THE BORDER WAR, AS TOLD BY A KANSAS SOLDIER

Part 1

THE BORDER WAR. WHEN? WHERE?
BY H. E. PALMER, LATE CAPTAIN CO. "A"
ELEVENTH KANSAS CAVALRY

A soldier's first duty is obedience to orders from his superior officer. Little did I think when I first heard of the firing on Fort Sumpter nearly three months after the dastardly act was committed, that I should over volunteer, or that my services would be needed. I thought all traitors would be promptly arrested and hanged. I was in faroff Colorado. There were no railroads or telegraph lines west of the Missouri. Coming to Denver about July 7,1861, I learned that war had been declared and 75,000 volunteers were wanted. Colorado had not been asked for help. I met two young men unemployed, Crawford and Goodrich, and proposed that if they would go with me to the states and enlist I would "pay the freight." They accepted and on July 9, 1861, we left Denver in a light wagon drawn by two mules driven by a Missourian homeward bound. "We made a remarkably quick trip, only eighteen days from Denver to Leavenworth, Kansas.
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We tried to enlist at Fort Kearney, Neb., where there were two companies of regular troops, but were refused and advised that our nearest enlistment station was at Leavenworth.
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At Marysville, Kan., Crawford and myself (being in splendid physical condition, having averaged about eight miles a day on foot, and feeling sure that the war would be over before we could reach Fort Leavenworth ) left the wagon at 4 p. m., just after our Missouri teamster had camped for the night and pushed on on foot, walking and trotting until 1 a. m., then laid down on the prairie for sleep and rest; having no overcoats or blankets two hours exposure was all we could stand, then we "double quicked" about eight miles to the first ranch where we received a good breakfast and two hours rest and sleep; then until 3 p. m. we tried to outwalk and outrun each

other; a good dinner and three hours rest at an Indian agency gave us strength for an all-night rapid march to Atchison, Kansas, 127 miles in forty consecutive hours, feet blistered and tired beyond description.
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A short steamboat ride brought us to Leavenworth on the evening of July 30. By 10 a.m. on the 31st day of July, 1861, my twentieth birthday, I enlisted, and was mustered out November 2, 1865. If I had dreamed that my four years, three months and three days' service was to be all the time west of the Mississippi, on the border, on the extreme right wing of our great army , that obedience to orders and soldierly duty would deprive me of the glory of the "Army of the Tennessee", "the "Atlanta Campaign", the "Army of the Potomac" the march in the "Grand Review", that the twenty-four general engagements and hundreds of bushwhacking fights in which I

participated wore to be comparatively insignificant, that they were to be barely mentioned in the history to be written of the great struggle; if I had but dreamed of the possibility of such a fate, I would have walked to Washington before enlisting. Within ten days I participated in the fight at Independence, Mo., and only a few days later, in a fierce little battle at Morristown, Mo., where I learned my first lesson of the horrors of what was then called the "Border War. " In a charge upon the rebels commanded by General Rains, Colonel Johnson, a gallant officer of the Fifth Kansas Cavalry, was killed. We won the fight and captured several confederates, seven of whom were called before a drum-head court martial and sentenced to death. Their graves were dug, were compelled to kneel down by the edge of the grave, blindfolded, and shot by a regularly detailed file of soldiers, the graves filled up and we marched away. It was a sickening reminder that we were fighting under the black flag. This execution was in retaliation for the murder only a few days previous of seven men of our command.
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This story of the cowardly murder that caused this revenging retaliatory act is best told by the brilliant editor, author, and rebel soldier, John Edwards, who used his masterty pen to paint Quantrill a hero in his book entitled "Noted Guerrillas or the Warfare of the Border,

