Bloody Dawn

by Thomas Goodrich

  Ewing was firm.

  “If you persist in executing this order,” the artist threatened, “I shall make you infamous with my pen and brush.” When the general said nothing the Missourian flew out the door.11 But as Bingham left, others—politicians, editors, clergymen—with the same demands were waiting to enter.

  And even over the state line, some Kansans who agreed in principle had little faith that the order would work in practice and feared the consequences if it did not. This measure, they felt, in the hands of the same “dull and incompetent” man who could not prevent the destruction of a town deep within a loyal state was certain to be mismanaged, and then not only would Quantrill continue to scourge the land at will, but suddenly his ranks would swell with a whole new legion of wrathful, bloodthirsty killers freshly kicked from their homes. If this came to pass there were many black, smoky days ahead for Kansas and much new sod to be dug.

  Even if the order were carried out to the letter, however, there were many who didn’t feel this was enough. In the eyes of most Kansans, the farmers and planters of Missouri were just as guilty as the guerrillas. Whether by actual complicity, whether by simple silence, either way they had made the nightmare at Lawrence a reality and just as certainly killed the men in that town as if they’d been there to squeeze the trigger themselves. Now Order No. 11 was granting these murderers ample time to collect their stolen goods and escape the border altogether, no doubt to carry on a sneaking, silent war elsewhere. Ewing’s order, as these excited men saw it, was a pardon to Rebels, not a punishment; and if there was one ounce of justice yet left in the world, punished they must be, and severely.

  “Hanging, disemboweling and quartering are not half severe enough to satisfy the righteous vengeance of the people,” wrote one observer.12 And many were determined that this was exactly what would happen, regardless of Ewing or his law.

  Caught in the ideological crossfire of radical and moderate Unionists, too soft for the one, too harsh for the other; commanding a token army of 4,000 men in a land swarming with bushwhackers and jayhawkers; criticized mercilessly as a “pimp and an idiot,” a man “without heart or brains”; his finely crafted world crashing down all around him, the embattled thirty-four-year-old brigadier resumed his post and got on with the job at hand.

  The Sunday storm had extinguished the last embers in Lawrence, and by midweek, those who were coming back following the panic had done so. For most, the work began where it left off.

  Over one hundred and fifty bodies had at last been buried; mercifully that grim business was nearly at an end. In the rush to inter the dead over the weekend, only the briefest of words were spoken, but with matters less strained, something more fitting seemed called for now. “It was a week of almost uninterrupted funeral services,” noted a weary Reverend Cordley, who, while waiting for rites to begin at various homes, would fall fast asleep outside the doors.13

  Some of the terribly wounded died, but others such as Harlow Baker and John Thornton, although both in critical condition, continued to improve. Produce arriving from the country had not stopped and, happily, supplies from Leavenworth still poured in. And money was being raised. Already “with less talk than would ordinarily be required to raise $100,” Leavenworth had subscribed $15,000. Governor Carney opened his pockets and personally chipped in another $1,000, and to the widow of the Eudoran killed in the heroic attempt to warn the town, Carney gave $500. Four men, including Sen. Samuel Pomeroy, pledged $100,000 each to help resurrect the Eldridge House. Throughout the state and nation others were coming to the aid of the stricken town, and in a short while money and supplies would be on hand to rebuild Lawrence anew.14

  But all this, though encouraging, still seemed oceans away and did little to check the deep despondency. The want was dire, the memories vivid. Some felt the moral damage caused by the Sunday panic greater than that of the raid itself. Passions ran high, higher perhaps than at any time since Black Friday. There was hope that some of the wealth stripped from the town might be recovered. Many people, especially ruined merchants, were more than interested in the reports sifting back that said that a good share of the loot and currency and nearly all the fifty horses stolen had been retaken. Rumors also had it that Lane, in a pursuit bungled by stupidity and downright cowardice, was the lone bright spot.

