Bloody Dawn Read online

  Prior to its use as a prison, authorities were cautioned that the brick structure was unfit for habitation. Originally but two floors high, it was only in afterthought that the burden of a third story was added. And with little or no planning, the rear of the place had been clumsily built over a ravine. As the days passed the steady deterioration of the building became quite evident to all. Thus, early on the morning of August 13 an inspector was called in. The officer examined the structure, took note of the definite signs of shifting—walls cracked, dust and mortar along the foundation—then turned in his report to superiors. This, however, prompted a further inspection of the building, which quickly but quietly overruled the verdict of the first; the structure was deemed safe and the issue was dropped. The prisoners remained.

  Later that day, shortly after lunch, a soldier on the third floor of the jail heard a creaking sound; glancing up he saw the walls slowly separating from the ceiling. Swiftly the man dove to safety, shouting for everyone to jump. But there was no time. Within seconds the walls fell inward; moments later only dust and debris remained. A huge crowd gathered. Muffled cries and moans drifted up from the wreckage as rescue efforts began. Pulled from the rubble, bloody and broken, survivors became hysterical, screaming that the Federals were murderers, that the building had been a death trap. The crowd became angry and loud. With bayonets fixed, troops soon arrived. They were jeered and threatened by the mob.17

  The following day, on the third page of the Unionist Kansas City newspaper, a small article under “Local Matters” made passing note of the incident:

  Western Journal of Commerce

  Kansas City, Mo. Aug. 14, 1863

  The large three story brick building … occupied for the last two weeks as a guard house, fell in yesterday afternoon. … There were in the building at the time, nine women prisoners, two children and one man: Four women were killed; the balance escaped without fatal injuries.

  That day another woman did succumb to injuries and two others remained horribly crushed.18

  Few Kansans heard the roar of these crashing bricks or the screams that soon followed, but in the deep, dark woods of western Missouri, the sounds were both terrible and utterly deafening.

  2

  THE DEAD MEN

  Aubrey, Kansas, is situated on a swell of prairie several miles west of the state line. Except for a small hotel and a cluster of homes the sole attraction in Aubrey was the military. Capt. Joshua Pike commanded two companies of Kansas cavalry here, and for the defense of the state Pike’s outfit held the most important post. Prom Aubrey the country could be seen for miles around, sloping gently to the tree-lined creeks beyond.

  Captain Pike, “one of the best officers in the service,” some people said, had proven to be just the man for the job—a steady performer.1 Although important, it was a tedious, thankless assignment for the one hundred men quartered here. Barren, far from any large town, hot, dusty.

  “Life at this station is very dull,” a trooper wrote during the second week of August 1863. “Everything is quiet and but little of an exciting nature occurs to relieve the monotony.”2

  Then, late in the afternoon of the twentieth, a nervous farmer rode into Aubrey. An unusually large number of men, he revealed to Pike, had been encamped on the Grand, just east of the border. They were now moving up the river, he added, toward the state line and … toward Aubrey.3

  Although born and bred in Missouri, Bill Anderson considered himself a Kansan. He’d spent five years there. Heeding the irresistible call of the West, Anderson’s father had picked the family up one day in 1857 and then set it down again on the virgin plains of Kansas. The old man passed along the Santa Fe Road, ignoring the more populated, troubled eastern counties, opting for the peace and quiet and plentiful land of the Council Grove area. They were a hardworking, law-abiding family, the Andersons—the father and mother, the three brothers, the three sisters.4 And the land of their adoption, a wilderness of rolling prairie and endless sky, was in many ways similar to the old home in Missouri, two hundred miles away. There was an important difference, however: although they were Southerners, most of their new neighbors were not. When war came in 1861, the Andersons refused to take up arms against the South.

