Confederate wizards of the saddle /

by Bennett H. Young

Early in April, 1863, General Price returned after his service in the army of Tennessee and the Trans-Mississippi Department, and was assigned to the command of an infantry division. In the northern part of Arkansas there was nothing except Marmaduke’s division of cavalry, and this was in and around Batesville. The Confederates were loth to abandon the portion of Arkansas above the Arkansas River, and endeavored to hold the enemy in check for eighty miles north of that stream. The Confederates were not unaware that a most determined effort would be made to capture Little Rock. By the aid of the forces from Memphis and up the Arkansas River and down through Missouri, combinations were made which it was believed would render it impossible for the Confederates to hold that post.

The only really organized force operating in the territory northwest of Arkansas was Marmaduke’s cavalry division, composed of Shelby’s and Greene’s brigades. Anxious to do something to relieve the pressure upon Little Rock, General Marmaduke felt that if he should march northeastwardly to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, he might accomplish two things: first, he might recruit quite a large number of troops. Missouri was one of the best recruiting grounds for the Confederate states. There was no time when an organized force entered Missouri, when there was any sort of opportunity for the young men, or even the middle-aged men to enter the Confederate service that hundreds of them did not rush to the Confederate standard. Marmaduke, Shelby, Price and all those who invaded Missouri were not only gratified but astonished at the readiness with which recruits flocked to join them.

General Marmaduke believed that he might stay the approach of the Federals in their advance upon Little Rock. General Holmes was so pleased with Marmaduke’s offer to do something that he not only approved but encouraged him, and ordered forward to his support Carter’s brigade of Texas cavalry, which was the possessor of a four-gun battery and counted fifteen hundred men. The men of this brigade were not experienced, but they had grit, endurance and courage, and they were not long in measuring up to the standard of veterans. This gave General Marmaduke a force of nearly five thousand cavalry and eight pieces of artillery, but nearly one-fourth of them were unarmed and one-fifth dismounted. This was a formidable array to turn loose either in the rear or in the face of the enemy. It was more than Morgan ever had under his command; it was more than General Wheeler was ever able to take on a raid; and was greater than General Forrest had hitherto been able to pull together.

Marmaduke also learned that there was a Federal officer at Bloomfield, five miles south of Cape Girardeau, who had become infamous in the eyes of the Confederates, and of all the men in the Federal Army the Missouri troops would rather have captured General John McNeil. He was known amongst the men of the South as “the butcher.” This came from his brutality to prisoners and citizens, and he was the most hated man in the Federal Armies west of the Mississippi River.

The season of the year was fairly propitious for cavalry marches. The country was denuded of corn and oats, but green stuff was abundant and the grasses which grew with such luxuriousness in that section furnished bountiful feed, such as it was, for the horses. The scarcity of grain made raiding difficult unless grass was growing. Colonel John F. Phillips, commanding a Federal Missouri cavalry regiment, on July 30th, 1863, wrote of this section: “There is nothing to eat in this country. It is the impersonation of poverty and desolation.”

From Batesville, Arkansas, to Cape Girardeau was about one hundred and eighty miles. Marmaduke had learned that McNeil had been ordered to march northward from Bloomfield, Missouri, toward Pilot Knob. This would be a distance of seventy miles. Marmaduke reasoned correctly that McNeil would obey orders, and so he sent a force toward Bloomfield to stir up McNeil, hoping that he would follow the directions of his superiors and march toward Pilot Knob. Frederickstown was ten miles southeast of Pilot Knob, and here Marmaduke purposed to intercept McNeil, and with Carter behind him and Shelby in front of him, it was calculated that short work would be made of McNeil’s two thousand infantry.

In the beginning of the march there was warm work at Patterson, a small town fifty miles from the Arkansas line. At this point a Missouri Federal militia regiment, under Colonel Smart, and several Home Guard companies had been stationed for quite a while. One of the most offensive of these Home Guard companies was commanded by Captain Leper. Neither Leper nor Smart stood well with the Confederates. They had been aggressive, cruel and malignant, and General Marmaduke had particular reasons for capturing both Leper and Smart. The presence of the Confederates had not been known fully to Smart and his associates, and General Marmaduke had made disposition of his forces to surround Patterson and its garrison, which he intended to capture at any cost. With his eight pieces of artillery he felt sure that within a reasonable time he could batter down the fortifications. Shelby was ordered to swing to the east, and a Texas regiment was to move west; the Texas forces were to go east of the place and close in from that direction, while Shelby came from the other side. The Missourians caught all the pickets, and without alarm were ready to assault the garrison. The officers in charge of the Texas brigade were not familiar with the Missouri tactics. Instead of capturing the pickets, they undertook to fight them and used the artillery and opened a vigorous fire upon these isolated videttes. Colonel Smart had been insistent that there was nothing but a few militia in proximity to Patterson, but when he heard the sound of the artillery, he realized that heavy forces were about to encircle him, and he speedily and hastily fled. A small part of the garrison was captured. The men the Confederates wanted, Smart and Leper, escaped. These fired the houses containing the supplies, and a large part of the town was burned. Later this was charged to the Confederates, and after the war suits were brought against quite a number of Confederate officers to make them responsible for the destruction of the town. This was annoying, but it was not effective. The escape of the hated men quickened desire to bag General McNeil.

A short while after this campaign McNeil still further increased his reputation for bloodthirstiness. A Federal spy was captured and disappeared near Palmyra.

Major J. N. Edwards in his splendid work, “Shelby and his Men,” gives the following account of this terrible incident:

Colonel Porter captured Palmyra late in the fall of 1863, and during his occupation of the town, one Andrew Allsman, an ex-soldier of the 3d Missouri Federal Cavalry, and a spy, informer, guide, traitor and scoundrel generally, was spirited away, no one ever knew how or where. McNeil re-entered Palmyra upon its evacuation by Colonel Porter, confined ten worthy and good men captured from Porter’s command, issued a notice to Porter dated October 8th, informing him that unless Allsman was returned within ten days from the date thereof, the prisoners then in his possession should be executed. W. R. Strachan was the provost marshal, and was just as cruel and just as bloodthirsty as his master. Allsman was not returned—indeed, Porter never saw this notice until the men were shot—and even had it been placed before him, the rendition of Allsman was an impossibility, for he knew nothing whatever of the men required to be produced. Deaf to all petitions, steeled against every prayer for mercy, eager and swift to act, McNeil ordered the execution at the end of the appointed time. Ten brave, good men—Willis Baker, Thomas Humston, Morgan Bixler, John Y. McPheeters, Herbert Hudson, Captain Thomas A. Snider, Eleazer Lake and Hiram Smith—were led out for the death shots. Fearless, proud and noble in their bearing, these innocent and excellent soldiers were sacrificed to the whim of a butcher, and to satisfy the cravings of a foreign and brutal soldiery. They met death without a shudder, willing to yield upon their country’s altar the lives that had been devoted to her service. A young Spartan—one of the abovementioned men—volunteered to take the place of an old man whose family was large and helpless, was accepted, and untouched by the heroism of the boy, and indifferent to one of the finest exhibitions of chivalry upon record, McNeil and Strachan ordered his execution with the rest, thus covering their names with everlasting infamy.