A Civil War dance interrupted!

I stumbled across this fun passage in the memoir The Babe of the Company, by Hamp Watts, who was the youngest member of Bloody Bill Anderson's bushwhacker band. It made me realize that when Jimmy and friends enjoy come feminine company in my Civil War novel, they didn't post a sentry either. They were lucky enough to get away with it!

"Anderson took his command to the hills on the Perche Creek in Boone county, dispersing it into small squads... Several squads of the guerrillas returned to Howard county.

"One of these squads, composed of six young men, Bob Todd, Andy Idson, Plunk Murray, Thad
Jackman, _Smith and Lee McMurtry, at the noon hour rode to the home of Capt Sebree, six miles southeast of Fayette. Their horses were fed, a bounteous dinner was served the guerrillas, Mrs. Sebree and her fair and accomplished sister, Miss Jennie Saunders, being the hostesses.

"After the meal, the horses were rebridled and all preparation made for departure, but before mounting, they repaired in a body to the house to bid adieu to the ladies. These young men loved women and the women loved them. They were met at the front door by Miss Saunders who suggested that they enjoy some music before leave taking.

"Alas, in accepting her cordial invitation and entering the parlor in a body, the usual precaution of detailing one of their number for picket duty was overlooked and neglected. Eternal vigilance, to the guerrilla, was the price of safety. Being lured by the smiles of beauty, enraptured by sweetest strains of music, laughter and song held full possession. War was forgotten for the hour. They were at peace with all the world, oblivious that the grim monster DEATH, molded in the leaden musket-ball was stealthily approaching.

"Murray, chancing to glance through the window, saw a body of 200 Federal troopers coming through the road gate, not more than 150 yards distant. He shouted loudly to his comrades, 'FEDERALS,'at the same time rushing through the door for the rear of the house. His comrades, thinking Murray was playing a joke, only laughed and answered, 'Where?'

"The advancing troops seeing Murray rush from the house, began firing upon him. Alarmed at hearing the fire from the troops, four of the remaining five rushed from the house, firing on the enemy as they attempted to escape. Todd was shot dead while running through the garden. Smith was killed in a pasture 300 yards south of the dwelling. Murray, Idson and Jackman succeeded in reaching a heavy growth of underbrush north of the house, making good their escape.

"For presence of mind and coolness facing imminent danger of death, McMurtry's quick action and successful ruse to evade detection and being killed was seldom if ever equaled during those perilous days. Realizing that all hope or means of escape from death by egress from the house was closed by the Federals, who had now surrounded the building, he quickly unclasped his belt of revolvers, and handing them to Miss Saunders, said to her, 'buckle these around your waist, beneath your dress skirt, and when the Feds come in address me as brother.'

"Speedily divesting his Over-shirt, secreting it under the piano lid, he rushed to the hall; an old straw hat on the wall, he donned it and then with no visible outward show of fear or tremor, calmly faced a squad of the enemy as they made excited inrush to the house.

"Both Miss Saunders and McMurtry were subjected to much questioning and severe scrutiny as to his identity, but they managed to retain their nerve and self-possession under the intense and trying ordeal. McMurtry helped to untie his captured horse and those of his five comrades and rushing in front and ahead of the Federal column, opened the gate for them on their departure.

"Hastily returning to the house securing his revolvers and with a 'God bless' for Miss Saunders, he lost no time in taking to the brush. The Federal authorities, hearing of the aid given McMurtry in making his escape, Miss Saunders was promptly banished south of the Mason and Dixon line."

A Missouri bushwhacker meets a bloody end

This rather gruesome image is of Captain William H. Stuart, a Confederate bushwhacker from Missouri. He started bushwhacking early in the war and later joined the band of Bloody Bill Anderson. He helped Bloody Bill on his ride through central Missouri in the autumn of 1864 in support of General Price's Confederate invasion. This is covered in my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness, although Stuart himself is never named. He was probably at the slaughter of the wagon train and the attack on Fayette, for example.

Stuart also spent a fair amount of time riding with his own small band, and this is when he met his end. The November 25, 1864, issue of Columbia Missouri Statesman states:

"Death has overtaken another notorious desperado and robber, in the person of rebel captain Stewart [sic], who, a companion of Anderson and a participator in many of the enterprises of that brigand, has been a curse to this section for many months past.

