Buchanan County, Missouri - Chapter 19: Buchanan County During the War, 1881

The history of the important events, which transpired in Buchanan County, during the period of the late war, would alone, fill a large book.

At this late day, when the old ship of state is sailing over the smoothest seas of prosperity, and when the deep wounds and gashes made by the war are being healed by the flight of time, and the hopes of the future, men are disposed to remember that unfortunate episode in our national history as a dream ; as a dark story of romance, and are unwilling now to recall the facts and incidents connected with it, especially those that are replete with crime and bloodshed.

The citizens of Buchanan County, being largely from the southern and western states, were, prior to i860, intensely patriotic, for it is a matter of history, that prior to that time, the southern people were loud and enthusiastic in their protestations of loyalty to the constitution and flag of the country.

In the canvass of i860, Bell and Everett received in this county, 1,287 votes. Douglas, 1,226. Breckenridge, 614, and Linqoln, 452, of which number, received by Lincoln, 410 were cast in the city of St. Joseph.

Each of these parties claimed, during the canvass, that it was the simon pure and only union and patriotic party. The old Whig party, genally, voted for Bell and Everett, while a few of them voted for Breckenridge as the representative of the extension of slavery. The Irish voted for Douglas, and the German vote was divided between Douglas and Breckenridge, and, anomalous as it may seem, much the larger number of Germans in the Platte Purchase voted for the Breckenridge ticket, believing that he was the regular nominee of the Democratic party.

At the election of delegates to the convention held in this Senatorial District, Governor Stewart, Governor Hall and Hon. Robert W. Donnell were elected by a large majority as union men over the other ticket, composed of Smith and Fallis, who were for disunion, on certain contingencies.

of a sectional president by the votes of the Northern States meant the violent abolition of slavery and the speedy dissolution of the Union. The course of the New York Tribune, which was then regarded as an exponent of Northern sentiment, had prepared most of the slaveholders of this county to believe that the Northern Abolitionists desired a separation of the slaveholding from the non-slaveholding states.

There were 2,Oii slaves owned in Buchanan County, which represented $1,500,000 in money. The dissolution of the Union meant destruction to this interest, and the large free territory west and the vicinity of Iowa and Nebraska, caused much anxiety and nervous apprehension for the future, which culminated in county meetings in the spring of 1 861. At these meetings intemperate action and incendiary resolutions were proposed, but the advice of the older and leading citizens was for quiet acquiescense in whatever might be the result^of the approaching conflict outside of this state.

In May, 1861, a portion of the citizens of St. Joseph, who had been organized into independent companies by M. Jeff. Thompson, of this city, and, under command of Captain I. C. C. Thornton, and who had participated in the sacking of Liberty Arsenal, had brought a part of the arms and ammunition there procured to this county, and some of the more inconsiderate and foolish ones had threatened to drive out the loyal men of St. Joseph, and especially those who had voted for Lincoln in i860.

John L. Bittinger, a prominent free soil man, had been appointed postmaster of St. Joseph, and had hung out a huge flag over the postoffice building when he took possession. Some of the Southern hotspurs believed this flag was a taunt and defiance to Thornton's camp, and in May, 1861, a crowd collected on the site of the old postoffice building, situated on Second Street, next door to the St. Joseph Hospital Medical College, and the flag was taken down by General Thompson, to the great gratification of the mob, and disgust of the frifends of Bittinger. The business men generally kept religiously away, and did not participate in the transaction.

Many claimed that Major Bittinger had purposely provoked the demonstration in order to have troops sent to St. Joseph, and declared they would shed the last drop of their blood to preserve the old flag from insult, but not a drop to keep Major Bittinger's flag over the postoffice.

The result was the sending of troops here during the same month to protect the loyal men, and to preserve order, which had become necessary from the violent disputes and bitter altercations, constantly threatening to end in street fights and general pillage. The first troops quartered here were United States Dragoons, which arrived on the 20th of May, 1 86 1, and encamped in South St. Joseph, under command of Captain Sully, (afterwards a brigadier general in the Federal army) and Lieutenant Armstrong. Lieutenant Armstrong resigned some time later, and became a general officer in the Rebel service. This company of dragoons' broke up Thompson's and Thornton's camp, near the Patee House, after which Thompson and Thornton went into the lower counties to raise troops, where many of the men composing the old company rejoined them, and served with more or less credit during the war as soldiers in different Confederate organizations.

The next Federal troops sent to St. Joseph were the Second Iowa, under command of Colonel, afterward General, Custis. They came about the first of June, 1861, and remained until August.

The Sixteenth Illinois, under command of Colonel Smith, arrived in St. Joseph in September, and remained until about the sixteenth of the same month, when it went down through the counties of Platte and Clay, to Blue Mills, where his regiment was engaged in the fight with the Rebels under Patton, Saunders, Boyd and others, and met with considerable loss.

