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The Lone Jack
Fight
Once there stood a
lone blackjack tree, taller than its companions and larger than any near
it. From this tree the town of Lone Jack, in the eastern portion of
Jackson County, was named. On the afternoon of the 13th of August clouds
were seen gathering there. These clouds were cavalrymen. Succoring
recruits in every manner possible, and helping them on to rendezvous by
roads, or lanes, or water courses, horsemen acquainted with the country
kept riding continously up and down. A company of these on the evening of
the 15th were in the village of Lone Jack.
Major Emory L.
Foster, doing active scouting duty in the region round about Lexington,
had his headquarters in the town. The capture of Independence had been
like a blow upon the cheek; he would avenge it. He knew how to fight.
There was dash about him; he had enterprise. Prairie life had enlarged his
vision and he did not see the war like a martinet; he felt within him the
glow of generous ambition; he loved his uniform for the honor it had; he
would see about that Independence business—about that Quantrell living
there between the two Blues and raiding the West —about those gray
recruiting folks riding up from the South—about the tales of ambuscades
that were told eternally of Jackson County, and of all the toils spread
for the unwary Jayhawkers. He had heard, too, of the company which halted
a moment in Lone Jack as it passed through, and of course it was
Quantrell.
It was
six o'clock when the Confederates were there, and eight o'clock when the
Federal colonel, Colonel Foster, marched in, leading nine hundred and
eighty-five cavalrymen, with two pieces of Rabb's Indiana battery—a
battery much celebrated for tenacious gunners and accurate firing.
Cockrell, who was in command, knew Foster well; the other Confederates
knew nothing of him. He was there, however, and that was positive proof
enough that he wanted to fight. Seven hundred Confederates—armed with
shotguns, horse pistols, squirrel rifles, regulation guns, and what
not—attacked nine hundred and eighty-five Federal cavalrymen in a town for
a position, and armed with Spencer rifles and Colt's revolvers, dragoon
size. There was a!so the artillery. Lone Jack sat
quietly in the green of emerald prairie, its orchards in fruit and its
harvests goodly. On the west was timber, and in this timber a stream ran
musically along. To the east the prairies stretched, their glass waves
crested with sunshine. On the north there were groves in which birds
abounded. In some even the murmuring of doves was heard, and an infinite
tremor ran over all the leaves as the wind stirred the languid pulse of
summer into fervor.
In the center of the town a large
hotel made a strong fortification. The house from being a tavern, had come
to be a redoubt. From the top the Stars and Stripes floated proudly—a
tricolor that had upon it then more of sunshine than of blood. Later the
three colors had become as four.
On the verge of the
prairie nearest the town a hedge row stood as a line of infantry dressed
for battle. It was plumed on the sides with tawny grass. The morning broke
upon it and upon armed men crouching there, with a strange barred banner
and with guns at trail. Here they waited, eager for the
signal.
Joining Hays on the left was Cockrell and the
detachments of Hays, Rathburn and Bohannon. Their arms were as varied as
their uniforms. It was a duel they were going into and each man had the
gun he could best handle. From the hedgerow, from the green growing corn,
from the orchards and the groves, soldiers could not see much save the
flag flying skyward on the redoubt on the Cave House.
At
five o'clock a solitary gunshot aroused camp and garrison, and all the
soldiers stood face to face with imminent death. No one knew thereafter
how the fight commenced. It was Missourian against Missourian—neighbor
against neighbor—the rival flags waved over each and the killing went on.
This battle had about it a strange fascination, The combatants were not
numerous, yet they fought as men seldom fight in detached bodies. The same
fury extended to an army would have ended in annihilation. A tree was a
fortification. A hillock was an ambush. The cornfields, from being green,
became lurid. Dead men were in the groves. The cries of the wounded came
in from the apple orchards. All the houses in the town were garrisoned. It
was daylight upon the prairies, yet there were lights in the windows—the
light of musket flashes.
There is not much to say about
the fight in the way of description. The Federals were in Lone Jack; the
Confederates had to get them out. House fighting and street fighting are
always desperate. The hotel became a hospital, later a holocaust, and over
all rose and shone a blessed sun while the airy fingers of the breeze
ruffled the oak leaves and tuned the swaying branches to the sound of a
psalm.
The graycoats crept nearer. On east, west, north or
south, Hays, Cockrell, Tracy, Jackman, Rathburn or Hunter gained ground.
Farmer lads in their first battle began gawkies and ended grenadiers. Old
plug hats rose and fell as the red fight ebbed and flowed; the shotgun's
heavy boom made clearer still the rifle's sharp crack. An hour passed, the
struggle had lasted since daylight.