"page 111".
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"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 fringedwith 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. He kills there yes, but he does not discriminate. Harold, the dauntless, or Robin, the hunchback what matters a crown or a crutch to the immortal reaper?"
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"The seven prisoners rode into Missouri from Shawneetown puzzled; when the heavy timber along the Big Blue was reached and a halt was had, they were praying. Quantrill 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 neigh 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 Quantrill: '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!"
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"The prisoners were arranged in a line, the Guerrillas opposite them. They had confessed to belonging to Jennison, but denied the charge of killing and burning. Quantrill 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."
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"Hurry away! The oldest man there, some white hairs were in his beard, prayed audibly. Some embraced. Silence and twilight, as twin ghosts, crept up the river bank together. Blunt made haste and before Quantrill 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 woodchopper, going early to his work, saw six stark figures swaying in the early breeze. At the foot of another tree was a dead man and in his forehead a bullet hole, the old mark."
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I was a member of the original First Kansas battery, then equipped with one 12-pound brass cannon and a mountain howitzer. We were attached to the Fourth Kansas Infantry commanded by Colonel William Weer; the Third Kansas , then part infantry and part cavalry, was with us, and was commanded by Colonel James Montgomery, a border warrior since 1850, and a copartner in the John Brown conspiracy. We had also part of the Fifth and Sixth Kansas cavalry with us, all commanded by United States Senator "General" James H. Lane. This army was called Lane's Brigade.
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The battle of Drywood, Mo., east of Fort Scott, Kan., September 2, 1861 was a dash by Col. Montgomery with about 1,200 men and our mountain howitzer, then known as "moonlights battery" against over 5,000 rebels with six Parrot guns, the famous "Bledsoe battery" the confederate force commanded by Gen. Rains, a late regular army officer. So bold and determined was our assault that Rains was content, after he had shaken us off, to move on south without trying to capture Fort Scott, as he intended to do.
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Part 2

At Balds Mill, September 20, we charged upon Col. Rosser's confederate regiment, about 600 men and whipped them badly. Here I saw a man escaping through a cornfield. Being on horseback I gave chase and soon came up with him. He threw himself on his knees and prayed for life. While he was a full-grown man, nearly six feet high, yet he was only a sixteen year old boy, son of Col. Rosser, who's home was at Westport, Mo., and had just reached his father's command with letters and clothing sent by his mother. I took him to Gen. Lane, then at Fort Lincoln, and having won Gen. Lane's friendship and commendation for services rendered at Drywood, I persuaded him to let young Rosser go to his home and mother, out of what he thought was the jaws of hell. For this act Rosser seven mouths later saved my life by preventing my capture by Dick Yeager's band of guerillas.
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About October 1, 1861, we captured Osceola, Mo., defeating a large force of rebels, captured about 400 mules and a very large amount of stores, gathered for the confederate army. Among these supplies were several wagon loads of liquor, stored in a brick building. Our men were dangerously thirsty. Some officers and men , myself among the number, were detailed to break in the heads of the barrels
and spill this stock of "wet goods , " to prevent the men from indulging too freely. The "mixed drinks" filled the side-hill cellar and ran out of a rear door down a ravine where the boys filled their canteens and "tanks" with the stuff more deadly for a while than rebel
bullets. Nearly 300 of our men had to be hauled from town in wagons and carriages impressed into the service for that purpose. Had the rebels rallied and renewed the fight we would have been captured and shot. The town was fired and was burning as we left.

