Jackson County, Missouri - Incidents of the War, 1881

Politics in Jackson County from i8S7 to i860 - Missouri Men and Families Abused - Colonel Henry Younger and John Fristoe - Cole Younger' s Revolution to Avenge His Father's Death - Dr. Lee and the Summit, Etc. - The County Officers - Two Silly Young Men - Capt. Quantrell and His Men - He Dashes Upon the Headquarters of the Troops and Escapes Again - The Community.

The enormities of violated law in Jackson county will never be recorded ; figuratively speaking, the half has never been told and the history of the importantevents alone would fill a book.

At this late day when our country is sailing over the smoothest seas of prosperity, and when all is favorable and inviting for at least a succession of years to come, men are beginning to be disposed to remember that unfortunate period in our history as a dream, as some story of romance that they remember to have read years ago. Therefore there is some difficulty in getting men to agree to live that life over again in the way of telling men what they saw and suffered during those times.

It is not so much our wish to learn which individual was guilty and thereby establish the innocency of his neighbor, or which party was just and right while the other was wrong and deserving of annihilation, but to know and record the facts, in the case, as the attorney would say, in his pleading at the bar. The harsh and unreasoning world is by no means in sympathy with historians ; but to the contrary, often times, there is the bitterest feeling toward them, simply because they endeavor to solicit and place on record the truth. In the following sections on the civil and criminal record of Jackson county, from the spring of i860 to the autumn of 1866, the charity and good will of all are sought, and their assistance is earnestly desired that true and reliable facts as they really occured might go down to coming generations.

It is not the trouble to find something to write about, as much as it is what to write, and what not to write. There is not a more prolific period for a multiplicity of interesting subjects in the history of Missouri than in that of Jackson county during the years 1860-6. Crime and blood-shed held high carnival for some time outside of the above indicated years, a part of which has found its way into the history of our country, but the great part is yet unwritten and remains within the minds of those who were unfortunate enough to experience it.

There must be a difference made between crimes. As a matter of course, rebellion and treason are more or less reprehensible wherever found, yet quite frequently in the history of nations do we find very respectable and plausible rebellions and revolutions. No particular illustrations are necessary to prove this observation ; it is almost understood as a condition of man's energies in behalf of liberty. Consequently, it need not be expected by either North, East, South or West for the late Civil War - in the great Rebellion, as some choose to call it - to be considered as a crime in these pages; not that there were no crimes committed during those troublesome times, for both sides of that desperate struggle did things that have disgraced the fair name of American freemen. So, if any have charges to make, let them be made against the times and not against the men ; and hardly so much against the times as against the culmination and development of certain counter and exceptional principles that enter the constitutions of all Republics.

Most certainly, if men did wrong as individuals, they are responsible, and their names will ever be praised or blamed, according to what they did.

There has been more or less interest taken in politics in Jackson county ever since the border troubles in 1857 and some time afterward. About the year of 1858 there were quite a number of new settlers in Jackson county, an important majority of whom were first class citizens, and consequently were cordially welcomed by the people of the county. Along with this number came others who strenuously contended for the notions and prejudices of the sections from which they came, whether North or South. It would not take a very imaginative mind, therefore, to perceive that if there was much persistence on the part of either class of citizens, there would be trouble. These two classes, the slaveholders and the non-slaveholders, continued to increase, as also did the feelings concerning the abolition question, By the time of the Presidential nominations in the spring of i860, matters took a definite course, and it only took the example of the earlier seceding States to throw the country into party lines. All during the summer of i860, as the campaign of the several Presidential nominees was going on, some considerable feelings were being aroused throughout the country, to the extent that the election of Lincoln in the autumn of i860, and his inauguration in the spring of 1861, sounded the key-note of what was to follow.

Of course, as the question of slavery was the hinging issue of the election, its success in the election of Abraham Lincoln was at once manifest ; consequently the feelings between the border counties of Missouri and Kansas were almost at once raised to blood heat. The least infringement upon the rights of any of either party were causes whose effects, before the troubles were over, were destruction of much property and the cruelest blood-shed and murders. In the autumn of 1861 the Kansas Volunteers, under Colonel Jennison, entered Jackson county and committed many atrocious crimes, which should, and perhaps would, had circumstances been favorable, have convicted any man in the Criminal Court of the county; but as things were then going, revenge and retaliation were about the only measures adopted.

