Bloody Bill Anderson

by Albert Castel

  To be sure, Major Matlock at Glasgow notified Fisk the following day that during the preceding week his troops had killed and wounded thirty-five guerrillas belonging to Anderson’s and two other bands. But two days later he in effect belied this claim by reporting that a steamboat laden with supplies for Fort Leavenworth in Kansas had been stopped from proceeding beyond Glasgow on the Missouri River because of a bushwhacker attack. He also renewed his pleas for better firearms, specifically carbines and pistols: “With our muskets we can well defend, but pursuit and attack is another thing.” He also stated that “Anderson used our signals on August 20 when approaching our men [in the Perche Hills encounter]; that spoils them for [our] use.”26

  Further evidence of the ineffectiveness of the Federal counterguerrilla campaign comes from two other documents, both also of Union origin. The first is a letter dated August 25, 1864, to Rosecrans from the “Committee of Safety for Montgomery County.” The key passage appears at the beginning:

  The murders, robberies, and other outrages committed by guerrillas are fast making the county untenable for Union men. Not a day passes but some Union man is robbed of almost all he is worth, and if he offers any opposition to the robbery he is at once shot. Of course the greatest consternation prevails. Something must be done and done at once, or loyal men must leave this county.27

  Making this letter all the more significant is that Montgomery County is located in eastern Missouri, only about seventy-five miles from St. Louis itself. It was not a major center of guerrilla activity, and none of the main bushwhacker gangs operated there. If conditions for Unionists there were as described in the letter, one can only conclude that they must have been far worse in what had now become Anderson’s stomping grounds in central Missouri.

  The other document, also dated August 25, consists of a “Statement” made by George Williams, a Union spy who, disguised as a bushwhacker, spent a week with members of Anderson’s and other guerrilla bands in Randolph County. He “talked with them all,” and “[t]heir conversation seemed to be all about the same; they were ‘going to make [Randolph] county hotter than hell,’ and intend, they say, ‘to hold it, by God, to a certainty.’” Moreover, added Williams, “They also say part of Quantrill’s men are now crossing the Missouri. . . . They are going to have Huntsville” and “burn everything and kill all the people in it,” and Anderson was endeavoring to induce the local guerrillas to join him for the raid on Huntsville.28

  Clearly the bushwhackers—in particular, Anderson’s gang—believed that they held the upper hand, a belief that could only have been strengthened by an encounter that took place near Rocheport on August 28. On that day a large mounted patrol of the Fourth Missouri State Militia clattered from the ferry opposite Boonville and set off on a scout in quest of guerrillas. They soon found them. As the Federals rode north along the Fayette Road, they spotted two horsemen up ahead and immediately gave pursuit. Not until they heard the shrill yells and crack of revolver fire in the woods behind them did they realize too late that they had galloped into a trap. Panicked by the onslaught and unable to turn in the narrow road, they broke in wild rout. Most of the bushwhackers continued to chase the fleeing foe, killing and wounding a dozen or more. Others swarmed over seven wounded soldiers lying on the ground. First they stripped off their uniforms. Then, as the soldiers watched in helpless horror, the raiders pulled out large, sharp knives and stabbed some of the victims in the heart, cut the throats of others, and either castrated or scalped or did both to all of them. As a final touch, they looped a rope around the neck of a militiaman who had been “skinned” and left his body dangling from a tree branch. That way it would be obvious to all who had performed these deeds: Anderson’s bushwhackers.29

  Following the ambush, Anderson ordered his men to scatter among the nearby Perche Hills; again, strong Union forces were concentrating against them. With a group of about twenty-eight, Anderson went to Rocheport, a village perched beneath high bluffs overlooking one of the main crossings along the Missouri River. The staunchly “secesh” inhabitants welcomed the bushwhackers, who in turn refrained from their usual depredations. In effect, Anderson took another vacation from the war and killing—his last one, as it turned out.