"Stewart was killed at the house of M'Donald in old Franklin, Howard county, on Friday last, by a cattle drover. Two drovers were at the home of Mr. M'Donald when Stewart and two companions rode up for the purpose of robbing or murdering them. The drovers fastened the doors of the house and Stewart in attempting to break them down was shot by one of the drovers and killed instantly. One shot penetrated his neck, another entered near the mouth, and a third passed fairly into the corner of the forehead. The other two guerrillas escaped.

"Stewart was a man of medium height, spare made, smooth of face, and wore very long hair of a red color. He was on the whole a fine looking man. The drover who killed him was in town on Wednesday and had in his possession a photograph of the desperado taken after death, exhibiting plainly the holes where the fatal bullets entered. Stewart was from the vicinity of Warrensburg, Johnson County, Missouri."

Death photos of bushwhackers and outlaws were common in those days, both as gruesome mementos and as a way for authorities to identify suspects. Bloody Bill also had his death photo taken, as did Jesse James and the Dalton brothers.

This card was sold at auction a couple of years ago by Heritage Auctions, which has all sorts of great stuff to buy if you have more disposable income than I do.

There is some debate of the spelling of Stuart's last name. This genealogical website states that it's actually spelled Stewart.

P is for General Sterling Price

One of the defining figures of the Confederate cause west of the Mississippi was General Sterling Price. A former Missouri governor and commander of the Missouri State Guard when the war started, he was a popular figure and was very effective at rallying troops to the Confederacy.

Price was the victor of several early battles such as Wilson's Creek and Lexington, but his star soon faded as he suffered a number of defeats. Price was a brave man who often led his troops from the front (rather than several miles to the rear like too many generals) yet he was a poor strategist. The consensus among historians is that he would have made a better regimental commander than army commander.

In 1864 he led his last campaign, an ill-planned invasion of Missouri. He thought that after more than two years of Yankee rule that Missourians would rise up to support him. Some did; most didn't. His poorly armed troops plodded through the state, winning some battles but losing others, never strong enough to take St. Louis or the state capital at jefferson City as Price had planned.

By this time Price weighed 400 pounds and could barely ride a horse. He rode most of the time in a carriage while many of his ill-equipped troops had to walk. The expedition met disaster at Westport near Kansas City and fled south, having their final engagement at the Battle of Newtonia before retreating south to Arkansas, never to return.

Price never stopped believing in the Confederacy. When the South surrendered he and some other diehards fled to Mexico and started a Confederate colony. It too was a failure and eventually he returned home to live his final years in quiet retirement.

I've always been fascinated with Sterling Price because he sums up much of what was good and bad about the Confederacy: enthusiastic yet ill-conceived, brave yet foolhardy, willing but unequal to the task. And he accepted defeat with his head held high.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Hunting Quantrill in Civil War Missouri

A hundred and fifty years ago this week, Union forces in Missouri were hunting someone who would become a legend. The Seventh Missouri Infantry had moved to Blue Springs in Jackson County, where infamous Confederate bushwhacker William Clarke Quantrill was operating.

A schoolteacher from Ohio, Quantrill made a name for himself during Bleeding Kansas by fighting on whichever side offered the most chance for booty. Once the war started in earnest, he threw in his lot with the South and rampaged across Missouri. Even at this early stage of the war he was robbing stagecoaches, wagon trains, mail carriers, and stealing horses. Many of these actions were hit-and-run attacks on Union forces; others were simple banditry. His followers rode the best horses, either stolen or given to them by Confederate sympathizers, while Union troops, indifferently mounted on government-issued steeds, had a hard time catching him.

From January 29-February 3, the Seventh Missouri tried their best. They managed to kill six of his men and capture much of his booty, including a fine stagecoach and team and seven wagons filled with pork and tobacco. Quantrill got away, however, and would only die in the last days of the war in 1865.

The Official Records include an interesting complaint from a Union officer stating that his men lacked boots and shoes and "the suffering men have filled the hospitals with frostbite." They also hadn't had any sugar for two weeks. The rebels weren't the only ones suffering from supply problems during the Civil War.

Quantrill appears briefly in my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness. Two men who rode with Quantrill for part of the war, Frank James and Bloody Bill Anderson, are supporting characters. One of the reasons I picked Civil War Missouri as a setting for my novel was because there were so many interesting real characters for my fictional ones to meet!

