The Missouri Civil War on classic television

While searching through old movies on YouTube the other day, I saw the name of a familiar battle of the Missouri Civil War. Decision at Wilson's Creek was a 25 minute TV movie from the popular show Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater. The show ran from 1956-1961 and many of the episodes were based on stories written by Zane Grey, one of the most famous Western writers.

This episode aired in 1957. I'm not sure if it's a Grey story or not. I can't find a tale by that name although of course it could have been retitled. The story opens with a Confederate officer (played by John Forsythe, the voice from Charlie's Angels) in the army of General Sterling Price resigning his commission and returning to his wife in Springfield. His army buddies deride him for a coward, but it soon turns out he's on a secret mission to find out Union troop strengths before the Battle of Wilson's Creek.

Other than the fictional character, the episode sticks fairly close to history. The main error was showing the Confederates in beautiful new uniforms, when in fact many of Price's men had no uniforms at all, or pretty ragged ones. The acting is fairly good, the writing so-so, and it's worth seeing as a historical curio and for a bit of old-time TV nostalgia.

Got my author's copies of Spirits of St. Louis!

A nice little package from Rocking Horse Publishing arrived here in Spain, containing my author's copies of Spirits of St. Louis: Missouri Ghost Stories.

It includes my story "After the Raid", an offshoot of my Civil War horror novel A Fine Likeness. For those who have read the novel, it follows the story of Helena, the daughter of the German photographer who gets killed by the bushwhacker band, and how she takes a terrible revenge. Of course a terrible revenge comes at a terrible price. . .

The story also stands on its own in case you haven't read the book (ahem).

There are lots of good stories in here. I especially liked "Ghost in Celestial Blue" by Donna Volkenannt, which is set in Bissell Mansion in St. Louis. Since I know you read this blog, Donna, could you tell me if there's really a ghost there? I suppose I could Google it, but where's the fun in that?

Civil War Photo Friday: The tomb of the Emperor Maximilian

On last week's trip to Vienna I visited several sites of historical interest. One of them was the Imperial Crypt of the Hapsburg dynasty, including this grave for the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. He was the younger brother of Franz Joseph, the Hapsburg who would later be ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and draw his country into World War One.

As a younger brother, it seemed unlikely that Maximilian would ever sit on the throne, so when France extended its influence into Mexico in the 1860s and was looking for a European monarch, Maximilian was the man for the job. He took over as Emperor of Mexico in 1864. The United States didn't recognize him as the rightful ruler of Mexico, but was too busy with its own Civil War to do anything about it.

Maximilian was a liberal ruler, granting extra rights to the peasants and taking steps towards land reform, but that couldn't stop the revolutionaries who were fighting to make Mexico into something closer to a democracy. Once the Civil War was over in 1865, the U.S. government started arming the revolutionaries and Maximilian's position became precarious.

He got a bit of help from former Confederates who fled to Mexico after the war. This included many Missouri figures such as Confederate Generals Sterling Price and J.O. Shelby. They couldn't tip the scales, however, and when France pulled out its army in 1866 Maximilian's days were numbered. He was defeated and executed in 1867. He now lies back home in Vienna. Note that someone put a little Mexican sombrero on his tomb. He still has his admirers in Mexico.

Spirits of St. Louis Anthology out now!

Missouri publisher Rocking Horse Publishing has just come out with Spirits of St. Louis, an anthology of ghost stories set in Missouri.

It includes my story "After the Raid", an offshoot of my Civil War horror novel A Fine Likeness. For those who have read the novel, it follows the story of Helena, the daughter of the German photographer who gets killed by the bushwhacker band, and how she takes a terrible revenge. Of course a terrible revenge comes at a terrible price. . .

The story also stands on its own in case you haven't read the book (ahem).

Here's the back cover blurb.

Lonely Hitchhikers. Dirt Roads. Tired Soldiers. Strange Children. Mysterious Ladies. Dark Houses. What do they have in common? 