  Anderson remained at Rocheport, which he dubbed “my capital,” for two weeks. He and his followers devoted most of their time to getting drunk and staying that way. When not drinking, they occasionally sallied forth to the riverbank and fired on passing steamboats, forcing them to turn back. They allowed one boat, a tug, to dock, then captured it, killing a crew member in the process. Soon traffic on the Missouri between Jefferson City and Boonville ceased entirely.30

  “Anderson,” complained the editor of the Jefferson City State Times, “with his thieving, murdering, misbegotten, God-forsaken, hell-deserving followers have [sic] at last established themselves in and about Rocheport . . . and they are having things entirely their own way.”31

  As befitted a ruler, Anderson also sent forth some of his “most trusted men” to collect a “contributory tax” from civilians in the area for the “support and maintenance” of his company. According to the subsequent account of a member of that company, Hamp Watts, “The tax was not manditory [sic], but altogether voluntary.”32 In other words, a man need not pay it if he did not mind being shot or at the very least pistol-whipped; women likewise were exempt if they were willing to have their houses ransacked and perhaps burned.

  All went well for Anderson’s tax collectors until the morning of September 12. When a steady rain began falling, five of Anderson’s men took shelter in a barn owned by a widow named Turner. Deeming themselves safe from the enemy because of the weather, they unsaddled their horses, spread out their blankets to dry, and began cleaning and oiling their revolvers. While they were so engaged, a twenty-five-man mounted militia patrol, which had picked up their trail in the muddy road, entered the farmyard and asked a black servant—slavery had been abolished by now in Missouri by act of a Radical Republican– controlled state constitutional convention—if he had “seen any bushwhackers ’round here.” The servant merely pointed toward the barn. As he did so, two guerrillas, having spotted the Federals, rushed out of the barn, a pistol in each hand. First one, then the other, went down, ripped by militia bullets. The remaining three fled through a cornfield into a brush-filled forest. For a time it seemed that they would escape, but their pursuers eventually overtook and killed them. The militiamen, who belonged to the Ninth Missouri State Cavalry stationed in Fayette, also captured seven horses, several of which wore bridles bedecked with scalps. Their sole disappointment came when they examined the corpse of the first guerrilla they had slain; it was not, as they had thought, Bill Anderson. But, sooner or later somebody would get him. It was just a matter of time.33

  Word of the tax collectors’ fate reached Rocheport later that day. The bushwhackers took it hard, none more so than Anderson. He was, Hamp Watts later wrote, “pitiable to behold. Great tears coursed down his cheeks, his breast heaved, and his body shook with vehement agitation.” Then he became “morose, sullen, and gloomy.” As with the deaths of his father and sister, there could be but one response: It was time to start killing again.34

  The next day he rode out of Rocheport, heading north toward Fayette. Most of his men followed him; the rest galloped off into the Perche Hills to summon the other portions of the command.

  On the evening of September 23, some seven miles northeast of Rocheport, a train of eighteen wagons, carrying supplies of all kinds and escorted by eighty members of the Third Missouri Militia, creaked along the road between Columbia and Fayette. Suddenly scores of bushwhackers charged out of the woods and brush lining the road, their shrill yells shattering the air. Surprised and terrified, the militiamen fled. Most escaped, an unknown number were killed or wounded, and twelve simply threw up their hands in surrender. Their captors ordered them to remove their uniforms. When they did so, each was shot through the head, as were three black teamsters. The bushwhackers
then plundered and burned all the wagons except, for some reason, those carrying food and ammunition. They then rode away, dividing and subdividing into small groups to baffle pursuit.

  It worked. But a detachment of the Ninth Missouri, patrolling out of Fayette, picked up the trail of one bushwhacker party, followed it, and overtook seven “prairie wolves.” It killed and then scalped six but took prisoner the seventh, Cave Wyatt, who had been wounded and was “sergeant” in Anderson’s band. Unless the militiamen hoped to extract useful information from Wyatt, their sparing him is inexplicable; almost certainly pity had nothing to do with it. Whatever the motive, it would have remarkable consequences for another sergeant, a Union one, who on this particular day was in Nashville, Tennessee, on his way to home and family in a little place called Hawleyville, Iowa.

  Ambushing the wagon train and murdering twelve of its escort—the teamsters, being “niggers,” did not count in the tally—had been Anderson’s retaliation for the slaying of his tax collectors. Now he had something else to avenge, and he resolved to do it in a big way. In both instances the bluebellies who had killed his men belonged to the Ninth Missouri stationed in Fayette. He would go to that town and “clean it out,” thereby teaching the Ninth—for that matter, all Union troops in Missouri—that they could not kill and scalp his men with impunity, and they were not safe from his wrath even in a fortified town.

