\ \ 13be Conservative *
should. "You nsk an impossible thing ,
Mr. Secretary. This secession , or revo
lution , or whatever you call it , cannot
conquer without violence , nor can those
who hate it and hope to stifle it , resist
without vindictivencss. Every struggle
has its philosophy , but this is not the
hour for philosophers. Your young
confederacy wants victory , and champ
ions who are not judges. Men must be
killed. To impel the people to passion
there must be some slight illusion min
gled with the truth ; to arouse them to
enthusiam something out of nature must
occur. That illusion should bo a cru
sade in the name of conquest , and that
something out of nature should bo the
black flag. Woe be unto all of you if
the federals come with an oath of loy
alty in one hand and a torch in the
other. I have seen Missouri bound hand
and foot by this Christle&s thing called
conservatism , and where today she
should have two hundred thousand
heroes lighting for liberty , beneath her
banners there are scarcely twenty thous-
and. "
" "What would you do , Captain Quan-
trill , were your's the power and the op
portunity ? "
"Do , Mr. Secretary ? "Why I would
wage such a war and have such a war
waged by land and sea as to make sur
render forever impossible. I would
cover the armies of the confederacy all
over with blood. I would invade. I
would reward audacity. I would exter
minate. I would break up foreign en
listments by indiscriminate massacre. I
would win the independence of my people
ple or I would find them graves. "
"And our prisoners , what of them ? "
"Nothing of them ; there would be no
nrisoners. Do they take any prisoners
from me ? Surrounded , I do not sur
render ; surprised , I do not give way to
panic ; outnumbered , I rely upon com
mon .sense and stubborn fighting ; pro
scribed , I answer proclamation with
proclamation ; outlawed , I feel through
it my power ; hunted , I hunt my hunters
in turn ; hated and made blacker than a
dozen devils , T add to my hoofs the
swiftness of a hoiso , and to my horns
the terrors of a savage following. Kan
sas should bo laid waste at once. Meet
the torch with the torch , pillage with
pillage , slaughter with slaughter , subju
gation with extermination. You have
my ideas of war , Mr. Secretary , and I
am sorry they do not accord with your
own , nor with the ideas of the govern
ment you have the honor to represent so
well. ' ' And Quantrill , without his com
mission as a partisan ranger , or without
any authorization to raise a regiment of
partisan rangers , bowed himself away
from the presence of the secretary and
away from Richmond.
j Gen. Thomas Ewing while in com-
maud of the District of the Border ,
j headquarters at Kansas City , Mo. , detailed -
tailed June 17 , 1808 , my company , A
Eleventh Kansas cavalry , and fifty
picked men from ton companies of cav
alry to trail and hunt Quantrill , who
had become the terror of the country.
His men were mostly toughs and des
peradoes from the plains of northern
Texas and the Kansas border , were dead
shots , best riders in the world ; and
while ho could concentrate in a day or
two 500 men , ho generally moved in
small squads of from ten to forty men ,
and occupied the timber and brush of
every border county south of the Mis
souri river to the Boston mountains of
Arkansas. He was enabled by his dar
ing and dashing , unexpected attacks to
keep fully 4,000 Federal cavalry busy
for three years and 4,000 or 5,000 infan
try guarding towns , trains and supply
depots.