They all haunt the pages of this book.

From the Lemp Mansion to The Exorcist, from the 1904 World's Fair to Jefferson Barracks, the history of St. Louis, Missouri and its surrounding river towns is filled with stories of haunts and the supernatural.

Spirits of St. Louis: Missouri Ghost Stories is a collection of over thirty stories from authors across the globe, celebrating these ghosts, banshees, and shadows.

Do you believe in ghosts? If you believe or not, this collection of dark tales of the dead and disturbed is sure to keep you awake at night. Lock the doors, turn down the lights, and prepare to be terrified.

Received my author's copies for my latest book!

A big box of books came to my door this week, my own books! Here's yours truly in need of a haircut holding a copy of the second edition of It Happened in Missouri. This is a collection of tales about interesting and odd events in the state's history.

This edition has a new cover showing Vice President John Garner playing around with a pair of Jesse James' pistols while Harry Truman looks on. The book also includes two new chapters. One covers a champion bicycle race in 1887 where the racers used those strange old bikes with one giant tire and one small one, except for one plucky cyclist who did the race with a tricycle! The other new chapter is about the various hucksters who impersonated Jesse James after his death. One guy was even so bold as to do this as late as 1950.

The book is available for preorder now. If you'd like a free signed copy I'll be happy to send one along, although I'll have to ask you to pay for the international shipping.

The end is in sight for my next Civil War horror novel!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been forging ahead with the sequel to A Fine Likeness. I had more than 60% done, had the ending written, but didn't know how to get there. It was coming in little 1000-word bursts. This is different than my usual method which is to have the entire story arc in my head and I'm really only filling in details.

Now I'm happy to say I know exactly where I'm going. That last span of the story arc is in place in my head and cone again my writing is essentially filling in the little blank spots, like that crusty old riverboat captain that makes a certain scene but didn't exist until my fingertips surprised my mind by putting him on the page.

So I'm hoping to get this sucker done by the end of this week. We shall see!

Reader News for October 6, 2013

A couple of new books from blogger buddies this time around! Have some news you want to share? Drop me a line!

The Maze of Mist, the latest fantasy novel from A.J. Walker, is for sale in the Kindle store. For the first month he's priced it at only $3.99, and it's free for Prime members.

Here's the blurb:

When the heir to the throne is treated as an outcast, he has to prove himself before he can rule.

Prince Metis Itxaron is the son of a human father and a goblin mother. As heir to the Twin Thrones, he will some day bear the responsibility of ruling two peoples while protecting the kingdom from the vicious armies of the Bandit Queen and the Elves of the Great Forest.

Instead he spends his time getting drunk and sleeping with the few women willing to look beyond his mixed heritage.

In a desperate attempt to make a man out of him, his parents send him on a secret diplomatic mission to prepare for an upcoming war. What they don't expect is that he will come upon visitors from an unknown land beyond the Sea of Mist, a strange labyrinth of fog that has baffled navigators for all of recorded history.

Metis sees a visit to these new lands as an opportunity to escape his responsibilities and prove himself on his own terms.

Then he discovers that representatives from his kingdom's enemies are coming along for the voyage. . .

This is the second book in the Chronicles of the House of Itxaron series. The first volume is Roots Run Deep. While set in the same world, each title is a standalone novel.

Missouri historian Larry Wood also has a new book out. Murder and Mayhem in Missouri tells the story of some of Missouri's toughest outlaws.

Desperadoes like Frank and Jesse James earned Missouri the nickname of the "Outlaw State" after the Civil War, and that reputation followed the region into the Prohibition era through the feverish criminal activity of Bonnie and Clyde, the Barkers and Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd.

Duck into the Slicker War of the 1840s, a vigilante movement that devolved into a lingering feud in which the two sides sometimes meted out whippings, called slickings, on each other. Or witness the Kansas City Massacre of 1933, a shootout between law enforcement officers and criminal gang members who were trying to free Frank Nash, a notorious gang leader being escorted to federal prison.

