Leonard Stephens Letter, 16 Aug 1864
[Penciled note at top: Answered 8 December/64]
Beech Woods, Kenton County, Ky., 16th August 1864
Dear Brother William,
Your very kind and affectionate letter of the 18th has come to hand & I now seat myself to write in answer. I am very sorry your hearing is getting worse, as it is exceedingly unpleasant to be in company and not know what is being said, But I sincerely hope the remedy you are using will relieve you, and that you may yet have your hearing restored. I am having a good deal of uneasiness about my hearing. I can perceive that it is failing and I have a continual roaring in my head which I understand is the way old people are usually affected when their hearing begins to give way. Brother Edmund's hearing as you know was very bad for years, and yet he could always make out to hear by persons talking loud, So I would not have you feel very uneasy about yours, as I have no idea it will even be worse than his was never so bad. [Sic.] Napoleon, Rebecca and their two youngest children, Jack and Rachael, or Rachie as she is called, started to Iowa last Monday or yesterday week. They would greatly preferred to have come through Mo. and have made you a visit but on account of the troubled condition of portions of your State were afraid to run the risque of traveling that way. Napoleon told me he had written to you to that effect. They expect to be gone three or four weeks.
Betsy Haden left here this day week ago on her return home in Missouri. She expected to have staid in Ky. for some time yet or untill perhaps October. But the military authorities issued a very stringent order, requiring all persons who had come into this State from Missouri and other States who were Southern sympathisers to leave this state within twenty days from the date of said order. The order was issued on the 26th of last month & had now expired. She had determined to return to Missouri anyhow and would not consent to make her home here with me as I desired she should do. If she would have consented to stay I would have tried to obtain from the authorities permission for her to do so. Tho Since she left I have understood that similar applications have been made and prompt refusals were increasingly made. So that I suppose, if I had tried to get permission for her to stay I could not have succeeded. I regretted very much to part with Betsy for she made herself very useful here, and she is certainly a very affectionate clever lady, & I shall have some uneasiness about her untill I learn of her safe arrival at home. She had no friend or acquaintance to accompany her and had to depend entirely on her own management to get along.
She decided to take the Cars at St. Louis for Jefferson City and
Sadalia or Dresden on the South side of the Missouri River. She considers her home at Harrisonville where she left her son
Branham and three negroes and what household goods she could
save. She had lived in the house with a family by the name of
Glenn, & says she was very kindly treated by them, That Mr. Glenn furnished her with land for her two negroe men to tend without charging rent. She received several letters from home during her stay in Ky., by which she understood her negroes were still at home, and were doing very well, had a good crop & that Branham had probably gone to the plains with some stock drovers.
Betsy left here with ample means to get home upon. She had about eighty dollars of her own money, & I gave her a hundred, making $180, which of course was enough if she can only keep it. She intended after getting home to go over into
Ray County to where Billy Brady who as you know married
her daughter lived. He returned home last Spring and settled in that County. Mr.
Brady, his father, returned from Ky. to his son Billy's home and in May last he left Ky. in poor health and continued sick untill sometime in June when he died at Billy's. I saw a statement of his death in a letter written by Billy's wife to her mother, Betsy Haden. He died of dropsy as she stated.
My Dear Brother, I had fondly hoped to have seen you here sometime this summer or fall & have had the pleasure of your company during the next winter and seasons, But since the issuing of the military orders here in reference to persons coming to Ky. from your state I am compelled tho I assure you with feelings of great regret to say that I fear you could not now come here without running the risque of being arrested. Your feelings of Sympathy for the South are known here as you are apprised, & to be candid I do not believe you would be safe here, For it appears there are individuals who are ready to report upon all who are suspected of Southern preferences. Times are far more precarious here than they have ever been. There have been quite a number of arrests made here recently. Some of them you used to know intimately. Capt. John W. Leathers, Robert Carlisle, W. W. Wilson, oldest son of Aquilla Wilson, & a number of others. These men were taken to Louisville & after being detained there sometime were sentenced to pay from five hundred to a thousand dollars a piece and then banished to the North Side of the Ohio River & to remain there three years or during the war. This information has come to me by others as I have not seen any of the parties themselves, tho I think it is probably about correct, so you will perceive the times are squally indeed.