After Osceola we camped at "West Point, Mo., on the Kansas line. I was on duty as sergeant of the guard, on picket nearly a mile from the main camp. It had been raining all night and then at 10 a.m., a cold, drizzly October rain. We saw a woman approaching from down
the dreary uninhabited roadway. She was on foot and was carrying a babe hugged to her breast, four little children also walking, two boys and two girls , the oldest a girl of seven years. All were in their night clothes and all wet to the skin , the children crying and suffering with cold and hunger. We soldiers quickly shed our coats to shelter them from the storm and gave them our dog tent by the rail campfire. The babe was dead. I sent for a wagon and soon we had them in camp. The mother died from this exposure within thirty-six hours; the four children were sent to four different homes by friendly officers and soldiers. The story told by the woman before her death revealed the fact that her husband had, as a member of the Missouri legislature of '6O and '61, fought bitterly the secession scheme. He was a rich man, owned 500 acres of improved land, fine buildings, house, barn and other out-buildings, and owned
several slaves; yet he loved the flag and was for the Union.
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In January '61 he freed his slaves and then his neighbors damned him as a "black abolitionist." They finally, in July, '61, drove him from his home. The Union army was the only safe resort, so he joined Montgomery's Kansas regiment and was on this fatal October day 110 miles south of West Point. Bushwhackers had at divers times robbed his home until every head of stock had been driven away save a yoke of old wornout oxen. His wife, with one old black aunty, had remained at the persecuted home, and during her confinement in August no friends came to see her. Only the old slave woman who would not accept her freedom, was left to help her. On this cold dreary October night the bushwhackers came for their last damnable raid, burst in the doors suddenly and drove her and her children out into the storm and set fire to the house, barn and other out-buildings. The burning home gave generous heat until morning
when the old colored woman yoked the oxen to an old wagon, filled the box with straw, loaded in the children and started for Kansas. Within four miles of our camp a band of bushwhacking fiends rode out of the brush and asked "Where are you going ? " Answer, "To
Kansas. " "Go on and give our compliments to your husband." With this reply they shot the oxen and rode away leaving a helpless mother and five children, near no habitation, to walk in the rain and mud to our camp. When the soldier husband and father heard the
news only four survivors of his once happy family were left and they in four different homes widely separated. Did he thirst for revenge!
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In October, 1863 , Mr. Lawrence, a Virginian, a rebel sympathizer, nearly GO years old, feeble and week, unable to do harm to anybody, was living near the Big Blue in Jackson county, Mo., three miles from my headquarters where I had 180 men specially detailed to fight the famous guerrilla chief, Quantrill. Lawrence owned a fine home, was a slaveholder before the war and reputed quite wealthy. It was a lonesome neighborhood, and he lived quite alone; his wife and two daughters who were between 25 and 80 year old, and two or three old darky servants constituted his family. An unmarried son about 35 years old lived in New Mexico, serving as clerk for Jesus Perea at Cimmaron. He had gone to New Mexico some years before the war and at this time, October, 1863, had not taken side in the struggle.
Capt. J. B. Ssvain commanding Co. K of the Fifteenth Kansas cavalry (which regiment was them commanded by Col. C.R. Jennison, late commander of the Seventh Kansas cavalry "Jayhawkers" ) with seven of his squadron made a night raid on Mr. Lawrence on the very day of the death by disease of Mrs. Lawrence. Mr. Lawrence was ordered to produce his money and silver plate. He answered that his money and silver were iu a bank in Canada.

Capt Swain's party dragged old man Lawrence into the orchard in front of his home and three times hung him to a tree to force him to produce the money and valuables wanted. Lawrence had told the truth. His persecutors left him nearer dead than alive and commenced a wild search of the house opening drawers with an axe when locked, emptying trunks upon the floor and ripping open bed ticks. Passing from room to room they had passed the coffin containing the remains of Mrs. Lawrence resting on chairs in the parlor. One fellow, Beardsley, suggested that maybe the money was hid in the cofrin. With that he knocked off the lid of the casket and searched for gold; a ring on the finger of the dead woman attracted his attention; whipping out his bowie-knife he cut off the finger to release the ring. Before leaving, this gallant party of Union defenders said to the two terror-stricken daughters: "If you want to plant the old lady drag her out, for we are going to fire the ranch." Unaided they dragged the coffin from the burning home, nursed their father back to life and watched for the dawn of day and reflected perhaps that they were not the only sufferers on account of this cruel civil war, that "man's inhumanity to man makes countless millions mourn." A colored servant came to toll me the story early next morning. I did all I could to relieve their distress, tried to locate the villains, but did not for over a year learn who the night raiders were. My vote as a member of a court martial held in March, 1805, helped to give tliis same captain a dishonorable dismissal from the service, which he had from the first disgraced.

Young Lawrence came home from New Mexico and joined Quantrill for revenge; in fact, "revenge" was the watchword from the north line of Kansas south on the line between Kansas and Missouri into Arkansas. Old scores from the early Kansas troubles had to be settled. The war was not commenced at Fort Sumpter; it started in Kansas in 1850, and the fires had been kept bright until the Fort Sumpter breeze had fanned the entire border counties into a flame.
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Part 3

