He also wisely and firmly corrected all illegal assumption of power on the part of his subordinates. Some district commanders had assumed the right of forming sub-provost-marshal districts, and of appointing assistant provost marshals. They were true, patriotic men. Unquestionably they meant to do exactly right. But unwittingly they had transcended their powers. So by an order issued April 9th, the general called their attention to this unwarrantable usurpation of authority, and put a stop to it.[[98]] He knew that he was called to cope with a foe burrowing in every part of the State, and so far as possible must know every subordinate officer, and must hold firmly in his own hand all the lines of authority. He felt that such unification of power alone could preserve the State from the grasp of a secret, ubiquitous foe.
While the great mass of our fellow-citizens were not acquainted with the facts that were already in possession of our commander, rumors of a secret organization of the disloyal began to get abroad. This was just enough to fire the popular imagination, and to keep the people standing on tiptoe and craning their necks for news. And while filled with apprehension, they were not a little disturbed by seeing the troops that had been faithfully guarding our city sent elsewhere. The masterful campaign of Grant in Virginia had begun. The general-in-chief and his great lieutenants, Sherman and Canby, were all clamorous for soldiers, and each in turn urgently pressed General Rosecrans to send them regiments from our State and city. He generously responded to these calls, until he had sent them nearly all of the troops in and around St. Louis.[[99]] When still further pressed for recruits by the generals in the field, knowing, as they did not, the powerful hostile secret organization intrenched in every part of our State, he pathetically pleaded that he could not safely spare any more; that he must not abandon, but must protect, the loyal citizens in the various counties of our commonwealth, who remained unflinchingly true to the Union while confronted with manifold perils. Grant, underestimating our dangers and needs, and intent on his great work, accused Rosecrans of acting in violation of orders; but later he softened his accusation by merely declaring that in his judgment Rosecrans might have granted what he asked without so much correspondence.[[100]] One marked fault of our general was his great proneness to irritating disputation. Nevertheless both of these patriotic generals were doing their level best. But we must bear in mind this denuding our city of troops, if we would justly appreciate the administration of General Rosecrans, and fully understand the events that soon followed.
As early as March ugly rumors were flying about the city that small roving bands of guerrillas and bushwhackers had begun to appear in various parts of the State. Information concerning this daily became more definite. On the 3d of April, a lieutenant-colonel of the 61st enrolled Missouri militia reported from Columbia that rebel officers and guerrillas had been coming into that region from the South and that they were re-enforced from Illinois. That patriotic Illinois was taking a hand in this clandestine, hostile invasion seemed to the uninitiated incredible. But the announcement was unequivocal, and the invaders were reported as operating in small squads, robbing and pillaging in all directions. The disloyal in that part of the State, stirred to wrath on account of the enlistment of negroes in the army and the prospect of a draft, were receiving these desperadoes hospitably. And along with these specific reports of devastation there was a persistent rumor that Price was coming with a large army.[[101]]
In the latter part of April it was declared that the rebels had planned to send into northern Missouri two brigades of cavalry and two of mounted infantry; and into the region about Rolla in the southern part of the State a column of guerrillas, together with the Confederate Seventh Missouri Regiment, to act in conjunction with some conspirators’ organization[[102]] of whose existence and character the public at large had received only an inkling. At the same time it was reported that three Confederate colonels, with over a hundred armed men, were on their way to northern Missouri and that most of these men were recruiting officers of the rebel army.[[103]] We began to apprehend that the quietude that we had felt and in which we had prematurely rejoiced was only the stillness that precedes the fierce tornado. On the last day of April it was announced that rebel raids from the South into the central part of the State had begun, and that many of the citizens of Boonville, alarmed by these reports, were fleeing from their homes. Four days after, companies of Confederate cavalry, numbering from one to three hundred, were reported as advancing towards our State from the southwest, and, what was still more astounding and bewildering, it was rumored that there were rebel organizations in Illinois, and that Quantrell, with eight hundred men, was below Quincy between the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. Of the truth of this, Rosecrans was convinced, because he declared that he hoped to bring “these conspirators and raiders to grief.”[[104]] On the 4th of May from eight to twelve hundred rebels were seen on Grand River, west of Neosho.[[105]] Rumors multiplied. Marmaduke with eleven hundred men was observed going toward Missouri.[[106]] Officers of the army on watch in the interior were persuaded that the State would be soon invaded by a powerful force.[[107]] Before the middle of June this became clear to all. Reports of guerrillas drifting in from the South came from all parts of the State,[[108]] coupled with the rumor that Price and his veteran host would soon be upon us.