  In early May 1862, a local judge accused the Andersons of horse stealing. Hard words were exchanged, tempers flared, and a short time later a showdown occurred between the elder Anderson and his accuser. When the shooting stopped and the smoke had finally cleared, Bill Anderson’s father lay in a pool of blood, cold and still. In turn, the son delivered himself into custody, and although he was soon set free on bail, an angry mob snatched another man also charged with stealing horses and quickly hanged him. Young Anderson didn’t linger near Council Grove long, and after abandoning the farm, he and his family fled to the border.

  Two months later, accompanied by several others, Bill Anderson returned. The judge, at home with his wife and her brother, also ran a small grocery by the wayside; thus when a stranger came one night seeking whiskey, the Kansan grabbed his gun and led the way. Just as he was about to leave the cellar of his store, two shadowy figures stepped from the dark and opened fire. When the brother-in-law appeared, he too was shot and, along with the judge, was stuffed into the cellar. As the wounded men struggled desperately to escape, the store was set ablaze over their heads. Finally, after torching the other buildings and herding in the victims’ horses, Anderson and his companions rode back up the trail to the woods of western Missouri.5

  Following the Council Grove affair and his escape from Kansas, Bill Anderson did surprisingly little for the next twelve months. True, his father was gone—“murdered,” Bill said—and this wound would remain deep and open. But the rest of his family was yet together and safe, and at the time there seemed no reason to suppose that they would not always be. He did fall in with the bushwhackers and was in a few small actions. But Anderson was not a leader of men; he was a follower. And it suited his tastes to keep things just that way. He was partial to the lighter side of life. He also favored a bottle now and again. Then, on July 31, 1863, Bill Anderson’s world began to change.

  On that night Anderson led a small band of bushwhackers on a raid through eastern Kansas. After murdering two men and burning several homes along the way, the marauders slipped up the Kaw Valley to a home in which the Anderson family was staying. Throughout the region the military roundup of guerrilla relatives was in progress, and it was for this reason that the Kansan had come—to hustle his family away to safety. And so, early next morning the mother and her children left with the eldest son. Crossing back to a point just over the state line, the family pulled up; here Anderson quietly hid them among a group of friends.

  Whatever his hope, Anderson’s plan was a failure. The effort postponed his family’s arrest by only hours, for hardly had they settled when a squad of soldiers arrived and herded them off to Kansas City and to prison. Legend has it that two weeks later, on August 13, Bill Anderson began toting a silk cord with him wherever he went and that generally, no matter where his shadow fell after that day, a new knot or two was tied. That was the day the building collapsed, crippling one sister for life and crushing another to death.6

  One of the Yankee officers who had helped run the Todds from town the year before reflected on the matter with a riding companion in early August 1863. The son, George, he concluded, was a “blood thirsty cuss.” And it was true. Since his family’s banishment from Kansas City Todd had lived up to that label, and he had every intention of living up to it even more.7

  One dark morning in March 1863, near Sibley, Missouri, Todd and a gang of guerrillas forced a steamer to land as it was passing close to shore. The Rebels rushed aboard, rifled the clerk’s safe, robbed the male passengers, and then compelled them to dump boxes of government supplies into the river. A further search of the boat turned up a handful of Yankee militiamen and eighty frightened blacks. Except for two who were shot and killed, the remaining Federals either escaped or were given pa
roles. As for the slaves, contrabands going west to resettlement and freedom, all were ordered ashore. The man in charge of finding homes for these bondsmen, their sponsor, was searched for several times but not found. With that the bushwhackers prepared to leave the boat. When asked by the edgy captain what he intended to do with the blacks, Todd didn’t even have to think. “Blow their brains out!” came his simple reply. Although most wisely escaped earlier, nine of them had not, and as the boat’s mate held the lantern Todd shot them dead, one after the other.8

  Three months later, on a warm evening just before dusk, a company of Kansas cavalry entered the long, wooded lane south of Westport, Missouri. That day the weary outfit had ridden up over a dusty trail under a fierce sun. They planned to camp for the night at the military post in Westport, and many of the men, with the captain’s consent, had strapped their unwieldy carbines to the saddle. A short time before, another outfit had passed the same way.