Thus, as before stated, from early spring of '01 until in October 1861, Lane's brigade fought under the black flag, the rebels opposed to us. Up Hayes, General Rains, Davidson, Stand Watie and his Choctaws and Chickasaw Indians, Coon Thornton (the worst daredevil of them all) Qnantrill, Thrailkill, Bill Anderson, Arch Clements, Jesse James (who made Missouri notorious after the war ) his brother Frank, Cole Younger, Si Porter, Si Gordon, Bill Todd, Dick Yeager, all officers under Quantrill, commanding guerrilla bands, started in under the war cry "No surrender except in death." The Kansans under Lane, Montgomery, Blunt, Jennison, Anthony, Hoyt and others accepted the challenge, and until General Fremont in October, 1861, issued his order against this retaliatory work and forced a reorganization of
Lane's brigade which forced Lane out of the army and back to the senate there was no pretention to the common amenities of civilized war, and in fact with the guerillas and bushwhackers there was no quarter given or taken until the surrender of Lee. It was a fight to the death by combatants on both sides all through the war. The bushwhackers, who were the demon-devils of this border war personally more for plunder and dare-devil notoriety than for patriotic impulses were led by men holding roving commissions from the
confederate government. They paid and supported themselves by robbery; by plundering homes and villages, wrecking and robbing trains, attacking weakly protected supply trains, ambushing and waylaying soldiers. In fights with Union men they were treated as pirates should be, no quarter given; and of course our men expected like treatment. Two of my troopers were scalped by Quanlrill's men, and I saw five of his men hung on the present site of the Now Coates House, Kansas City. This demoralized inhuman condition
of affairs in the "District of the Border" was not confined to one side.