  Hopes of recovered property were soon burst, however, for when Jim Lane and his bedraggled men rode into town the dismayed citizens saw no extra horses and no cash and goods worth mentioning. The wealth of Lawrence was gone. That part of the report had been untrue; the part about his own glorious role in the chase was not, however, or so said Jim Lane. Alighting from the saddle tired and sore, just completing a circuit that would have laid men half his age low, Lane was never so entirely fatigued that he could not summon the energy needed to advance his own name. He announced to the gathered citizens that he and his squad had killed over two score of Quantrill’s men and undoubtedly wounded more. Some others in the chase, others whose imaginations were just as fantastic, said they counted between eighty and one hundred guerrillas “lying or hanging dead,” and had the yarn spinning gone on much longer, or had anyone been willing to listen, few if any of the raiders would have made it to the border alive. But the people were not amused or impressed by these tales; they had heard them for years. They were instead more concerned about who would answer for the mounds of fresh brown sod on the hill. Moreover, they angrily asked, how and when was Missouri to be punished?

  After making arrangements to have his home rebuilt, Lane called for a meeting of townsmen. There he revealed the plan to depopulate western Missouri, assuring the men present that he had personally cornered Tom Ewing and forced a “pledge” from him, making sure the job was done right.15 If the senator expected the citizens of Lawrence to be comforted, he was mistaken. They, like many other Kansans, had no faith in Ewing or the military and were convinced that the order would not be carried out properly. Besides, they argued, this would not get their property back, nor was it the kind of punishment they had in mind. To a man, they were for going to Missouri and doing the job themselves, recovering their goods and killing off any Rebel or so-called Union man who claimed differently. When the point was raised that the military would never condone such an invasion, emotions were murderous.

  On his journey back from the border, Lane had a chance to sound the opinions of many and knew well that the feeling expressed here at Lawrence was general elsewhere. Kansas demanded blood—Missouri blood—and the people were going there to get it under anyone who cared to take them. And so rather than stay at home and defend an unpopular cause, Lane changed course on the spot and in a few seconds became the leading advocate for the invasion of western Missouri. But as was the case with any of the senator’s actions, there was more to it than that. There were political considerations as well. As a rival for the senate, Thomas Ewing, Jr., was finished. But John Schofield was another matter. Impediment that he was to the radical takeover of Missouri, if President Lincoln could be shown by a great popular uprising the universal contempt and lack of confidence in the St. Louis general, it stood to reason that he would be replaced. If this came to pass, Lane would very quickly have a mightier say, perhaps the mightiest say in the West. And so while the senator preached invasion on the one hand, he was careful to rail at the moderate Schofield on the other, painting him as the man most responsible for the Lawrence bloodbath.

  With little sleep and less rest, yet spurred by the possibilities, James Lane adjourned the meeting and raced off to Leavenworth to fire support for the plan.

  Watching as the senator left, a bitter, very bitter Charles Robinson had no doubts whatsoever as to who was “most responsible” for all the ills along the border. And it wasn’t Thomas Ewing, John Schofield, or even William Quantrill!

  As was the case up and down the border, Leavenworth was a hive of excitement and fear, for it was fully expected that when the next blow fell it would fall nowhere but there. Every day new and graphic horr
or stories from Lawrence set nerves on edge. The presence of Lane did nothing to calm the situation. Stalking here, then there, blasting “Skowfield” in one breath, drawing lurid scenes of Lawrence in the other, the senator found an audience on every corner. “Think of riding down the streets, and seeing a hundred and fifty of your fellow-citizens cooked—literally cooked—on the sidewalk.”16

  Early the following evening, August 27, while hundreds of militiamen nervously patrolled the outskirts, the largest, most riotous crowd in Kansas history came together in front of the Mansion House. Sharing the podium were Mayor Anthony, Charles Jennison, George Hoyt, and other well-known radicals. Each in turn regaled the torch-lit audience—estimated at 10,000—hour upon hour, calling loudly for the destruction of western Missouri and ritually beheading Ewing and Schofield. But everyone, though warm to the others, had come for the top bill, the master himself, to learn of his plans for the invasion of Missouri and, incidentally, to be thoroughly entertained in the process. Lane did not disappoint. For two hours the audience stood riveted, looking up with “open mouths” as the senator delivered his speech from the balcony, animated as always, removing one article of clothing, then another, warming to the crowd as they in turn were fired to a frenzy.