  Early the next morning Anderson and his men, who had regrouped, left their bivouac beside Bonne Femme Creek and marched toward Fayette, six miles due north. As they neared the town, they saw something they had not expected to see: a large force, perhaps two hundred or more, of fellow bushwhackers. It turned out to be George Todd’s band, accompanied by the gangs of Dave Poole, John Thrailkill, and a band of six or seven guerrillas headed by none other than Quantrill. What, they wondered, were they doing here?

  They soon found out. On September 8, a Confederate officer had delivered to Todd a message from Sterling Price, stating that his invasion of Missouri was about to begin and asking Todd and all other guerrillas to help prepare the way by disrupting Union defenses and supply lines. Todd thereupon reassembled his band and crossed over to the north side of the Missouri, where he was joined by Thrailkill, Poole, Si Gordon, Tom Todd (no relation), Cliff Holtzclaw, and finally by Quantrill, who said that while he would not serve under his former lieutenant, he would cooperate with him. Not since Lawrence and Baxter Springs had so many bushwhackers been assembled at one time and place. Altogether they numbered more than four hundred, counting several score Confederate recruits accompanying Thrailkill.

  Tacitly putting aside their past animosity, Anderson and Todd held a conference in which all of the chieftains, including Quantrill, participated. Anderson urged an immediate attack on Fayette. Most of its garrison was away, searching for him. He had intended to go into the town with just his own men. Now, with Todd’s and the other bands, taking Fayette would be a walkover.

  Todd promptly agreed. Just four days earlier he and Thrailkill had ridden into Keytesville, seat of Chariton County and Price’s hometown, and secured the surrender of its Paw Paw garrison without firing a shot or losing a man. Should the militiamen in Fayette try to stave off the enemy, they would not stand long against so many of the fiercest bushwhackers in Missouri.

  Quantrill objected. Unless taken by surprise, the Federals in Fayette would literally fight for their lives rather than meekly lay down their arms like the Keytesville garrison. They were not Paw Paws. More important, they would be protected by the brick walls of the courthouse and probably other brick and stone buildings as well, against which revolver fire would be virtually useless. No, an attack on Fayette was too risky, and even if successful it would cost too many casualties to “make it pay.”

  Todd jeered, “We are going into Fayette no matter what! If you want to come along, all right. If not then you can go back into the woods with the rest of the cowards!”

  Unfazed, Quantrill rode away from the conference, which continued without him.

  Again asserting that it would be easy to take Fayette, Anderson offered to enter the town first with his men, who, wearing Federal uniforms, would surprise and dispose of the garrison. All Anderson wanted was revenge against the Ninth Missouri. After that Todd’s and the other bands could have the place all to themselves.

  Todd accepted Anderson’s proposal. It promised little fighting and a lot of loot for his boys. That Quantrill opposed attacking Fayette merely made Todd more determined to do it. He already had shown himself to be a better man than Quantrill. Now he would prove that he was a better leader.35

  It didn’t turn out that way. Because one of Anderson’s men was trigger-happy—the one who shot the Yankee uniform-attired black man standing on the sidewalk—the ruse for taking the garrison by surprise failed just as it was about to succeed. Instead of easy pickings in a defenseless town, Todd’s followers found themselves doing most of the fighting and suffering most of the losses against the Federals holed up in the log cabins. As the bushwhackers retreated from Fayette along the Glasgow Road, they had to have thought that while Anderson and Todd were utterly fearless, Quantrill was a damn sight smarter.

  That night, after leaving their wounded with friendly farmers, the guerrilla bands camped near Glasgow. It had been a bad day, the worst most of them had ever experienced. Anderson’s men in particular felt frustrated and angry. Not only had they failed to avenge their dead, scalped comrades, they now had a humiliating defeat to redeem. They resolved to do this the first chance they got. And the sooner that chance came, the better.36

  Chapter Five

  There are Guerrillas There

  Central Kentucky: Night, September 25, 1864

  All was quiet in the train’s coach except for the steady chugging of the engine up ahead, the clanking of iron on iron below, and the snoring of men asleep on the hard, wooden benches. Half of the passengers were soldiers, veterans who could sleep anywhere, anytime. They came from Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s army down in Georgia. Exactly three weeks and three days earlier, that army had captured Atlanta, thereby ending four months of hard, bloody, incessant campaigning. Also ended was the South’s last chance of winning by holding on until the North lost its will to continue the war. That will had started to erode when the summer gave way to fall, and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, despite hideous losses, remained stalemated in Virginia while Sherman seemed stymied in Georgia. Then Atlanta fell, and most Northerners decided that the war could be won—in fact, it would be won. It was just a matter of time.

