county magistrate, ruling with a firm but fair hand. Such was his popularity that he even sat several terms in the state legislature at Jefferson City. Younger was also extremely wealthy: his homes in the region were splendid showcases, and his land-holdings throughout the area were vast. Younger also owned numerous slaves. Although fiercely proud of his Southern heritage, when war came Henry Younger prayed for peace, held hard to the Union, and as a U.S. mail contractor carried on with his duties.

In late 1861, when the jayhawkers under Charles Jennison marched into Harrisonville flying the Stars and Stripes, they loaded Younger's possessions into wagons, threatened, bullied, and abused his helpless family, stole forty top horses, then marched out again. At that moment the old Missourian made an abrupt about-face and became an avowed secessionist.

The following summer Younger was returning home from a trip to Kansas City. Just south of Westport he was surrounded by a gang of Union militia, robbed of a large sum of money, murdered, then left bloating in the sun. Later the Younger mansion was burned to the ground and the mother and children forced out to face the winter.
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On a night in August 1863, Younger's oldest son, Coleman, led fifty raiders to Pleasant Hill, Missouri. Several loyalist homes were put to the torch, as were the dwellings of those who had recently sheltered a Kansas regiment. The next night the son returned and burned some more.
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Cole Younger didn't need a new reason to hate Kansas and fight the Yankees in his state, but on August 13, when the prison fell and killed a cousin, he got it nonetheless.

When Dick Yager returned to Missouri from the West, as foreman on one of his father's wagon trains, he found that Jennison had already been there. In a single night the Yagers' farm and lucrative freighting business were all but wiped out. The jayhawkers made off with thousands of dollars in furniture, horses, and slaves. If there was a glimmer of hope, the Yagers did manage to save a large herd of sheep and almost fifty head of fine stock. Even this spark sputtered out, however, when the Kansans returned a few days later to finish the job.
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Already a secessionist at heart, joining the Rebel forces was an easy step for Dick Yager to take. Fighting in a few engagements at first, falling on and looting the town of Gardner, Kansas, one night without firing a shot, Yager then led a daring raid to Diamond Springs, over one hundred miles deep into Kansas. Here, after murdering a storekeeper, he and two dozen men rode back toward Missouri, working along the Santa Fe Road, robbing and killing.
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Partly through his own words and partly through his son's actions, Yager's father was now rotting away in a dark cell of a St. Louis prison.
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At 6:00
P.M.
on August 20, 1863, with the sun still blazing above the horizon, Bill Anderson, George Todd, Cole Younger, and Dick Yager, along with William Gregg, Frank James, and over four hundred others rode over the State Line Road and entered Kansas. Except for those in blue at front and rear, most wore tattered butternut or faded red shirts, patched trousers tucked inside well-worn boots, and sweat-stained, wide-brimmed hats. They carried only a minimum of food and supplies. Yet they also had with them an ample amount of black powder and lead. Some balanced carbines over saddle bows. Many more, however, had stuck in holsters, belts, or side bags up to
eight revolvers apiece—Colt's big navy model, a .36 caliber cap and ball machine that left an “ugly looking wound” when fired into a man at close range.