The Seventh Kansas cavalry, organized October 28, 1861, commanded by Charles R. Jennison, gained under his control a world-wide reputation as the "Jayhawkers. Returning from their first raid into Missouri, they marched through Kansas City, nearly all dressed in women's clothes, old bonnets and outlandish hats on their heads, spinning wheels and even gravestones lashed to their saddles, their pathway through the country strewn with, to them , worthless household goods, their route lighted by burning homes. This regiment was a little less than an armed mob until Jennison was forced to resign, May 1, 1862. As might be inferred, this man Jonnison brought only disgrace to Kansas soldiery. He was a coward and a murderer, and for shooting, while he was colonel commanding the Fifteenth Kansas cavalry, four bravo Kansas state militia men, October 23, 1804 was tried in June, 1865, by a court martial, of which Major-General George Sykes of Antietam fame was president and myself the junior member. The sentence, death, was changed by the commander of the department to imprisonment for life, and finally , through the great influence of Seator James H. Lane with President Andrew Johnson, the service. Lane was a warm friend of Jennison's and morally nearly as bad and died a coward's death suicide.
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William Clark Quantrill, the bravest most successful guerilla of the War of the Rebellion and chief bushwhacker of the Border War, was born in Canal Dover, Ohio , in 1837. His father Thomas H. Qnantrill, was principal of the public school. Both parents were from Hagerstown, Maryland. The elder Quantrill was a whig, a religious, enthusiastic educator. Young Quantrill enjoyed the best advantages, was indor strict religious training; at 16 taught a country school. In 1857, in his 20th year, Quantrill went to Kansas to secure a homestead. Being under age, h was compelled to trust a supposed friend, who proved false; this embittered the young man and from
hat time it seems he lost control of the moral instincts that should be the guidng star of true manhood. For two or three years he taught school in Kansas; between terms, worked with the immortal John Brown, who was stealing slaves from Missouri, and as slaves were
chattels he also took horses, mules and anything else of value to compensate limself and companions for the risk incurred, and to supply the sinews of war, for the freedom of a suppressed and benighted race. John Brown could pray, shoot, steal slaves or horses and really thought ho was serving God in his almost single-handed war against slavery, an institution supported by the laws of our country and enforced by the courts, and by the army. Not a dollar's worth of Brown's plunder or captured booty was used by him
for selfish purposes. Quantrill became one of Brown's best men; the false friend and an embittered mind caused him to start with his elder brother, in 1860, for California by team. They were attacked by Indians on the Little Cottonwood in Kansas; the brother was killed and scalped. Young Quantrill, badly wounded, escaped to the brush; after the Indians left with the horses and provisions Quantrill
crawled to the creek and laid there for nearly three days when a friendly Indian found him and nursed him to stalwart health and strength, and from this date Quautrill became the most cruel, desperate robber and murderer that ever lived. Ho was a blonde haired ,
handsome, mild-mannered man, nothing indicating the desperado or robber in appearance.
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Edwards, in his book entitled Noted Guerrillas of the Border War, tells of Quantrill's interview in Richmond, Va., with the confederate secretary of war, in November, 1861, after Quantrill had been for more than seven months murdering his Kansas neighbors and comrades in the name and in behalf of the Southern cause, which he had so suddenly and unexpectedly espoused, after years of work on the opposite side of the question. Like Saul of Tarsus, this fiend had experienced a change of heart but the devil had engineered the change I quote the interview as reported to Edwards and written up by him in his laudatory work of showing Quantrill as a hero, a patriot, and as a chivalrous Southern soldier who was willing to lay down his life for the South as was Gushng, who sunk the Albemarle. Read, and judge as you will.
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"His interview at Richmond with the confederate secretary of war was a memorable one. General Louis T. Wigfall, then a senator from Texas, was present, and described it afterwards in his rapid, vivid, picturesque way. Quantrill asked to be commissioned a colonel
inder the Partisan Ranger Act, and to be so recognized by the department as to have accorded to him whatever protection the confederate government might in a condition to exercise. Never mind the question of men, he would lave the complement required in a month after he had reached western Missouri. The warfare was desperate, he knew; the service desperate; everything connected with it desperate; but the Southern people to succeed had to fight a desperate fight. The secretary suggested that war had its amenities
and its refinements, and that in the nineteenth century it was simply barbarism to talk of a black flag.
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"Barbarism," and Quantrill's blue eyes blazed, and his whole manner and attitude underwent a transformation; 'barbarism, Mr. Secretary, means war and war means barbarism. Since you nave touched upon this subject, let us discuss it a little. Times have their
crimes as well as men. For twenty years this cloud has been gathering; for twenty years, inch by inch and little by little, those people called the Abolitionists have been on the track of slavery; for twenty years the people of the South have been robbed, here of a negro and there of a negro; for twenty years hates have been engendered and wrathful things laid up against the day of wrath. The cloud has burst. Do not condemn the thunderbolt."
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The war secretary bowed his head. Quantrill, leaving his own seat, and standing over him as it were and above him went on.
"Who are these people you call confederates? Rebels, unless they succeed; outcasts, traitors, food for hemp and gunpowder. There were no great statesmen in the South, or this war would have happened ten years ago; no inspired men, or it would have happened
fifteen years ago. Today the odds are desperate. The world hates slavery. The world is fighting you. The ocean belongs to the Union navy. There is a recruiting officer in every foreign port. I have captured and killed many who did not know the English tongue. Mile
by mile the cordon is being drawn about the granaries of the South; Missouri will go first, next Kentucky, next Tennessee, by and by Mississippi and Arkansas, and then what? That we must put gloves on our hands, and honey in our mouths, and fight this war as Christ
fought the wickedness of the world?"
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Part 4