Many citizens of the county, who were, in fact, good, law-abiding men, Union men, were roughly handled, their families abused, and property confiscated by those robbers and marauders who came into the county from Kansas, under the pretense of protecting property and the people. Had they proven true to the purpos/for which they were sent, and faithful to the authority that sent them, perhaps hundreds of their own men, and scores of the country's best citizens, as well as millions of her property, would to-day be blessing the world. But alas ! they are no more ; only the little biographical pamphlets and stories of the wrongs of the Civil War remain. It might not be of much use to mention any of the several families, that fell victims to this first attack and storm of violence, for they have been given to the world in many different forms ; but as this chapter is exclusively devoted to incidents of the late war in the whole county, the names of Colonel Henry Younger, old Esquire Lee, the Wilsons, etc. ,- cannot well be omitted. There is no doubt that the above named families and many others that could be mentioned as well as not, were unjustly and unmercifully treated by those men from Kansas. It is highly probable that the people from among whom these Volunteers came,had been unjustly treated ; but the moral that " Two wrongs never make one right," should have been considered by the United States authorities before they commenced to destroy and kill in the way they did. And then, after that was done, the other side should not have taken the desperate steps it did, by any means in the world ; for it inaugurated a struggle of annihilation, that has not been surpassed since the days of the memorable crusades. Were the National Volunteers responsible for what they did ? Were the people of the county responsible for what they did ? are questions that will have to be answered at the judgment, and perhaps they will never before. -We may form whatever conjectures we will, notwithstanding; but besides this high handed species of crime, in which many people were engaged, there were many lesser crimes, or, to be more explicit, many personal and individual crimes, such as murdering, killing, thieving, etc., trespassing upon the rights of others, violating the written and unwritten laws of the county and State.

Colonel Henry W. Younger and Mr. John Fristoe were living, when the war broke out, on the Independence and Harrisonville road, a few miles from what is now known as Lee's Summit - at least they owned valuable property in that neighborhood. Judge Younger was County Judge for eight years and afterward was twice elected to the State Legislature; it seems that when he, his family and his property were first attacked, he was a United States Mail Contractor and had his transportation ^«^^ stationed at Harrisonville, Missouri. The first dash of Jennison through Jackson and Cass counties swept the lovely property of Colonel Younger away ; this gained, of course, for the Federals, eternal hatred from the Younger family ; they espoused immediately the Confeder3,ie cause, though they were primarily Union men. The next year brought its full harvest of death and crime. On the 20th of July, 1862, Colonel Younger was waylaid and assassinated five miles from Independence. As he had been trading in town the day before rather extensively, the presumption is that he was killed for his money. Though he had some $2,000 or $3,000 about his person, the robbers did not get but about $400. It would have been good for the world and Jackson county had the assassins that killed Colonel Younger never been born. For this and other insults that have been offered to the Younger family brought to the front one of the most daring and dangerous characters that ever drilled beneath the black flag. Coleman Younger, more hastily called Cole, son of Colonel Younger, while beholding the agonizing tremors of his delicate mother and sisters over the dead body of his dear father, made resolutions the faithful carrying out of which has cast a shadow over his father's family and good name, made hundreds of widows and fatherless children, and scattered forgotten graves over the entire portion of Western Missouri and Eastern Kansas. Many a noble son and brother that volunteered to fight for the glorious stars and stripes of our native land melted and went down before the remorseless anger and resolutions of that injured son and brother. The historical narrative and connection would be entirely broken, were the deeds and crimes of the Younger brothers to be followed.

Mr. John Fristoe, who was related to the Younger family by marriage, was the owner of considerable land, stock and residences, by his relation to the guerrillas, the presumption was that he offered them aid and comfort. Consequently his fine country mansion was burned to the ground, his stock driven off, etc. , to the extent that his creditors came upon him and nearly broke him up. His troubles and anxieties, exposures and melancholy had a fatal effect upon him, so much so, that he died a few years afterward of pulmonary consumption ; his widow still lives on the old homestead near Lee's Summit.