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

WARNING!!! GRAPHIC!!! Civil War Photo Friday: Scalping Victim

Today’s Civil War Photo is at the bottom of the post instead of the top to give squeamish readers a chance not to see it. I’m not squeamish and even I find this photo hard to look at.

This is Robert McGee, c.1890, in a photo courtesy the Library of Congress. When he was a young boy in 1864, he was scalped by Sioux chief Little Turtle. The Sioux and many other tribes in the Far West rose up during the Civil War to take some of their land back and avenge many broken treaties. Perhaps Little Turtle was thinking of all the Indian children who had been killed by the white man. None of that, of course, justifies maiming a child.

Both North and South sapped the frontier of regular troops and young men, leaving it open for attack. Local militia and small detachments of Union and Confederate troops had their hands full fighting Indian war parties. In nearly all of these fights, the white’s superior weaponry led to victory, and the victors weren’t loathe to take scalps themselves. In one notorious incident called the Sand Creek Massacre, troops and townsmen slaughtered about 150 men, women, and children who had made peace with the Federal government and had been promised protection. A good introduction to the war in the Far West is Colton's Civil War in the Western Territories, which I reviewed here.

Scalping took place in other theaters of the war too, especially Missouri. In a scene from my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness, teenaged Confederate bushwhacker Jimmy Rawlins and his friends have joined the guerrilla band of Bloody Bill Anderson. They’re appalled when they see Anderson scalp a Union soldier. The next day Anderson shows them something calculated to change their minds.

“Mount up!” Anderson ordered. “We got some riding to do.”

“Where we off to this time, sir?” Jimmy asked.

“Another fight, what you figure? Bring your boys over here. I want you to see something.”

Jimmy gathered his group and Anderson led them through the woods about a hundred yards to where some bushwhackers were digging graves. Five bodies lay beside them. Jimmy gagged when he saw they’d all been scalped.

“These were my men,” Anderson said. “Serving as rearguard as we made our escape yesterday. Some Yanks caught up with them and look what they did.”

“My God,” the Kid muttered.

“Take a good look,” Anderson said. “The Yanks won’t show us no mercy, so I don’t want no more bellyaching about the way I do things. This is war to the knife, and the knife to the hilt. If you want to win it, you do things my way.”

The Rawlins Rangers walked back to their horses in silence. As they mounted up Albert whispered, “What with what Jesse told us about Anderson’s sister, and what we just saw, I wouldn’t give a plug nickel for that Union prisoner’s life.”

“Worth more than that,” Elijah grinned, patting his saddlebag. “Two more to go.”

He trotted off as the others stared at him. Morgan paced his horse up to Jimmy’s side.

“Yankee soldier or no,” Morgan muttered, “this ain’t no way to do things. I swear to God one day I’m gonna put a bullet in that son of a bitch.”

More Neoconfederate nonsense

As I mentioned in my last post, the Neo-confederates don't like my Civil War novel's negative portrayal of Bloody Bill Anderson, rapist and murderer of unarmed prisoners. Big surprise.

The admin over at the Missouri in the Civil War Message Board deleted the thread, saying,

"The message boards extend a courtesy to our "Contributing Authors" to promote their books, articles, speaking engagements, etc. In the case of a book or article posting, I must ask that any critique of an author's work be on the highest and most polite level. If you have an "historical" issue with the content of an author's work, please specifically address a statement from the book or article with page numbers, dates, the text in question and your documented response to the author's position. No personal or "petty" exchanges will be tolerated on the message board from authors or respondents. Thanks for your cooperation."

Yeah, I was partly guilty for the petty exchange, but as anyone who knows me knows, I have a zero-tolerance policy to assertive stupidity. Despite the admin's words, Bloody Bill's #1 fan Neil Block wrote again. This time he used a spell checker, sort of.