This regiment afterwards returned to St. Joseph and remained in camp with the Fifty-second Illinois, during the winter of 1861 and 1862, on Prospect Hill.

The last of September, 1861, Major Cranor, of Gentry, occupied St. Joseph with a battalion of state militia, raised in the counties north of St. Joseph. These militiamen were a source of amusement to the citizens, as they were raw in military matters ; sans everything but courage - rough, ragged and ready.

During the time which elapsed between the departure of the Second Iowa and the arrival of the Sixteenth Illinois, the Confederates, under Colonel Patton, Boyd and others, occupied tjie city for several days, and levied contributions from some of the citizens, and confiscated contraband of war, which term was made to include everything a needy soldier desired. If he belonged to the rebel side, he could see contraband of war in nearly all the goods owned by the Union men. If, however, he was training under the stars and stripes, he could discover, as by instinct, that all desirable articles owned by southern sympathizers, were dangerous, as aids to the cause.

In 1861, James Craig, of St. Joseph, was appointed a Brigadier General by President Lincoln, and put in command of the Department of the Platte, on the plains among the Pawnee and Sioux Indians. He retained this position several months, when he resigned and returned home and was appointed a Brigadier General in the State Militia, by Governor Gamble, and was in command of this district in the winter of 1864 and 1865. In the spring of 1862, Benjamin F. Loan was appointed a Brigadier General by Governor Gamble, and placed in Command of Northwestern Missouri, with headquarters at St. Joseph. In the fall of that year he was put into active service, in an effort to run the "bushwhackers" from the central part of the state, and finally took command of the

General Loan was succeeded in the fall of 1862, by General W. P. Hall, in command of this military district, which he retained until the meeting of the Legislature, when he took his seat as Lieutenant-Governor. In February, 1864, General Hall succeeded Governor Gamble, deceased as Governor of the State of Missouri. With a short interregnum, Governor Hall was succeeded by Col. John F. Williams, of the Ninth Missouri State Guard. He was succeeded, in 1863, by Colonel Chester A. Harding. About this time, the Eighty-first regiment of enrolled Missouri militia was organized, with Col. John Scott as commander, and although many surmises were indulged in as to the loyalty of its soldiers. Col. Scptt kept good order, and showed a clear record in his coaimand.

During the most of the years 1862, 1863 and 1864, General John M. Bassett was Provost Marshal of this district, and perhaps filled a wider field of usefulness than any officer in arms. The jail and the military prisons were filled with Federal and Confederate delinquents, consigned there upon any conceivable charge, from actual treason and murder, to the most trivial charges of malevolence and fanaticism.

General Bassett, with a suavity and honesty to be envied, heard these cases daily and passed upon them with the stern eye of justice; always moistened with the tear of mercy.

In the spring of 1864, General C. B. Fisk was placed in command of the United States forces in this county, and remained until he was succeeded by Colonel Harding, late in the fall. In the winter of 1865, Colonel John Finger was in command, succeeding General Harding. Colonel Finger was of the Forty-fifth Missouri Volunteers, and continued in command until May, 1865, when he vacated this post and was placed in command of the Second District of Missouri.

Buchanan County, in 1861, furnished most of the Twenty-fifth Missori (Colonel Peabody's regiment), then Major Berry's Battalion of Cavalry, Penick's Fifth Regiment Missouri State Guard, Hall's Fourth Regiment of Missouri State Guard, and Eleventh Missouri Cavalry. In 1865, the Second, Third and Fourth Regiments of Missouri militia, as state organizations, organized with W. R. Penick, Cyrus Messemer and Joseph Thompson, respectively, as Colonels. These troops did no service and were only organized as provisional regiments, to keep quietude in a country which was thought would be disturbed by the return of a large number of soldiers from both armies. This was a violent presumption, as the most orderly citizens were those who saw hard service in the army. The true soldier has given no offence to the laws since his return, whether his fealty was given to the blue or gray during the contest.

States Volunteers, from Buchanan and the surrounding counties. During 1862, Colonel John Severance, afterward State Senator, and Mayor of St. Joseph, commanded the Forty-fourth Regiment of Missouri militia, and policed the county in the fall of 1862.

In 1864, General R. C. Bradshaw, a native of Platte County, and an original Union man, organized, at St. Joseph, the Forty-fourth United States volunteers, many of whom were from this county. This regiment had a proud history. Wm. Drumhiller commanded company B, and F. G. Hopkins company C. This regiment left St. Joseph in September,. 1864, for Rolla; thence to Paducah, Kentucky; thence to Nashville, Tennessee. They were in the battles of Springfield and Franklin. At the latter place Colonel Bradshaw received severe wounds and was left on the field for dead, but is now an honored citizen of St. Joseph. Bradshaw's regiment then accompanied the Twenty-third corps, and engaged in the battles of Columbia, Clifton and Spanish Fort, in Alabama, and were finally mustered out of service at St. Louis, on the 15th of August, 1865,, having traveled six thousand two hundred miles from St. Joseph, seven hundred and forty-seven on foot and the balance by rail and transport ; a greater number of miles perhaps, than any other regiment had traveled during; the war, and showing a striking parallel to the First regiment of Missouri volunteers, during the Mexican war, under Col. Doniphan.