Doctor Lee, also, suffered much from those troublous times, and shortly afterward was shot upon his own premises in cold blood. He lived upon and owned many of the broad acres of land in and around the station on the Missouri Pacific Railroad, now known as Lee's Summit. If there was any cause for the maltreatment of the doctor and his property, more than that his sons and nephews were in the Confederate army, it has not come to light; neither does it appear that he made any resistance, but suffered those men who were actually enemies to law and order, in whatever cause, to lead him forth in his own yard and before his own family, and shoot his head full of lead. How completely must those times have been a reign of terror ! The house of Esquire Hink was also burnt with that of a dozen others, in that part of the county. Thus far, it might be observed, that the names above given were in sympathy with the Confederacy, as many others may be given, who were badly treated and some of whom were killed. By the summer and autumn of 1862, cases of murder and other crimes were occurring frequently and fast all over the county, many cases of which were completely in the dark and are until this day. It is quite likely, that canvassers for this very book, as they travel over the county, will find many families that lost a husband, a father, or a brother concerning whose death and for what they died they cannot give the remotest idea. One thing they can tell, however, and that is, that my husband, my brother, or my son on a certain day in 186 - left home, to go and see our neighbor beyond the Blue or the Kaw, and he never returned. Ah ! how sad must the helpless have fell, when there was no assurance that their loved ones would ever return again. The mother with her little ones did not know how much to fear or how much to dare; perhaps, her stay and protector would be met by the "Red-legs " or the guerrillas, the Federals or the Confederates and be murdered or hung like a dog. Some citizens of Jackson county during those times, disappeared under circumstances like the above, and have never been seen or heard of since. They surely must be dead, but how can we know it, where will the widowed wife and orphan children go and weep ; what wound will they dress, and strew with garlands of spring - where will they scatter beautiful flowers, upon the grave of a husband, a father, or a brother? No, no, no, that is impossible, he was mortally wounded and was burnt to death in his neighbor's dwelling, or was hung in the midst of a lone and desolate forest, where none would visit him but the fowls of heaven ; or was mangled and mutilated and his body was buried in the rough sands of the bottom of the Blue. As for who killed the poor man, or innocent youth it is as much a mystery as where they left him, or where he lies to-day. It seems as if all the furies of infernal hell had been let loose in Jackson county, there would not have been more agencies benton the destruction of human life. The " Red legs," mighthave done it; or the bush-whackers, or guerrillas, or desperate Confederate scouts might have done it, it is absolutely impossible to determine; but one thing we are quite sure of, and that is, that it was done, and too frequently in cold blood. It was cold blood murder in many cases as far as the unfortunate individual was concerned; but the men who did such things, (and they did frequently,) were very often in close places; perhaps more than a dozen times had the surging breath of death and destruction scorched their blood-stained garments, and it was in the cowardly act of killing the innocent that they took revenge.

The question might be asked where was the County Sheriff, or the County Marshal when so much outlawry and committance of crime was going on ? You might as well ask where the parson was, for one would have done about as much good as the other. That was the trouble ; there was no law ; the law was set aside for the time being, and every man was a law unto himself. No doubt there were county officers - plenty of them, but they were mere figure-heads. They were housed up at Independence, Kansas City and Westport, taking care of number one as best they could, and perhaps did not hear of half the crimes committed in the county. Were they to blame we might ask ? Perhaps not in every instance ; there were no informers, no warrants issued and no one to confess his guilt. So, from circumstances such as these, we can partly conceive of the troubles and disasters that swept over our county during the years 1862-4.

In the summer of 1863, a respectable and well-known citizen by the name of John Hagan, was living a few miles south of Independence ; he was a man that respected the rights of others, and by words and actions asked others to respect his, but alas ! the sequel will tell things quite differently. One bright Sunday morning, while he and his family, a wife and three children, were driving up to his brother's, William Hagan, who still lives near Lee's Summit, he met a band of Federal soldiers, who were much exasperated because the telegraph wire had been cut the day before. They ordered him to dismount from among his family and go before them into a neighboring wood, where they shot him through the head ; he was found next day killed in the manner described. This was the cause of a more bloody tragedy, or at least a more desperate one. Whether a murder could be more bloody and censurable than that which drags a devoted husband and father from the midst of his family and cruelly takes his life, so that the half-distracted wife and her frightened little ones had to go on and find some one to return and search for the missing husband and father, is a serious question. Yet, we will presently see where blind vengeance and madness did their gory work without the least suspicion as far as learned.