The war secretary did not speak. Quantrill, perhaps did not desire that he should. "You ask an impossible thing, Mr. Secretary. This secession, or revolution , 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 champions who are not judges. Men must be killed. To impel the people to passion there must be some slight illusion mingled with the truth; to arouse them to enthusiam something out of nature must occur. That illusion should be a crusade in the name of conquest, and that something out of nature should be the black flag. Woe be unto all of you if the federals come with an oath of loyalty in one hand and a torch in the other. I have seen Missouri bound hand and foot by this Christless thing called conservatism, and where today she should have two hundred thousand heroes fighting for liberty, beneath her banners there are scarcely twenty thousand."
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"What would you do, Captain Quantrill, were your's the power and the opportunity? "
"Do , Mr. Secretary? "Why I would wage such a war and have such a war waged by land and sea as to make surrender forever impossible. I would cover the armies of the confederacy all over with blood. I would invade. I would reward audacity. I would exterminate. I would break up foreign enlistments by indiscriminate massacre. I would win the independence of my people
or I would find them graves."
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"And our prisoners, what of them? "
"Nothing of them; there would be no prisoners. Do they take any prisoners from me? Surrounded, I do not surrender; surprised, I do not give way to panic; outnumbered, I rely upon common sense and stubborn fighting; proscribed, 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, I add to my hoofs the swiftness of a horse, and to my horns the terrors of a savage following. Kansas should be laid waste at once. Meet
the torch with the torch , pillage with pillage, slaughter with slaughter, subjugation 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 government you have the honor to represent so well." And Quantrill , without his commission 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.
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Gen. Thomas Ewing while in command of the District of the Border, headquarters at Kansas City, Mo., detailed June 17 , 1863, my company, A Eleventh Kansas cavalry, and fifty picked men from ten companies of cavalry to trail and hunt Quantrill, who had become the terror of the country. His men were mostly toughs and desperadoes from the plains of northern Texas and the Kansas border, were dead shots, best riders in the world; and while he could concentrate in a day or two 500 men, he generally moved in small squads of from ten to forty men, and occupied the timber and brush of every border county south of the Missouri river to the Boston mountains of
Arkansas. He was enabled by his daring and dashing, unexpected attacks to keep fully 4,000 Federal cavalry busy for three years and 4,000 or 5,000 infantry guarding towns, trains and supply depots.
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The hair-breadth escapes of this guerrilla 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 half a dozen fights with bushwhackers each week; the miles of night riding , skulking through wooded ravines, the byroads and cow-paths traveled, hunting for an enemy worse than Indians; houses, villages
and cities sacked and burned by guerrillas and retaliatory acts by our commanders resulting in a perfect 'hell 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 September and October, 1864; of Quantrill's Lawrence raid August 21,1863, 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 June 17, 1863, 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, 1861, and slaughtering eighty unarmed and wounded soldiers; of the massacre of Blunt's band and teamsters at Baxter Springs, October, 6, 1863; of Captain Cleveland's desertion with part of his company, the Seventh Kansas Black Horse cavalry, turning highwayman; 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 rebels, take no prisoners, free slaves and respect no property rights of rebels or of sympathizers; 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 massacre 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
finally drove Quantrill and his men beyond the Mississippi and of his tragic death near Louisville, Ky., in February, 1865 all those incidents come 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 be forgotten by anyone of the men who were active witnesses
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 population of that region between the ages of 15 and 50 into the army and made
mourners in every household, and left monuments of desolation and war in burned homes, marked by stone and brick chimneys from the north to the south line.
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The two incidents cited near the beginning of this story are given as extremely aggravating cases, not as everyday common-place affairs. With the exception of the Seventh and Fifteenth Kansas cavalry there were no better disciplined or better behaved troops in the
Union army than the Kansas men. The First Kansas infantry organized in May, 1861, fought like regulars under General Lyon at Wilson Creek and lost in that fight August 10, 1861, 51 percent of the entire regiment in killed and wounded, stood their ground to the end ,
and won the fight. The seventeen Kansas regiments, three batteries and three colored regiments, with the exception above noted, gave the enemy no good cause for guerrilla warfare; all left good records for brave and soldierly conduct; and the Seventh fully redeemed herself under Colonel Leo with Sherman's army from '62 to '64. 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 1861, and to the early campaigning of Lane, Montgomery and Jonnison to October, '61. As all the guerrillas wore outlawed by that time, there was no
possible way of ending their crimes, except in annihilation. While our men had become desperate hunters of desperate 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 soldierly courtesy as was accorded to the regular confederate army by our men on the Potomac.