Scorched Earth Policy in Civil War Missouri

By the middle of 1863, 150 years ago, the Civil War in Missouri had gotten nasty. Regular Confederate forces had long since been pushed out of the state, but the Union troops were constantly harassed by cavalry raiders and guerrillas.

Many Missourians supported the South, especially in the small towns and countryside, and Union troops took vengeance on them by burning their homes, barns, even entire villages. Guerrillas did the same with Unionist homes and villages.

For example, in June a Union scouting party torched the house of a Mr. Robertson after guerrillas had been found sheltering there on two occasions. They also burnt the town of Sibley, which the guerrillas used as a base for sniping at boats passing down the Missouri River. That same month, rebel guerrillas burnt the Unionist town of Butler in Bates County. After the civilians fled the inferno there were no more Union families in the county.

In August, another Union detachment torched Gouge's Mill. They'd found a recruitment poster for the Confederate army tacked to a tree nearby, and discovered it was a rendezvous point for Confederate recruiters and a local guerrilla band. There was a blacksmith shop and gunsmith shop on the premises that the rebels used to repair their equipment. Another house nearby where they were accustomed to stay was also burned to the ground.

The war in Missouri would only get worse.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons. This is actually a modern fire of an early 20th century barn, with the firefighters cropped out. :-)

Wild Bill Hickok in the Civil War

When we think of Wild Bill Hickok, we usually think of him as an Old West gunfighter and scout on the Plains. Here he is, second from left, with some of his scout buddies. Like many of his kind, however, he was involved in the American Civil War.

His war service got off to a humble start when he signed on to the Union army as a civilian scout. He was at the Battle of Wilson's Creek, where the noise of the cannon fire so frightened him that he was momentarily paralyzed.

Later he served as a wagonmaster, once having to make a quick escape when his wagon train was attacked by rebel bushwhackers. By early 1862 Hickok had become a scout again. He probably figured that if he was going to be involved in the fighting anyway, he might as well have a more impressive title! He saw action at the Battle of Pea Ridge and probably numerous smaller engagements.

He did so well at the battle that the Union command made him a spy, riding around the Missouri countryside without a uniform while trying to learn about rebel troop and guerrilla movements. When Confederate General Sterling Price invaded Missouri in 1864, a campaign that serves as the background to my novel A Fine Likeness, Hickok was sent to infiltrate Price's camp.

This he did, and according to his own account he was able to hang out in Price's headquarters and gather useful information. But that information would be of no use if he couldn't get back to his own lines. So one day when pickets from the opposing armies were lined up on opposite sides of a river, Hickok dared a boastful Confederate sergeant into riding out into the river with him to see who would get closest to the Yankees.

The Union soldiers recognized Hickok and held their fire. One of them was dumb enough to cheer, "Bully for Wild Bill!" The sergeant became suspicious, and so Hickok blasted him out of his saddle. Then he urged his horse through the water as the rebels opened fire after him. He returned safe and deliver the information to the Union command.

Book Review: Wild Bill Hickok, The Man and His Myth

Wild Bill Hickok: The Man and His Myth by Joseph G. Rosa
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Wild Bill Hickok is one of those Old West icons whose real personality has been shrouded in generations of fiction. The reality, as is often the case, is far more interesting. Hickok was a scout, Indian fighter, Civil War spy, lawman, gunfighter, gambler, actor, and much more.

In this book Joseph Rosa, the leading authority on Wild Bill, tries to separate the man from his myth and nail down just how various untruths and exaggerations about him got started. What really launched his fame was his 1865 shootout with David Tutt, one of the few standup, Western-style gunfights that really happened. The national magazine Harper's sent a hack out to Missouri to interview Hickok, and the result was a blood and thunder tale in the dime novel tradition. The article is reproduced in full in this book.