  When one mile from Westport, George Todd and sixty bushwhackers rose up from behind a stone wall and fired into the ranks. The Yankees toppled off in a row. Before the stunned survivors could free their guns, the guerrillas fired again, then charged. Panicked, the troopers broke and fled back down the lane followed by riderless horses and screaming Rebels. Later, when a relief column arrived, they found fourteen bodies sprawled in the road. Most were stripped clean of clothing, and many had numerous wounds. But all, it was noticed, had fatal shots to the head and heart—a little something extra, just to make sure.

  The next morning a party of Federal scouts located a fresh trail. They followed it for several hours, then dismounted and entered a thick undergrowth. Moving softly, the squad approached to within a few yards of a clearing in which four men were discovered asleep. Someone made a slight noise and one of the figures rose up on an arm, rubbed his eyes, then fell back again with a hole blown through his chest. Two others were also killed, but although wounded, the fourth escaped.

  Some days later, another group of scouts successfully ambushed a band of guerrillas, and in this fight the soldiers triumphantly announced that, indeed, George Todd was among the slain. Word spread rapidly and loyalists rejoiced.9

  Few men in western Missouri commanded more respect than did Henry Younger of Harrisonville. Colonel Younger was a pleasant, likable man, honored and admired by all fortunate enough to have his acquaintance. For many years he had served as county magistrate, ruling with a firm but fair hand. Such was his popularity that he even sat several terms in the state legislature at Jefferson City. Younger was also extremely wealthy: his homes in the region were splendid showcases, and his land-holdings throughout the area were vast. Younger also owned numerous slaves. Although fiercely proud of his Southern heritage, when war came Henry Younger prayed for peace, held hard to the Union, and as a U.S. mail contractor carried on with his duties.

  In late 1861, when the jayhawkers under Charles Jennison marched into Harrisonville flying the Stars and Stripes, they loaded Younger’s possessions into wagons, threatened, bullied, and abused his helpless family, stole forty top horses, then marched out again. At that moment the old Missourian made an abrupt about-face and became an avowed secessionist.

  The following summer Younger was returning home from a trip to Kansas City. Just south of Westport he was surrounded by a gang of Union militia, robbed of a large sum of money, murdered, then left bloating in the sun. Later the Younger mansion was burned to the ground and the mother and children forced out to face the winter.10

  On a night in August 1863, Younger’s oldest son, Coleman, led fifty raiders to Pleasant Hill, Missouri. Several loyalist homes were put to the torch, as were the dwellings of those who had recently sheltered a Kansas regiment. The next night the son returned and burned some more.11

  Cole Younger didn’t need a new reason to hate Kansas and fight the Yankees in his state, but on August 13, when the prison fell and killed a cousin, he got it nonetheless.

  When Dick Yager returned to Missouri from the West, as foreman on one of his father’s wagon trains, he found that Jennison had already been there. In a single night the Yagers’ farm and lucrative freighting business were all but wiped out. The jayhawkers made off with thousands of dollars in furniture, horses, and slaves. If there was a glimmer of hope, the Yagers did manage to save a large herd of sheep and almost fifty head of fine stock. Even this spark sputtered out, however, when the Kansans returned a few days later to finish the job.12

  Already a secessionist at heart, joining the Rebel forces was an easy step for Dick Yager to take. Fighting in a few engagements at first, falling on and looting the town of Gardner, Kansas, one night without firing a shot, Yager then led a daring raid to Diamond Springs, over one hundred miles deep into Kansas. Here, after murdering a storekeeper, he and two dozen men rode back toward Missouri, working along the Santa Fe Road, robbing and killing.13

  Partly through his own words and partly through his son’s actions, Yager’s father was now rotting away in a dark cell of a St. Louis prison.14

  At 6:00 P.M. on August 20, 1863, with the sun still blazing above the horizon, Bill Anderson, George Todd, Cole Younger, and Dick Yager, along with William Gregg, Frank James, and over four hundred others rode over the State Line Road and entered Kansas. Except for those in blue at front and rear, most wore tattered butternut or faded red shirts, patched trousers tucked inside well-worn boots, and sweat-stained, wide-brimmed hats. They carried only a minimum of food and supplies. Yet they also had with them an ample amount of black powder and lead. Some balanced carbines over saddle bows. Many more, however, had stuck in holsters, belts, or side bags up to eight revolvers apiece—Colt’s big navy model, a .36 caliber cap and ball machine that left an “ugly looking wound” when fired into a man at close range.