And what in the meantime were these invaders doing? They were endeavoring with but scant success to secure recruits for the Confederate army. Their campaign had been shrewdly planned. They were in all parts of the commonwealth. They made their appeal to every one in sympathy with the rebellion. Every able-bodied man disloyal at heart had a chance now to show his colors, to come out into the open and enlist in the Confederate army.
But at this supreme moment most of them thought it imprudent so to do. The Federal officers had never been so alert as now. Every concerted rebel movement in their respective districts was unerringly detected by them and at once checkmated. Every nest of secessionists was broken up. In every place the disloyal seemed to be in the grasp of an iron hand. They did not know that Rosecrans had in his possession all the facts in reference to their secret conspiracy, and that through his able and efficient subordinates, he was succeeding even beyond his expectations in holding it in check.
Still, his success was not complete; for while most of the disloyal of the State refused to enroll themselves as Confederate soldiers, they struck hands with their friends from the South in gathering commissary stores for the rebel army and especially for that part of it which was expected soon to appear within our borders. They regarded the property of Union men as legitimate plunder; so they gave themselves to pillage. Since these marauders were scattered in small bands all over the State beyond the immediate vicinity of St. Louis, it was impossible for our soldiers, however vigilant and alert, to defend against them the property of all Unionists. So they robbed here and plundered there,[[109]] and in each case were quickly gone, no one knew where. Many of them, to be sure, came to grief. Some were taken prisoners; some were shot or hung; but most of them escaped to rob the defenceless, and to make night lurid with burning farmhouses and barns.
If the depredators had confined themselves to plunder and arson, this orgy of lawlessness would happily have lacked its darkest colors. But they were joined by bushwhackers. These by birth or adoption were Missourians. They knew every Union man in their respective neighborhoods. They piloted the invaders to the homes of the loyal, that they might seize upon what they considered their rightful prey. Many of them wore the uniform of United States soldiers,[[110]] that they might deceive the Unionists. They had many grudges that they determined to feed fat. So to robbery was often added murder, cold-blooded, dastardly murder. All over Missouri, wherever these assassins, clothed in the loyal blue, dared to go, they shot down Union men. Many of these atrocities were unspeakably revolting. A bushwhacker rode up to the door of a peaceable old man, and asked for a drink of water. Whether the man regarded the thirsty traveller as a friend or enemy was never known; at all events, he brought him a cup of cold water, which he drank and then, handing back the cup, shot his benefactor dead. Not because he had previously injured him or any one else, but solely because amid many perils he had been a true Union man.
The leader of a band of guerrillas, by the name of Anderson, ordered his gang to shoot into, and stop, a train of cars on the North Missouri Railroad. In one of the coaches he found twenty-two unarmed United States soldiers that, on account of sickness, had been furloughed. They were on their way to their homes and loved ones. He ordered them all out of the car, robbed them, stood them in a row and shot them. Some of the bodies he scalped, others he put across the track and ran the engine over them. He afterwards attacked a hundred and twenty men of the 39th Missouri Volunteer Infantry, and having stampeded their horses, shot every one of them in cold blood. A few days later he was recognized by General Price as a Confederate captain, and with the gentle admonition that he must behave himself, was sent out to destroy railroads.[[111]]
But this carnage went on. It was the culmination of horrors in Missouri. All the barbarism that had gone before was now eclipsed. No other State of the South was so harried by lawless, irresponsible armed men. They did not wage war, and were entitled to none of the amenities of war as conducted by civilized nations.