  But what mattered most to the soldiers on the train was that they had survived—survived the rain of lead at Resaca, the corpse-strewn slopes of Kennesaw Mountain, the fierce Rebel onslaughts at Peachtree Creek, Bald Hill, and Ezra Church, and the final fighting at Jonesboro. They had survived, too, the cold rain and torrid sun, the clinging mud and choking dust, and the endless marching and trench digging that had put more men in hospitals and graves than all the battles combined. And because they had survived, they were going home. Some, whose enlistments had expired or who had received medical discharges, could stay home and never have to return to the army. Others, the vast majority, had thirty-day furloughs and were delighted to have them. It meant that for a few weeks at least they could live like human beings instead of beasts, killing and being killed. Besides, maybe by the time they were to rejoin their units, Grant would have taken Richmond, and Sherman would have finished off the Rebels in Georgia. If so, the war would be as good as over. In any event, at least for a short while it was over for them.

  One of the furloughed veterans in the car was Thomas Morton Goodman of the First Missouri Engineers.1 Six feet tall and beefy, he looked like what he was—a sergeant. Beneath his blue army blouse were the powerful shoulders and arms of the blacksmith he had been before joining up in October 1862. That was the reason why—along with his having served in the Mexican War and being, at thirty-five, much older than most of his fellow soldiers—he wore three large V-shape
d gold stripes on his sleeves. A blacksmith was an asset to any unit, especially in an engineer outfit where there were many things he could do besides shoe horses.

  Belonging to the First Missouri Engineers also greatly enhanced Goodman’s chances of remaining a survivor. During most of the Atlanta campaign his regiment had come nowhere near the front. Instead it had been in Tennessee, laying track and building and repairing blockhouses along Sherman’s railroad supply line. Not until toward the end of August had it joined the fighting army, and then it had remained well to the rear while the final clashes took place at Jonesboro and Lovejoy’s Station.2 And since his regiment would continue to perform noncombat service, Goodman could be reasonably confident that he still would be alive and well when his enlistment ended in 1865—supposing, that is, the war lasted that long.

  Now he was going home, back to Hawleyville, a little town in Page County, Iowa, near the Missouri line. Home to his wife, Mary, their three children, and his younger brother.3 He yearned to see them, to be with them, to hug them. Almost two years had passed since he had done those things. That was a long, long time.

  Goodman’s journey back home began in Atlanta on September 22, when he and other furloughed members of the First Missouri Engineers boarded a train destined for Nashville by way of Chattanooga. About an hour out of Atlanta, at a place with the unpoetic name of Big Shanty, the train came to a grinding halt: Up ahead, Rebel raiders had wrecked about a quarter-mile of track. To Goodman and his fellow engineers this was merely an annoying nuisance. They had had plenty of experience patching railroads, and Sherman kept stockpiles of rails all along the twin bands of iron that constituted the lifeline of his army. Within five hours they had the break repaired, and the train resumed its northward progress.

  At every station the local loafers—whom the soldiers called “half-and-halfs” because they suspected that their professions of loyalty to the Union derived more from convenience than conviction—sought to amuse themselves by declaring that Joe Wheeler’s Confederate cavalry were on the loose in northern Georgia and soon would strike the railroad below Chattanooga in huge force. Goodman and his comrades laughed at these “yarns.” They knew that back in August, Wheeler had tried to compel Sherman to retreat by destroying the railroad between Chattanooga and Atlanta but had failed miserably, and they doubted that he would try it again now that Atlanta had fallen. Maybe a few mangy guerrillas were prowling about, but all they ever did was take pot shots at trains and occasionally derail one. They would not dare attack a train, especially one packed with soldiers and in the daytime. They were too cowardly for that.