7. Lone Jack
It was in August, 1862, nearly a year after the party at Col. Mockbee's, that I was formally enrolled in the army of the Confederate States of America by Col. Gideon W. Thompson. I was eighteen, and for some little time had been assisting Col. Hays in recruiting a regiment around my old home.
It was within a day or two after the surrender of Buell at Independence that I was elected as first lieutenant in Capt. Jarrette's company in Col. Upton B. Hays' regiment, which was a part of the brigade of Gen. Joseph O. Shelby.
We took the oath, perhaps 300 of us, down on Luther Mason's farm, a few miles from where I now write, where Col. Hays had encamped after Independence.
Millions of boys and men have read with rising hair the terrible “black oath” which was supposed to have been taken by these brave fighters, but of which they never heard, nor I, until I read it in books published long after the war.
When Col. Hays camped on the Cowherd, White, Howard and Younger farms, Quantrell had been left to guard the approaches to Kansas City, and to prevent the escape to that point of news from the scattered Confederate commands which were recruiting in western Missouri. At the same time he was obtaining from the Chicago and St. Louis papers and other sources, information about the northern armies, which was conveyed by couriers to Confederate officers in the south, and he kept concealed along the Missouri river skiffs and ferry boats to enable the Confederate officers, recruiting north of the river, to have free access to the south.
The night that I was enlisted, I was sent by Col. Hays to meet Cols. Cockrell, Coffee, Tracy, Jackman and Hunter, who, with the remnants of regiments that had been shattered in various battles through the south, were headed toward Col. Hays' command.
It was Col. Hays' plan for them to join him the fifteenth, and after a day's rest, the entire command would attack Kansas City, and, among other advantages resulting from victory there, secure possession of Weller's steam ferry.