While Rosa does a good job separating fact from fiction, this book is terribly organized. It jumps around in time and place and never gives a full overview of the man's life, instead looking at a few key incidents. Even these aren't in chronological order. This makes the book confusing and frustrating.

For those looking for a standard biography, I recommend Rosa's earlier book, They Called Him Wild Bill. While written 30 years earlier and not as fully researched, it's much more readable.

View all my reviews

Wild West Photo Friday: Wild Bill Hickok

 

You don't get much more Wild West than Wild Bill Hickok. A scout, Indian fighter, lawman, gunfighter, gold prospector, and during the Civil War a Union spy, Hickok lived a life of adventure. I'll be talking about his Civil War record next week, but let's just admire this photo today.

Here he is clad in buckskins, as he would have been when scouting for the U.S. Cavalry on the Plains or fighting Indians. He preferred to dress this way, which is probably one of the reasons he became a legend in his own lifetime. The fact that he kept getting in gunfights and winning also helped. After his famous 1865 gunfight in Springfield, Missouri, the first real stand-up, face-to-face gunfight in the Old West, he launched into national fame.

As you can see here, he's carrying his famous pair of ivory-handled Colt .36-caliber Navy pistols in his belt as well as a large knife. Several people who knew him said he carried a pair of .41-caliber Williamson derringers as holdout weapons. These tiny pistols that were nevertheless deadly at short ranges, such as across a poker table.

Talking about historical horror over at Amlokiblogs

Hey all! I'm over at Amlokiblogs today chatting about my historical horror novel A Fine Likeness and having a conversation in the comments section about horror and history writing.

Drop on by and join the conversation!

Researching and writing in Oxford

As I mentioned in my last post, my family and I are in Oxford, England, for our usual working summer vacation. So what does a Civil War/Wild West historian do with himself in Oxford? Luckily, quite a lot!

Oxford University's Bodelian Library is a copyright library, meaning they have a copy of every book ever published in the UK. Since many American books have UK editions, I have acess to them. There's also a special library building specifically dedicated to American studies.

Right now I'm working on the second edition to my Outlaw Tales of Missouri. This includes two new chapters, one on the famous shootout in Springfield involving Wild Bill Hickok and the other about Francis Tumblety, a quack doctor in St. Louis who was a prime suspect for being Jack the Ripper.

I'm also working on an article about the Civil War experiences of several key figures in the O.K. Corral shootout and Arizona War. For more UK-centered research I'm also doing a behind-the-scenes article on the British Museum. Of course I'm busy with fiction too, both the sequal to A Fine Likeness and the novel I stated in Tangier.

All this writing won't keep me from enjoying a sunny British summer and some pints of real ale!

What are your writing plans for this summer?

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Wild West Photo Friday: Jesse James in a Men's Magazine

If you're a guy and of a certain age, you'll remember the men's magazines. Popular from the 50s to the 70s, these cheap publications offered up large servings of violent action, fast cars, and loose women. They were often called "lad's magazines" to distinguish them from more serious periodicals such as GQ and Men's Health.

For Men Only was a typical lad's magazine, with lots of gunfights and sex. The issue shown here featured the James-Younger gang's disastrous robbery at Northfield, Minnesota. I wrote a book on this raid, and I bet it was more accurate than this hormone-driven coverage. I can't say for sure, though, since I haven't read this issue. I'm more curious about that white god who ruled a tribe of amorous women!

With cable TV providing 24-hour soft porn and cage fighting, men's magazines are mostly a thing of the past, with a few holdouts such as Maxim keeping the torch lit. So it looks like I won't be writing any popular-level Wild West articles laden with sex and violence anytime soon.

An unplanned ride through enemy lines

As I've mentioned before, by 1863 the fight in Missouri was mostly one between Union soldiers and militia and Confederate bushwhackers. Prominent among these irregular rebel fighters was Major Tom Livingston. He was quite successful for a time and gathered a lot of attention from Union forces.