Prior to the call of 1864, this county had credited as United States volunteers, 1089 men, and those credited afterward must have been as many more. Colonel Tracy, of the Kansas service, took a part of his command from this county, and many left singly and joined different companies and regiments, which swelled the total number in the United States volunteer service to more than 2,000.

Beside the militia organizations mustered into service from this county, there were equally as many more who went into the army, making fully four thousand soldiers who did duty for the old flag from Buchanan County.

In July, 1864, the Eighty-seventh Missouri, enrolled militia regiment, was organized, with Harbine, Colonel. This regiment was put on duty under command of J. W. Strong, and rendered local service in this county during the years 1864 and 1865.

In the spring of 1861, there were two companies of Missouri State Guards organized under the order of Governor C. F. Jackson, and went into camp in South St. Joseph. Colonel John C. C. Thornton, now of Montana, commanded one, and M. Jeff. Thompson the other. The appearance of United States troops here in May scattered these organizations, as heretofore stated, and the Mississippi rifles and ammunition which had been procured by Thornton's company in the raid on the Liberty arsenal, in April, i86i,and which. were secreted in cellars between Third and Fourth Streets, in St. Joseph, were removed by Captain John F. Landis, in July, 1861, in wagons driven through the Federal camp next day by a trusty contraband, (now a citizen of St. Joseph,) and carried to the outskirts of the city, where Captain Landis' company met and guarded them to Price's army, encamped upon the battle field of Wilson's Creek.

Landis afterwards participated in the hard-fought battles of Corinth, Che^mpion Hills.and Vicksburg, where he surrendered. Being exchanged, Captain Landis commanded a battery until the end of the war, and surrendered with the Army of the Gulf, thus earning a record of which his posterity may be proud. He is now an active and honored business man of St. Joseph.

Prior to the war, A. W. Slayback was a lawyer in St. Joseph, and after the battle of Lexington was elected colonel of a Missouri cavalry regiment, and being transferred to a department of the Confederate army, served until the surrender of Kirby Smith, and then, we think, accompanied Shelby to Mexico. He is now an honored citizen of St. Louis.

In the summer of 1861, Elijah Gates, (since State Treasurer), organized a company of Confederates at Rock House, in this county, and joined Governor Jackson. This company did memorable service in the battles of Lexington and Elkhorn, and were finally transferred east^ of the Mississippi, and were the heroes of the fight at Corinth, where our gallant Assessor, John S. Tutt, lost a leg.

Gates was promoted to the position of Brigadier General, and served during the war, losing an arm, retiring after the last gun was fired, with the reputation of Ney, "the bravest of the brave."

John R. Boyd, an attorney of St. Joseph, was at Blue Mills and Lexington, and was killed at Independence in the summer of 1863, leading a forlorn hope in an attack upon Colonel Buell's camp.

A regiment, to join Price at Lexington, was organized from the Counties of Buchanan, Nodaway, Atchison and Andrew in August, 1861, of which Saunders was Colonel, J. H. R. Cundiff Lieutenant-Colonel, and John C. C. Thornton Major. These troops were placed under the command of Colonel Green at Lexington, and were the special heroes of that fight. Colonel Green, in his report of the battle, attributed the success of the assault upon the Union breastworks to the devices of Major Thornton's men of this regiment, in moving a bale of hemp in front of each man, as he cautiously ascended the hill to attack the entrenchments.

The bullets did not penetrate the hemp bales and the cannon balls only bounced them from the ground, the bales falling back in the same position.

Sidney Cunningham, another St. Joseph boy, joined John Morgan and accompanied him through his entire career, and escaped capture by swimming the Ohio River, and now edits a newspaper in Tennessee.

George Baxter another attorney of St. Joseph, went to Virginia and joined Stonewall Jackson ; was at Bull's Run, in the Blackhorse Cavalry, and was finally killed in one of the fights in the valley.

Broaddus Thompson's oldest son was with Price, and afterwards a captain in the Mississippi Department, serving until the end of the war, and is now an Episcopalian minister in Virginia.

John Kemper, son of our esteemed fellow citizen, Simeon Kemper, was a captain in the Confederate service, and was killed by wounds received in battle.

Reuben Kay, son of James Kay, was in the Confederate service, in command of a company, during almost the entire war, and his narrow escapes would form a chapter of singular interest.