  Extermination—I repeat here, that for self-preservation there shall be extermination of the first tier of counties in Missouri, and if that won’t secure us, then the second and third tier, and tier on tier, till we are secure. [Uproarious cheers] Oaths of allegiance! Great God!

  What was Schofield doing while the fiends were murdering the citizens of Lawrence? He was administering oaths of allegiance to their companions in Missouri, trying to woo them back to their allegiance, instead of killing them. … I take the ground here of vengeance for blood and devastation for safety.

  Finally, when the crowd was “boiling over,” the senator closed by calling on 5,000 men to prepare for what had to be done—to march over the line with him and scorch Missouri black with fire and sword. A thunderous roar and ovation went up, rattling the windows of Leavenworth: Burn them over! Kill every living thing! Make a desert and call it peace! Voices from the frenzied mob assured Lane that twice the number of men asked for could be raised. At last, with the invasion set to start from Paola on September 8, the tumultuous throng broke into the night convinced that the problem on the border would be settled in a very short time.17

  Even before the Leavenworth meeting made blood its abiding aim, there had been hints of what might lay ahead for western Missouri. Following the pursuit of Quantrill, hundreds of angry Kansans had lingered briefly and crashed through the border region. And partly in frustration and partly for old motives’ sake these men had turned savagely on the people, those whose simple proximity to Quantrill’s route was itself grounds for suspicion. Any group of men, or women for that matter, caught in the Union net were considered fair game. Some were arrested and hauled to jail while not a few were killed. Anyone found by George Hoyt and his Red Legs wearing a new shirt or hat or riding a good horse was lynched on the spot.18

  That evil-looking, evil-acting men like Lane, Jennison, and Anthony flew about threatening extermination was one thing and would always be enough to pump fear into the hearts of men across the line no matter when it came. But suddenly, after the massacre at Lawrence and the meeting at Leavenworth the threats never seemed more ominous, with all of Kansas apparently poised to sweep into Missouri and have a serious go at wholesale slaughter. Mayors, senators, and congressmen were stumping hardest for it; prominent radicals and editors everywhere appeared to glory in it; the leading military men, even if they were disposed to do so, seemed incapable of preventing it; and at the moment there appeared to be no one on earth willing or daring enough to raise a hand against it.

  “We are drifting between Scylla and Charybdis!” one frightened man wrote. “Who has the foresight and the will to save us?”19

  On Monday, the last day of August 1863, John Schofield and members of his staff climbed aboard a special westbound train waiting at the St. Louis station. Schofield had hoped that the long trip wouldn’t be necessary, and at first it seemed that it might not. Shortly after the massacre, even by the banks of the Mississippi, the young general felt the waves for retribution come rolling in from Kansas. Responding to a request from Thomas Carney for a stand of arms, Schofield agreed; in return he asked the governor to do his utmost to check the invasion movement before it got out of hand. “I hope,” he continued to Carney, “a few day’s reflection will show the popular leaders of Kansas the folly and wickedness of such measures of retaliation.” Carney’s response was encouraging. Also, considering the heap of abuse, Ewing had done well enough. His troops had fanned out to watch ferry crossings, and to help with the difficult days ahead two fresh regiments were moving up to the border.20 But things simply had not gone as hoped.

  Just prior to the Leavenworth meeting Schofield had wired the Kansas leaders cautioning them that, excited though they justly were, any move over the line was strictly forbidden. That night when the telegram was read aloud in Leavenworth, it was unanimously shouted down by the crowd. And the next morning Ewing himself showed signs of stress when he wired St. Louis stating that Lane had offered him sole control of the expedition to Missouri. The leaders “would place themselves under my orders,” he said. “I have but little doubt I will be able to control matters to prevent any considerable acts of retaliation.” If General Ewing had “little doubt,” John Schofield had more than enough. Again he was forced to state the government’s position. In turn, and “in the present state of feeling,” Ewing himself worried about the reliability of his troops at stopping an invasion, torn as they were with Rebels to their back and radicals to their front.21 Concern was greatest at Leavenworth, however, where Dan Anthony was doing all he possibly could to twist the knife in Ewing and get himself and a mob over the river.