Foster fought his men
splendidly. Wounded once, he did not make complaint; wounded again, he
kept his place; wounded a third time he stood with his men until courage
and endurance only prolonged a sacrifice. Once Haller, commanding thirty
of Quantrell's old men, swept up to the guns and over them, the play of
their revolvers being as the play of the lightning in a summer cloud. He
could not hold them, brave as he was. Then Jackman rushed at them again
and bore them backward twenty paces or more. Countercharged, they hammered
his grip loose and drove him down the hill. Then Hays and Hunter—with the
old plug hats and wheezy rifles—finished the throttling; the lions were
done roaring.
Tracy had been wounded, Hunter wounded, Hays
wounded, Captains Bryant and Bradley killed, among the Confederates,
together with thirty-six others and one hundred and thirty-four wounded.
Among the Federals, Foster, the commander, was nigh unto death; his
brother, Captain Foster, mortally shot, died afterwards. One hundred and
thirty-six dead lay about the streets and houses of the town, and five
hundred and fifty wounded made up the aggregate of a fight, numbers
considered, as desperate and bloody as any that ever crimsoned the annals
of a civil war. A few more than two hundred breaking through the
Confederate lines on the south, where they were weaknest, rushed furiously
into Lexington, Haller in pursuit as some beast of prey, leaping upon
everything which attempted to make a stand between Lone Jack and
Wellington. Captain Trow, who was in this battle, narrates that at one
time during the battle, "I was forced to He down and roll across the
street to save my scalp." A mighty blow seemed impending. Commanders turned
pale, and lest this head or that head felt the trip-hammer, all the heads
kept wagging and dodging. Burris got out of Cass County; Jennison hurried
into Kansas; the Guerrillas kept a sort of open house; and the
recruits—drove after drove and mostly unarmed— hastened southward. Then
the Federal wave, which had at first receded beyond all former boundaries,
flowed back again and inundated Western Missouri. Quantrell's nominal
battalion, yielding to the exodus, left him only the old guard as a
rallying point. It was necessary again to reorganize.
After the Guerrillas had reorganized they stripped themselves for steady
.fighting. Federal troops were everywhere, infantry at the posts, cavalry
on the war paths. The somber defiance mingled with despair did not come
until 1864; in 1862 the Guerrillas laughed as they fought. And they fought
by streams and bridges, where roads crossed and forked and where trees or
hollows were. They fought from houses and hay stacks; on foot and on
horseback; at night when the weird laughter of owls could be heard in the
thickets; in daylight, when the birds sang as they found sweet rest. The
black flag was being woven, but; it had not yet been
unfurled.
Breaking suddenly out of Jackson County,
Quantrell raided Shawneetown, Kansas, and captured its garrison of fifty
militia. Then at Olathe, Kansas, the next day, the right hand did what the
left one finished so well at Shawneetown; seventy-five Federals
surrendered there. Each garrison was patrolled and set free save seven
from Shawneetown; these were Jennison's Jayhawkers and they had to die. A
military execution is where one man kills another; it is horrible. In
battle, one does not see death. He is there, surely—he is in that
battery's smoke, on the crest of that hill fringed with the fringe of
pallid faces, under the hoofs of the horses, yonder where the blue or the
gray line creeps onward trailing ominous guns—but his cold, calm eyes look
at no single victim.
The seven men rode into Missouri from
Shawneetown puzzled; when the heavy timber along the Big Blue was reached
and a halt made, they were praying. Quantrell sat upon his horse looking
at the Kansans. His voice was unmoved, his countenance perfectly
indifferent as he ordered: "Bring ropes; four on one tree, three on
another." All of a sudden death stood in the midst of them, and was
recognized. One poor fellow gave a cry as piercing as the neighing of a
frightened horse. Two trembled, and trembling is the first step towards
kneeling. They had not talked any save among themselves up to this time,
but when they saw Blunt busy with some ropes, one spoke up to Quantrell:
"Captain, just a word: the pistol before the rope; a soldier's before a
dog's death. As for me, I'm ready." Of all the seven this was
the youngest—how brave he was.
The prisoners were arranged in line, the
Guerrillas opposite to them. They had confessed to belonging to Jennison,
but denied the charge of killing and burning. Quantrell hesitated a
moment. His blue eyes searched each face from left to right and back
again, and then he ordered: "Take six men, Blunt, and do the work. Shoot
the young man and hang the balance."
The oldest man there,
some white hair was in his beard, prayed audibly. Some embraced. Silence
and twilight, as twin ghosts, crept up the river bank together. Blunt made
haste, and before Quantrell had ridden far he heard a pistol shot. He did
not even look up; it affected him no more than the tapping of a
woodpecker. At daylight the next morning a wood-chopper going early to
work saw six stark figures swaying in the river breeze. At the foot of
another tree was a dead man and in his forehead a bullet hole —the old
mark.
"After Quantrell hanged these men, the only time I
was ever scared during the war," relates Captain Trow, "I had left camp
one night to visit a lady friend of mine, and a company of Federals got
after me, and in the chase I took to the woods and it was at the place
where Quantrell had hanged these men, My saddle girth broke right there,
but I held on to my horse. I thought the devil and all his angels were
after me, but I made it to the camp."
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