On May 13, 1863, one Union detachment caught up with him at the Centre Creek lead mines. Livingston had about a hundred well-armed men and were probably in the area to get lead with which to make bullets. Union troops surprised him and attacked.

The official Union report states, "It was a desperate bushwhacking fight; both sides were hand-to-hand in the brush for awhile. Captain Henslee's horse became very much frightened, and charged immediately through the rebel crew; it is supposed fifty guns were fired alone at him in this passage; escaped unhurt. He fired as he went through; killed 1; charged back again in order to save himself and killed another."

If you're going into battle, make sure you can control your horse!

My book launch in Italy

I'm baaaack!

As I mentioned before, I was in Gorizia, Italy, for the ninth annual èStoria Festival. This history/book fair is hosted by my Italian publisher, who recently came out with these Italian-language editions of two of my books. For three days, a park in Gorizia was filled with tents. Several book dealers set up shop and the other tents were given over for talks and panels.

The theme this year was Bandits, and I was on a panel about Jesse James. I was the only non-Italian in the room but luckily they provided me with a translator. This guy was amazing. He grew up speaking four languages and went on to learn a dozen more. He gave a simultaneous translation so seamless it almost felt like the other panelists were speaking two languages at the same time.

My fellow panelists were a historian, a journalist, and a philosopher, and so we were an eclectic bunch. I gave a talk on "Jesse James, Inc.", on how the James legend was commodified even in his own lifetime.

The others put him in the context of the greater theme of banditry, and compared him with some of the famous bandits of southern Italy. Italian unification in the 19th century was mostly led by northern Italians, and while the southern Italians went along with it, there was some grumbling over the loss of independence. Some bandits took advantage of this by branding themselves rebels as well as thieves. Hmmm. . .sounds familiar.

I managed to slip away to do some sightseeing as well. Hit the link above about Gorizia to learn about this interesting town on the border with Slovenia. I also went to visit the Isonzo World War One battlefield.

I had a great time and hope to go back some other year. After the festival I headed over to Slovenia for a week. I'll be starting a series on Gadling this week about that.

The Missouri locust plague of 1875

As I've mentioned before on this blog, Missouri had a tough time during Reconstruction, with outlawry and sectarian bitterness dividing an already divided people. Nature didn't cooperate either. In the spring of 1875, just a decade after the Civil War, there was a great plague of locusts.

Huge swarms passed overhead for days on end, descending on the fields and stripping them clean. It was said the Missouri River, which was flooding at the time and causing extra damage, ran black with dead bugs. Locals clearing the courthouse lawn in Independence filled 15 barrels with locusts. Each barrel weighed 200 poiunds!

Needless to say, some holy rollers insisted the Apocalypse had come. Others managed to keep their sense of humor, such as this illustrator for a contemporary newspaper. I lifted this public domain image from the great blog Yesteryear Once More, which has a long post on the history of locust plagues in America.

Speculating on Confederate land

As I mentioned in my post about the Baldknobbers vigilante group in the Ozarks, when Confederate veterans returned home, many found their land had been confiscated for failure to pay taxes during the war and was now occupied by Union men.

Speculation in land skyrocketed in Missouri and many border and Southern states after the war as monied Northerners hurried in to grab cheap plots. One of the was Daniel Fogle, who in a letter from 1867 observed that he couldn't even get off the train without being offered land for sale, "There are a great many that are thronging the railroad stations, exceedingly anxious to sell lands."

The best deals were to be had from county governments, who had seized rebel farms when the taxes weren't paid. Fogle reported, "These lands sell for near nothing--but it is considered very hazardous to buy and occupy them as they mostly belong to men who went into the Southern army and dare not return, and there is a large band of them sworn together, and unknown to authorities, who will and do kill every man who attempts to occupy their former homes."