  And when Ewing, feeling terribly isolated, sought the aid of Governor Carney, it was in the eyes of all the ultimate sign of weakness since the two were well-known political foes. Thus, one week after the massacre at Lawrence, with “unprincipled leaders,” as Schofield termed them, seeking to “fan the flame … and goad the people to madness,” it appeared that the border, despite best efforts, would soon be consumed by fires beyond control.22 And so to Schofield’s mind there remained but one thing to do. Sometimes words on telegrams were not enough and only flesh and blood would do. And as the cars clattered away from the St. Louis station they were taking west not only the commander of the department—cold comfort, for John Schofield entertained no illusions about his popularity in Kansas—but were also, in his person, taking west all the authority vested in him by the commander in chief. His words were the president’s.

  Although Schofield had no way of knowing, there was at that moment a shift taking place in the minds of many along the border. For some it was subtle, for others sudden, but like Governor Carney all thinking men began to look about themselves and determine in what direction they were heading. Many decided they didn’t like the direction, nor who they were going with. Men who had been swept along in the current during the first days of excitement and who might have otherwise been carried on and on to the falls, recoiled to find themselves keeping company with James Lane. Long ago they had learned that when Lane sailed one way, then this was reason aplenty for an intelligent and honest man to sail the other. The editor of the Leavenworth Daily Times had always known this and was one of the first to urge caution. “The storm-cloud that now hangs with such black and threatening fury over this ill-fated border, must be guided with a wise and an iron hand, or it will burst upon us, involving all in one common ruin.” And the editor let it be known that the “iron hand” he had in mind was not that of the demagogue Lane, ruefully adding that the jayhawker would not even be around to agitate and boast of heroics but for his “lucky star and a neighboring cornfield.”23

  “Whenever one of those Lawrence murderers is caught,” echoed another man, “let him hang unt
il the buzzards fat on his carcass. But let us not imitate his barbarous example by an indiscriminate butchery of innocent persons.”24

  As ever, Lane turned a shrewd eye to all forms of criticism. To keep the pressure building and the Paola movement burning he called for yet another meeting at Leavenworth, scheduled for September 2.

  By the first of September, little had changed in Lawrence since the weekend of the attack. A few individuals, then a few more had cleared the debris sufficiently to begin rebuilding, but it was a slow, painful process, and between staying clothed and fed and guarding the town, no real headway was made. Happily, work on the new bridge continued. And to ease the housing shortage there was talk of hauling the old proslavery Legislative Hall from Lecompton to the town. Both Hovey Lowman and John Speer began stirring to revive their newspapers. “Lawrence is not to ‘wink out,’ ” wrote Speer, with more defiance than reason. “We have a glorious record; and a destiny. We are to be one of the largest cities west of the Missouri. There is no possibility of mistaking that.”25

  One of those who felt as Speer did was Peter Ridenour. On the Monday after the raid he began the long climb back. With what little money remained the grocer hired several blacks to clear the ash and debris from the store cellar. To the rear of the gutted building stood a corncrib untouched by the raiders; here Ridenour set up shop, throwing a lean-to on the side and planting a U.S. flag atop it all. The once-wealthy merchant then began selling the only thing in stock—salt. Taking a few dollars aside for expenses, he used the rest to pay as much to Eastern creditors as possible, which came as a shock to those who had read the names Ridenour and Baker among the list of dead. And because of the gesture and R & B’s past honesty, letters from the East arrived in turn, telling Ridenour that his rating, despite his poverty, was still sound. Supplies did come in bit by bit and the tiny profits were used to pay for labor and material on the new store—a hod of bricks, a keg of nails, a load of boards—or to purchase a few more items to stock the corncrib.