"One last time, if it remains here, I'll express an opinion. I hope it suits this board:

I find it unexceptable for anyone to make remarks or assumptions about the mental condition of anyone who has been involved in close quarters combat in any war. If you ain't been there, don't assume that you would be able to handle the stress in any given situation or the results of having war waged upon "your soil" and againest your friends and family. None of us can judge others or be for sure how many of us would regain their humanity after having cared so little for it to survive. For 150 years those have that demeaned Missourians to be less than perfect in their eyes have assumed that they are moral & intellectual superior to the rest of us. Promoting work that makes statements about real life soldiers should be based on works by those that actually knew the soldier and not statements made in judgement by his adversaries. I know there are soldiers and former soldiers that read this message board and if they have been CQC they may have known a few "Bill's", but they have also known some "John's"........John McCorkle suffered the same fate as Bill Anderson did, CQC, losing family in the same event, but John was able to return and make a life after the war. We don't know his ghosts but he was able to maintain his civility thru some pretty tough times...........Nobody Knows Who Will Return..............that is why soldiers make the best peace makers...........beating up on Bill Anderson has made quiet a few folks a little $$$......."Doing right ain't got no end" is the redleg way..........defending his victims is mine..........Neil Block"

To which I responded,

"And I find it unacceptable for anyone to make remarks or assumptions about a book they haven't even read.
I hope this thread does stay up because it points out the narrow pro-Confederate bias that is all too obvious among some in the community. The idea that one side was bloodthirsty and evil and the other side was perfect and honorable is contrary to the facts. Both sides did terrible things in that war, and both sides included honorable men.
Mr. Block says: "Promoting work that makes statements about real life soldiers should be based on works by those that actually knew the soldier and not statements made in judgement by his adversaries."
I'd like to see him apply that idea to Union soldiers and Redlegs as well Confederate soldiers and bushwhackers."

Will this end the debate? I doubt it, considering the Neoconfederates griping at me anonymously in the comments section. Those comments were all redirected to my blog from the same cc'ed message sent via Yahoo mail. Gee, I wonder who sent THAT? Blogger tells you some amazing things if you understand the system.

Neo-Confederate threatens author of Civil War novel

My Missouri Civil War novel A Fine Likeness has only been out ten days and it's already getting an angry response from Neo-Confederates. I posted an announcement on the normally sane Missouri Civil War Discussion Board and included my blurb. Skip down if you've already read it.

A Confederate guerrilla and a Union captain discover there’s something more dangerous in the woods than each other.

Jimmy Rawlins is a teenaged bushwhacker who leads his friends on ambushes of Union patrols. They join infamous guerrilla leader Bloody Bill Anderson on a raid through Missouri, but Jimmy questions his commitment to the Cause when he discovers this madman plans to sacrifice a Union prisoner in a hellish ritual to raise the Confederate dead.

Richard Addison is an aging captain of a lackluster Union militia. Depressed over his son’s death in battle, a glimpse of Jimmy changes his life. Jimmy and his son look so much alike that Addison becomes obsessed with saving him from Bloody Bill. Captain Addison must wreck his reputation to win this war within a war, while Jimmy must decide whether to betray the Confederacy to stop the evil arising in the woods of Missouri.

Bloody Bill Anderson was a real person. Neil Block, Commander of the Captain William T. Anderson Camp #1743 SCV (Sons of Confederate Veterans), posted this response. I've kept his and grammar spelling intact.

"Any writing, even fiction, especially fiction that portreys Capt. Anderson in a negitive light should be considered a Hertiage Violations by the Captian William T. Anderson Camp #1743 SCV and steps will be taken to address this writers material as such............"

Okaaay. Neil Block can't even spell the name of his own organization! As you can see from their website, they're desperately trying to rehabilitate the name of this guerrilla who killed unarmed prisoners, scalped victims, and according to the scholarly biography Bloody Bill Anderson: the Short, Savage Life of a Civil War Guerrilla, had a fondness for raping young black girls. This isn't just some damned Yankke talking. The self-styled modern Missouri Confederate government admits Anderson's band had a penchant for rape.

I used Bloody Bill as a character in my novel because while he was a real person, his personality was like something straight out of central casting for a horror movie. I didn't include the rapes because I didn't want to write those scenes, so in a sense I was actually kind to Anderson's memory.

Of course I responded:

"Mr. Block,
You misspelled "portrays", "negative", "heritage", and "captain".
And you forgot the apostrophe in "writer's".
After careful consideration of the evidence I find you guilty of a Literacy Violation and hereby sentence you to complete grade school."


You can read the inevitable continuation of the thread, here.