The enduring bitterness of displaced and disenfranchised Southerners led to many outlaw groups (often made up of former bushwhackers) and well as larger organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan. The legacy of the war continued long after the last battle was over.

Charles Zagonyi, Soldier on Two Continents

At the start of the Civil War, both sides were desperate for men with military experience. The last major U.S. conflict had been the Mexican-American War, long enough before that its veterans were beyond prime fighting age. Luckily for the North, it had a good supply of immigrants who were veterans of wars in Europe.

One of them was Charles Zagonyi, a Hungarian who had fought with distinction in his nation's revolution of 1848. Having been born in 1828 he, too, was beyond prime fighting age, but that didn't stop him.

Through connections in the Hungarian community, Zagonyi was invited to join the large personal bodyguard of General John C. Fremont in St. Louis. Fremont was entranced with the pomp and splendor of European armies and surrounded himself with foreigners in glittering costumes. Southerners sneered at all the foreign accents, and Northerners wondered if these strange fellows could actually fight.

Zagonyi got a chance to answer this question October 25, 1861, during the First Battle of Springfield, and the answer was both "yes" and "no". Confederate General Sterling Price's army had taken Lexington in the center of the state before retreating in the face of superior numbers. Now he was in southwest Missouri and only holding one major city in the region--Springfield.

Fremont led 38,000 men to make sure Price didn't come back. At its vanguard was Zagonyi. The Hungarian was given the task of retaking Springfield and decided to do it with a splendid cavalry charge. The charge was splendid all right, that is until it fell into a Confederate ambush.

Zagonyi's men numbered a little more than 300, while there were about 2,000 rebels in town. The Hungarian was in a tight spot, but he pressed forward and after some tough fighting the rebels wavered and ran. "Zagonyi's Charge" soon hit headlines across a North eager for some victories. He could rightly say that he'd seen off a far larger force and taken an important city. On the other hand, he really only defeated a poorly armed rearguard of an already retreating army.

When Fremont was relieved of duty for corruption and failure to adequately defend Missouri (a story I'll get to sometime) Zagonyi found himself out of a job. Fremont later managed to get a command in the Shenandoah Valley in West Virginia, and again hired his old bodyguard as a cavalry commander. Both made a poor showing of themselves and resigned under a cloud.

It's unclear what happened to Zagonyi after the war. While many officers wrote memoirs, for some reason Zagonyi never did.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Skirmish at Yellow Creek

Compared with the great Civil War campaigns back East, the struggle west of the Mississippi River had relatively few battles. Most of the fights were skirmishes that are all but forgotten today, yet they had a cumulative effect on the outcome of the war.

One such was the skirmish at Yellow Creek on August 13, 1862. Since August 9, Union forces under Col. Odon Guitar and Brig. Gen. Benjamin Loan had been pursuing pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard forces under Col. James Poindexter through Chariton and Livingston Counties in north-central Missouri.

The chase ran across 250 miles. The Union forces numbered 550 horsemen, while Poindexter's rebel force was much larger but suffering from supply problems. Col. Guitar estimated their number to be 1,500-2,000 but officers on both sides were not averse to exaggerating enemy numbers to inflate a victory or excuse a defeat.

Whatever the numbers involved, it was still a sound Union victory. The running fight cost the rebels horses and men, who were shot or fell by the wayside to be captured. The chase only ended when the rebels destroyed the bridge over the Muscle Fork river, stopping the Union pursuit cold.

Guitar boasted that by that point Poindexter only had about 400 men left, "with few arms and no ammunition. All of the latter I captured at Little Compton, with several hundred guns and horses, all his wagons, a large amount of clothing, and other plunder. In the round I have killed, wounded, and drowned 150 of his men and taken about 100 prisoners. Our loss has been 5 men wounded and some 10 horses shot."

He added, "I was unable to bring away a great part of the horses and plunder captured at Little Compton; besides, the condition of the greater part of them was such as to render them worthless. I have killed and worn down the greater part of my horses."