There has been three separate and distinct drafts in this County and now the great draft for five hundred thousand is to come off on the 5th of September & Ky.'s quota it is said will be about 20,000. There are now squads of negro Solders stationed in Kenton and Boone Counties for the purpose as it is said of recruiting other negroes, & it is thought a great many of what is left will be gathered up. A good many have already joined the army.
I got a fall about four weeks ago that hurt me very badly. I was on the fence and in getting down a rail broke and my side slid down against the rail which fractured a rib and bruised my whole side very badly. I was confined some three weeks to the house, but am now about well again. Tho the hurt was attended with a great deal of suffering my general health I think is fair. My family of blacks are well, & I think the friends are generally well. I heard from East bend the other day and understand our friends there were generally well.
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| Nancy Sanford |
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| Polly Herndon |
May God bless you.
Leonard Stephens
Notes:
Twelve-year-old John Leonard Stephens (1852-1934) later settled in Dallas, Texas. His little sister, Rachel (1854-1934) remained in Kentucky, marrying Dr. Charles Kearns. Return.
General Order 61, issued by Gen. Stephen Burbridge. Collins, History of Kentucky, 1: 137. Return.
Construction of the Pacific Railroad had faltered before the war, reaching Sedalia only in 1861, and the unsettled conditions, verging on anarchy in western Missouri, stopped building entirely in 1862. The line finally opened to Kansas City in 1865. Paul W. Gates, "The Railroads of Missouri, 1850-1870" Missouri Historical Review 26: 126-141. Return.
James Branham Hayden (1831- —) remained in Cass County following the war. A sketch of the bachelor farmer appears in the 1883 History of Cass and Bates Counties, 449. Return.
The Hayden family may have been forced to abandon their farm under the provisions of the notorious General Order 11, issued 25 Aug 1863 by the commander of the Department of the Border, Gen. Thomas Ewing, which required that all persons living in several counties near the Kansas border (except those living with one mile of certain specified towns) leave their residences. Those without certificates of loyalty were exiled from the district. All grain and hay had to be turned over to the Union Army or have it burnt. The scorched earth policy was to deny support to Confederate guerrillas. Gen Ewing may also have acted to forestall some of Abolitionist Senator Jim Lane's Kansas supporters, known as Jayhawkers, who were planning to lay waste western Missouri.
Tradition has it that Betsy's cousins, the Hiram Stephens family, were burnt out by Unionists, and they fled to the woods, saving only the family Bible. The tale is recounted in Kentucky DAR Bible Records 6:15. Return.
Hugh Gibson Glenn (1817- —), although a Union supporter, also suffered losses. He was a county judge, amember of the county governing board. History of Cass and Bates Counties, 446. His son, Allen Glenn, wrote another history of the county in 1917 (Topeka and Cleveland: Historical Publishing). Though a half-century had passed by that time, the scars left by the war were still tender. Return.
Ray County lies on the north side of the Missouri River, about midway between Kansas City and the capital, Jefferson City. Return.
William Marion Brady (1829-1904) had married Sophia Hayden (1836?-1919) in 1858. They later returned to Cass County. A sketch appears in The History of Cass and Bates Counties, 437. Return.
John Brady (1792?-1864) and Mary Jackson had nine children, four of whom had married into the Stephens family. Billy's sister, Mary Jane (1814-1854) had wed Betsy Hayden's brother, William Waller Stephens (1810?-1856). Two other sisters, Harriet (1820-1876) and Hetha Ann (1831-1876) married two brothers, Hiram (1813-1875) and Benjamin (1823-1874), sons of Benjamin and Agnes Nelson Stephens. Another sister, America Frances (1834?- —), married Judge John Coughenour (1815- —), a Cass County neighbor. Return.