  Just over the line the column rode up a small lane leading west toward Spring Hill. Shielding them on the right was a diminishing row of trees along the headwaters of the Grand. To save strength in the terrific heat, horses were held to a fast walk, occasionally a trot, but never more. Still, a large cloud of dust rose in their wake. The first test was coming soon, just up the road.

  “Make no attack unless fired upon,” was the command.15

  Some of the four hundred, such as Anderson and Younger, were kin to the dead girls at Kansas City. Most, such as Todd and Yager, were not. Many had little left in life to lose except that life, and a majority didn’t consider this much to risk. Half were farmers, such as the ones who had joined that morning or the fresh-faced recruits who had come along for the ride. The other half—guerrillas like Anderson, Todd, Younger, and Yager—the other half, at this moment, were the most dangerous men on earth.

  After hearing the farmer’s story, Captain Pike ordered his men to saddle and mount. Before he left Aubrey, however, Pike quickly jotted out two messages—one to Coldwater Grove in the south, the other to Little Santa Fe in the north—warning these posts that 700 Rebels were on the state line. Riders were given the notes and sent on the double-quick.16

  Pike then mounted and led his force south. After a short ride the captain halted, and as his men drew their carbines and revolvers, he formed a line of battle.17 Above the trees of the Grand, a mile or so in the distance, a large cloud of dust could be seen. In a few minutes, as the brush gave way to open ground, the first of the invaders slipped into view, then more and more until the entire guerrilla force was passing to Pike’s front—more such horsemen than he or his troops had ever seen before.

  Suicide, the captain thought.

  And thus, as the Rebels continued their progress west, Pike turned and led his company back to camp. Once there the nervous officer dispatched a second rider north, bearing the word that 800 bushwhackers were in the state and on the move. Pike then settled in at Aubrey, awaiting developments.18

  3

  THE “LIVE” MAN

  At dusk, the courier from Joshua Pike reached the military camp at Coldwater Grove, thirteen miles southeast of Aubrey. Lt. Col. Charles Clark read the news
of guerrillas on the Grand with growing apprehension. Acting promptly, Clark sent runners to outlying stations ordering all troops to rush forward immediately. The colonel then returned a hasty message north, cautioning Pike to “watch the enemy and report.” With men and mounts fresh and ready, Clark held to his post, awaiting further word on the Rebel whereabouts.1

  At approximately the same time, 8:00 P.M., Capt. Charles Coleman at Little Santa Fe, a dozen miles north of Aubrey, received Pike’s first report. Fifteen minutes later the second dispatch arrived, stating in part that 800 guerrillas were in Kansas and moving west. Without hesitation Coleman sped a courier west to Olathe, warning of invasion, requesting that word be relayed inland as rapidly as possible. Another rider was sent north to the district headquarters at Kansas City.

  By nine o’clock Coleman and eighty cavalrymen left camp, riding hard down the trail to Aubrey.2

  In retrospect, the border war of 1861 must have seemed like light and carefree sport. Looking back on it all from the dark days of 1863, Kansans could be forgiven if in their hearts there was a longing for a return to those simpler ways of life; back to that joyous time of springtide war when, with flags and banners flapping, the jayhawkers had swooped across the state line to crush the rebellion for God and the Union and in the process pluck old Missouri clean for God and themselves. Like so many children loose in a farmer’s orchard, the war had been more a wonderful game back then. And like children at the peak of their excitement and greed, few seemed mindful of another day or the ultimate consequences of their rash acts. But as always, a new day did finally arrive. And when it did, the “game,” for all practical purposes, was up.