Two young men, both of confederate sympathies resolved upon revenge. One was known as Ed. Hink and the other as Sam Jones, the former was an uncle to the latter. As they were riding along the road where Mr. John Hagan was killed a short time before, they in the ardor and indiscretion of youth, vowed to each other to kill the next man they met. How silly and yet how singular was such as this to the spirit of the times! See those boys that might have been, under favorable circumstances, pious and model young men, sweeping along the highway swearing eternal death and destruction to the first man they met, whether friend or foe ! Behold their misguided zeal hurrying them on to the next meeting where they were to imbue their youthful hands in innocent blood. How can we imagine they felt as they turned the bend of the road and saw their victim approaching without the least intimation of their diabolical design. Oh ! how fortunate it would have been if some friendly hand could have stopped those youths from their first murder, how some mother's heart would have rejoiced if her wayward son had escaped the terrible sin of blood-guiltiness! But like the dangerous son of Hamilcar, they were bound under the heaviest oaths to shed human blood. As they charged along the highway, making the air hideous with their mischievous threats, they met another young man a few miles from Independence. The name of the latter has not been ascertained, though much can be found concerning the high esteem in which he was held by every one. From oral statements of the former young men, when they met the man they killed they did not ask him a single word, not even for the cause with which he sympathized, not whether he was a Union man or a Confederate man, but simply drew their deadly revolvers and shot him dead upon the spot. They did not show him as much mercy as the guiltiest and most deserving of death would have received at the hands of the most desperate guerrilla band. When they had done their worst, after they had sent all that was immortal of their comrade, trembling into the presence of the Great Judge of all without a single moments warning, they searched the body of his fair person and found to their great horror and regret that he was a young medical student just returned home to his friends and relatives with his diploma.' Poor man ! He was entirely innocent of all the wrongs and their exaggerated reports of either side ; little did he dream as he bore his authority "to go and heal the nations" that his career would terminate so unnecessarily and cowardly. But then, he that sheddeth man's blood by man shall his blood be shed " has gone forth into the world and has certainly been verified among all tongues and peoples. Not very long after this bloody deed had been done, one of these young men, and the presumption is, the principal one, met his fate. The other is still living, but his garments, as it were, smell of blood. Like Cain, he is fearful of being slain.

Thus far it has been seen that there were crimes committed - black and indelible crimes that our country can never blot out ; crimes, for generations yet to come, that will make the blood chill to relate. And these, too, we must remember, were committed by men who were on both sides of that dreadful war ; over which, however, we ask our kind readers and noble Americans to spread the robe of charity, so that a few years hence the world will never know that we were once engaged in such a deadly struggle. But before concluding this chap-

By the spring of 1863 there were to be no doubts as to a man's politics, whether a " jayhawker " or a "bush-whacker," a militiaman or a guerrilla, a Federal or a Confederate, he was to show his colors and get into Hne or leave^the country. Prominent among those who had distinguished themselves in the deeds of crime was Quantrell. He did many things as a guerrilla chieftan that the world would not believe, and perhaps he himself will not conceive of its enormity until he stands before the Judge of all the earth at the last day, and then in what he did he was not alone by any means; it was through Quantrell that the world ever heard and felt the merciless vengeance of Cole Younger, Bill Anderson George Tucker, the James Boys and a host of other blood-thirsty wretches that have long since met their terrible fate. As has been stated elsewhere, most of these had causes of their own for entering so desperately into the war. Many of their families and relatives had suffered almost inhumanly from the other side. By the unfortunate crimes offered to Quantrell and his neighbors, to the Younger Brothers their parents and sisters, was brought such a whirlpool of madness upon the people of the country, that the like has never been experienced in the history of the country; but it is not so much the insults that brought these outlaws to the front as the terrible deeds they committed - not that their injuries should be overlooked, for such is not the case. They have given rise to not a few almost fictitious works, in which the very wrong offendings done have been greatly exaggerated. The year 1863, it seems inaugurated a different movement on the part ot the desperadoes and guerrillas in Jackson county. The country was being filled with Federal soldiers, so that it was impossible for the guerillas to have anything like a permanent camp or headquarters ; consequently, they selected from among the Southern sympathizers the bravest and most dangerous men to be found; they bound themselves together by an oath that, perhaps, has not its equal in the memory of man, that they would work together, act under the black flag and take no prisoners ! About the time such a combination was effected, and as though it needed some fresh and startling crime to revive the memory of Colonel Younger's assassination, his daughters' prison death and the recent death of other friends and neighbors, Mr. Lee, Quantrell's respected friend, was dragged from his house and put to death. Mrs. Younger, Cole's mother, though deprived of her husband and stripped of all her children, was compelled, at the point of the bayonet, to apply the torch to her own house. Such fresh deeds as this brought to light the bloody Bill Anderson and some of the James Boys and relatives. Bill Anderson was, perhaps, the most unconscientious man that ever shed blood. The number of lives these men have destroyed has never been known. The number that the soldiers and county officials destroyed in attempting to take them has never been ascertained. The innocent suffered invariably, while the guilty escaped.