President Lincoln had suspended the right of habeas corpus and imposed martial law within Kentucky on 5 July. Harrison, Civil War, 77. The last weekend of July saw Gen. Stephen Burbridge order the arrest of ten Kentuckians who had been too vocal in their opposition to the war, or otherwise irritated Union authorities. The story appeared Monday in the Cincinnati Daily Commercial, 1 Aug 1864, p 5, c 1. Citizens of the Border States were not alone in being subject to arbitrary arrest by military authorities. John A. Marshall tells the stories of more than one hundred persons who were so treated in American Bastille (Philadelphia: Thomas W. Hartley, 1876), a popular work which went through at least two dozen editions. Return.
John W. Leathers (1808-1873), a prominent citizen of northern Kentucky, was a dairy farmer living on the Lexington Pike not far from Beech Woods. He had been a thorn in the side of the Union military authorities for some time. In February 1863, he had called to order the State Democratic Convention meeting in Frankfort to nominate candidates for the August elections. The meeting at the Metropolitan Hall was forced to adjourn without completing its business by Col. E. A. Gilbert and the troops of the 44th Ohio Infantry. That summer Leathers ran for Congress and placed third in an election conducted under the bayonets of the Union Army. Before his arrest, Leathers had been chosen as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention meeting in Chicago at the end of August. During his confinement in Louisville, he and fellow prisoner Joseph R. Buchanon sent "spirited letters" to the convention. Captain Leathers served four terms in the legislature. In his last term in the House, he introduced, 11 Dec 1868, a resolution calling for a joint committee to investigate the deaths, arrests, and expulsions by military authorities during the war. Collins, 1: 119, 127, 139, 184. His Southern sympathies were shared by his son (also named John) who served in the CSA. Perrin, History, Ed. 7, 833. Return.
Robert McClure Carlisle had represented Kenton County in the Kentucky legislature. He filed suit in U.S. District Court in Covington 17 Dec 1869 against M. Hightower seeking damages for false imprisonment or military arrest at the time of the 1864 election. The case was decided for the defendant. Perrin, History, Ed. 7, 761; Collins, 1: 193. Politics ran in the family; see below, 20 Feb 1866. Return.
Aquilla Wilson's name appears on Campbell records up through the 1840s, and his widow, Mary, was found in the 1850 census. As they gave all of their sons names beginning with W (Walker, Warner, Woodford, and Walter) the one who so irritated the Yankees is not identified, but the most likely is Whiting. Return.
The conscription of slaves for military service was very unpopular among propertied Kentuckians, even among some of the staunchest supporters of the Union. Col Frank Wolford (1817-1895), who had led the 1st Kentucky (Union) Cavalry against John Hunt Morgan's raiders was relieved of command, dismissed from the army and briefly arrested for giving an intemperate speech in Lexington March 10th, opposing the draft and criticizing President Lincoln. He was arrested twice more in 1864 while serving as commander of Kentucky State troops under Governor Thomas Bramlette. After the war Wolford returned to the state legislature and later served in Congress. See Harrison, Civil War, 91.
Reuben Bristow's cousin, Union Colonel Benjamin Helm Bristow (1832-1896), kept his objections in channels, writing of his strenuous opposition to the draft, maintaining it would be counterproductive:
If we could, by means of a draft or otherwise, drive every disloyal person in Kentucky into the rebel army or to the South I should urge the measure and applaud the result. But you very well know that such is not the effect, and I do not doubt that the enforcement of the draft in Kentucky now would increase the guerrilla forces now in the State into such proportions that all the soldiers raised by the draft would not be sufficient to protect the lives of loyal citizens.Benjamin went on to serve in Grant's Cabinet, where he was regarded as one of the few honest men in that administration. Short biographies of Benjamin and his father appear in John Walton, "Politicians and Statesmen: the Bristows in American Government" which has been reprinted in Genealogies of Kentucky Families from the Filson Club History Quarterly (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1981), 79-83. Return.
-- Official Records, Series 3, 4: 1096.
Leonard's nephew, Zachariah Herndon (1811-1881), youngest son of Benjamin and Polly. Return.