Part 5

When General Marmaduke, General Cabbell and seven confederate colonels surrendered with over 1,000 men at Mine Creek, Kan., in October, 1864, some of their captors were Kansas men of my company and regiment, who were prompt in according them fair treatment, and no spirit of revenge was manifested; our men divided the contents of their haversacks with the hungry rebels. So at Prairie Grove, Van Burcn, Newtonia, at West Port, and wherever and whenever we met the regular confederate army (an organization that wore the gray, supported and carried a flag) no regular confederate soldier had cause to complain of ungenerous or unkind treatment from Kansas soldiers.
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I might tell of deeds of individual heroism and bravery, of devoted loyalty to our country and our flag, loyalty to a wrong and losing cause; sufferings in camp and on the march, short rations, no medicine and poor surgeons ( fully 80 per cent of the amputations at and immediately after the battle of Prairie Grove, Ark., December 7, 1862, were fatal); of the 1100 miles tramped on foot by my company and regiment in ten mouths before we were mounted; of five days and nights scout of myself and twenty men on the front and flank of
Joe Shelby's command in October, 1864, with no sleep except in the saddle and yet we were not at Vicksburg, Donnelson, Nashville, Gettysburg or in any of the great battles of the war save at "Wilson Creek, Pea Ridge, Cane Hill, Prairie Grove, Van Buren and two Lexington fights, Little Blue, Big Blue, West Port, Mound City and Newtonia.
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We were regularly nmstered and drew our pay, wore the blue and fought the grey, obeyed orders and after Lee's surrender fought Indians from the Missouri river to the crest of the Rockies and north to the Yellowstone. The soldiers constituting the large armies east of the Mississippi were indeed fortunate in comparison with troops in the Army of the Frontier and District of the Border and others detailed on the fearful and thankless duty of fighting bushwhackers. Were the former killed in battle and left in the hands of the enemy, an honorable burial and uumutilated body were awarded them. If they were wounded medical aid and some care were bestowed upon them. If captured the prospect of an exchange of prisoners was ever before them. Contrast this treatment with the unfortunate fate of the Union soldier on the border, in the hands of the guerillas! If killed their poor inanimate bodies were outraged and mutilated; if wounded they were often forced to suicide or torture and death in the end. There was practically no captures, surrender meant death. No battle stained flags, no heroic pages in history, no honor or special credit. "Murdered by bushwhackers killed by Indians" is the brief record to be found in the adjutant general's office.
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Don't forget that our enemy was as often clad in the Union blue, as in the butternut or rebel grey. We met, someimes face to face with hands on our weapons, both parties in doubt, some short questioning, a faltering answer, a sign, a move, draw, fire and let the dead
bite the dust.
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I quote from Quantrill's historian, Edwards: "From Jackson county to the Arkansas line the whole country was swarming with militia, and but for the fact hat every guerrilla was clad in federal clothing, the march would have been an incessant battle. As it was it will never
be known how many isolated federals, mistaking Quantrill's men for comrades of other regiments not on duty with them, fell into traps that never gave up their victims alive. Near Cassville, in Barry county, twenty-two were killed thus. They were coming up from Cassville, and were meeting the guerillas, who were going south. The order given uy Quantrill was a most simple but a most murderous one. By the side of each federal in the approaching cohimna guerrilla was to range himself, engage liim in conversation, and then, at a given signal, blow his brains out. Quantrill gave the signal promptly, shooting the militiaman assigned to him through the middle of the forehead; upon their liorses twenty-two confident men laughed and talked in comrade fashion only a second before."
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Edwards in his laudatory history of the guerrillas says on page 327, speaking of Arch Clements who succeeded to the command of Anderson's company of guerrillas, that on one raid lasting but a few days he kept an accurate diary of each day's work, killing federals. Those shot to death numbered 152; killed by having their throats cut 20; hung, 70; shot and scalped 88; shot and mutilated, 11; a grand total of 292 a ten days' job for sixty men, something worth boasting of.
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In the same book, in describing 183 engagements by the bushwhackers with federals on the border, Mr. Edwards reports a grand total of 0,888 federal and Union sympathizers killed. The reports of these engagements are quixotic in the extreme. The actual number
killed by the bushwhackers could not have been more than 2,000 to 2,500 (bad enough) and fully 70 per cent of those killed are among the unknown dead.
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A picture of the horrors of border warfare as painted by the enemy.
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We saved Kansas and Nebraska from the rebel hordes, saved our western settlement from General Albert Pike's Christian scheme of annihilation by his Indian allies, kept open and comparatively safe communication with the Pacific coast, and preserved the proper
alignment of the right wing of that grand phalanx of army corps that ex ended from the Atlantic to the crest of the Rockies, served where wo were comnanded to serve, and have the consciousness of having done our duty.
Kansas furnished for the war in defense of the Union 20,097 soldiers out of a population of 100,005, one out of eight a soldier.
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The census of 1860 shows 107,110. Enlistinents from Kansas were 8,448 more than the quota - no draft was ever suggested.
The proportion of deaths in action or from wounds was 2.79 per cent more than any other of the twentyfour loyal states, and just 25.91 per cent abovo the average of all the states.