Quantrell and his men, principal among whom was Cole Younger, in these latter years of the war, did not hesitate to dash into the very heart of any defensless community, do their fatal work, make their way back into the eastern portion of Jackson county, and there suddenly disappear in their mysterious cave. Do we wish to stop and learn more definitely? Will we attempt to revivify those horrid scenes that the most credulous will hardly believe ? Were we disposed, the spirit and culture of our time forbid. What huge volumes it would take to contain descriptions of the bloody and ghastly steps of the Guerrilla chieftains ! But will we call all these individual crimes, for whom the perpetrators should have suffered ? Should the unqualified outrages committed by all persons, of whatever name or sympathies, be traced to the guilty hand, and it be made to feel the vengeance of a violated law ? Were such the case, many of the best and most respectable citizens in the county and surrounding country, would be made to tremble; many of our best and most religious mothers, who are now instilling the strictest piety into their growing up children, would be shown to have wished, anxiously brooded over the shrine, that death and destruction might sweep over the homes of their next door neighbors. Were they culpable ? perhaps, will be the debatable question in a few generations to come. If so, the guilty could, undoubtedly, have been found in every regiment and army in the field ; in every cast of party, and, to a qualified extent, every home to be found in the thickest of the trouble. Oh, the horrors of a civil war ! May we all drink such Lethean draughts that we might never have aught against our neighbor. Then, it seems, as for the crimes of individuals, they have all vanished into the clouds of the war. The county records, of course, contain a great deal about outraged justice during those years of our history, but, to say the least, they must be very incomplete. Then it was the times and the occasions, and not the men, to a wonderful degree. The crimes, however, that these times inaugurated did not terminate with the war; but they are continuing on till this day (1881), and perhaps will grow for years to come. But for all later crimes, the law endeavors, and justly, too, to apprehend and bring the offenders to justice; in some degree it has been successful, but there are to-day, running at large, many highwaymen, who almost put the law at defiance. They had their start in this career of crime in Jackson county, and are, therefore, to some extent, connected with its history. The bloody and destructive attack upon Lawrence, Kansas, could almost be incorporated into the history of Jackson county, for the identical leaders of that bond of death, and the most of its two hundred privates, lived formerly in Jackson county, Missouri. When Quantrell and his blood-guilty men returned from that raid of annihilation, they mysteriously disappeared somewhere in the county. Recent revelations seem to indicate that that wily chief, in association with Cole Younger, had a cavern in which they could conceal themselves, with several men and their horses and booty. Whenever, in the' desperate years of 1861-4, they did mischief, either upon the Federal soldiers or upon citizens around in the country, they could be traced into certain localities in the county, and suddenly disappear as though the earth would swallow them up.

Imagine, if you can, the terrible condition a community would be in when they would be situated between the galling fires of Federals and guerrillas; not very often at once, but where one party would go killing and burning persons and things of the other party, the soldiers and scouts of that party would come in a few days and do worse. And it is well to notice and record, the burning shame upon our history, that many crimes, individual crimes, were committed, but, perhaps, not one in a score was brought before the courts. Why were not those uncontrollable soldiers that murdered several innocent men, some few cases women, and fewer children, made to pay the debt of their guilt? Why was not that most terrible of all devils. Bill Anderson and his accomplices, that stabbed so many hearts and cut so many throats, brought to the bar of a most completely violated law and made to answer for his crimes? The answers to the preceding might be many and various, but the simplest and best would be, perhaps, that it was not able under such disorganized circumstances. The depredations of the guerrillas ; their almost certain escape with valuable spoils; the soldiers pursuit out into the country districts of the county inaugurated a species of retaliatory vengence that did not subside for several years after the war. In fact, crimes and misdoings that resulted from those times have reached down to a very few years since ; a full history of which, however, will be found in other parts of this volume.