The hair-breadth of this
- escapes guer
rilla chief ; the wonderful experiences of
his men and the daily adventures of his
pursuers , our men , who were lost in
wonderment if we failed to have a halt
a dozen fights with bushwhackers each
week ; the miles of night riding , skulk
ing through wooded ravines , the byroads
and cow-paths traveled , hunting for an
enemy worse than Indians ; houses , vil
lages and cities sacked and burned by
guerrillas and retaliatory acts by our
in ' 'hell
commanders resulting a perfect'
of a war ; " the story of the events from
Sterling Price's first march to the south ;
of his several attempts to wrest Missouri
from the Union ; of Joe Shelby's raids
up to Price's last disastrous raid in Sep
tember and October , 1804 ; of Quantrill'b
Lawrence raid August 21,1803 , when he
slaughtered in cold blood 143 unarmed
non-combatants and sacked and burned
the undefended city , of Quantrill's escape
from eighty men of Pomeroy's command ,
Ninth Kansas , when they had him and
five of his men in a house surrounded
and the house on fire ; of the ambuscade
and cowardly murder Jnno 17 , 1803 ,
of Capt. Flesher's men , Co. E
of the Ninth Kansas cavalry at
Brash Creek within a mile of West
Port , Mo. , then a military station , by
Bill Todd ; of Bill Anderson's wrecking
and capturing a railroad train on the
North Missouri railroad at Contralia in
November , 1801 , and shuightoring eighty
unarmed and wounded soldiers ; of the
massacre of Blunt's band and teamsters
at Baxter Springs , October , 0 , 1803 ; of
Captain Cleveland's desertion with part
of his company , the Seventh Kansas
Black Horse cavalry , turning highway
man ; how it took nearly 2,000 cavalry
four months to disperse his band and
kill him ; how Geo. H. Hoyt , the young
Boston lawyer , came to Kansas after
defending John Brown at Clmrlestown ,
Va. , was first captain Co. K , Seventh
Kansas cavalry with John Brown , Jr. ,
as first lieutenant , and after resigning
raised a band of over 800 Red Legs , an
organization sworn to shoot i-obols , take
no prisoners , free slaves and respect no
property rights of rebels or of sympath
izers ; of our chase for Qnantrill from
the Missouri river to Arkansas and back ,
before and after the Lawrence raid ; how
the sacking of Lawrence and the massa
cre of 143 people might have been
averted had it not been for a mistake of
judgment on the part of one of our best
and most loyal oflicers ; of how we t
finally drove Quantrill and his men be
yond the Mississippi and of his tragic
death near Louisville , Ky. , in February ,
1805 all these incidents como before
my mind as a panorama , vivid as life , a
story that can never be told , the record of
which would fill a hundred volumes of
intensely interesting matter ; a story
which can never bo forgotten by any
one of the men who were active wit
nesses of the sickening details. I have
cited a few instances to show barely a
sketch of the "Border war" near the
Kansas and Missouri line , a war that
forced fully 80 per cent of the male pop
ulation of that region between the ages
of 15 and 50 into the army and made
mourners in every household , and loft
monuments of desolation and war in
burned homes , marked by stone and
brick chimneys from the north to I ho
south lino.
The two incidents cited near the be
ginning of this story are given as ex
tremely aggravating cases , not as every
day common-place affairs. With the
exception of the Seventh and Fifteenth
Kansas cavalry there were no bettor dis
ciplined or bettor behaved troops in the
Union army than the Kansas men.
The First Kansas infantry organized in
May , 1801 , fought like regulars under
General Lyon at Wilson Creek and lost
in that fight August 10 , 1801 , 51 percent
of the entire regiment in killed and
wounded , stood their ground to the end ,
and won the fight. The seventeen Kan
sas regiments , three batteries and throe
colored regiments , with the exception
above noted , gave the enemy no good
cause for guerrilla warfare ; all left good
records for bravo and soldierly conduct ;
and the Seventh fully redeemed herself
under Colonel Leo with Sherman's army
from ' 02 to ' 04. The guerrillas who
fought with Qnantrill under the black
flag , excusing their blood-thirsty acts as
deeds of revenge , charged the first cause
to acts committed before the war , 1850
to 1801 , and to the early campaigning of
Lane , Montgomery and Jonnison to
October , ' 01. As all the guerrillas wore
outlawed by that time , there was no
possible way of ending their crimes , ex-
capt in annihilation. While our men
had become desperate hunters of desper
ate criminals , and had for years given
and asked no quarter , yet when Gen.
Sterling Price and Joe Shelby led their
armies into our field they wore met and
fought with as much chivalry and sold
ierly courtesy as was accorded to the
regular con federate army by our men
on the Potomac. When General Mar-
