The Centralia Massacre
In history, this is called a battle of massacre, but there never was a fight during the Civil War that was fought any more fairly than this battle was fought.
Along about September, 1864, at Paris, in Monroe County, there had been a Federal garrison three hundred strong, under the command of a Major Johnson. These soldiers, on the watch for Anderson, had been busy in scouting expeditions and had come down as near to Centralia as Sturgeon.
After Anderson had done all the devilment that he could lay his hands to in Centralia and had retired again to the Singleton camp, Major Johnson came into the pillaged town, swearing all kind of fearful and frightful things.
At the head of his column a black flag was carried. So also was there one at the head of Todd’s column. In Johnson’s ranks the Stars and Stripes for this day had been laid aside. In the ranks of the Guerrillas the Stars and Stripes flew fair and free, as if there had been the intention to add to the desperation of the sable banner the gracefulness and abandon of legitimate war.
The Union citizens of Centralia, knowing Anderson only in his transactions, besought Johnson to beware of him. He was no match for Anderson. It was useless to sacrifice both himself and his men. Anderson had not retreated; he was in ambush somewhere about the prairie. He would swoop down like an eagle; he would smite and spare not. Johnson was as brave as the best of them, but he did not know what he was doing. He had never in his life fought Guerrillas—such Guerrillas as were now to meet him.
He listened patiently to the warnings that were well meant, and he put away firmly the hands that were lifted to stay his horse. He pointed gleefully to his black flag, and boasted that quarter should neither be given nor asked. He had come to carry back with him the body of Bill Anderson, and that body he would have, dead or alive.
Fate, however, had not yet entirely turned its face away from the Federal officer. As he rode out from the town at the head of his column a young Union girl, described as very fair and beautiful, rushed up to Major Johnson and halted him. She spoke as one inspired. She declared that a presentiment had come to her, and that if he led his men that day against Bill Anderson, she felt and knew that but few of them would return alive. The girl almost knelt in the dust as she besought the leader, but to no avail.
Johnson’s blood was all on fire, and he would march and fight, no matter whether death waited for him one mile off, or one hundred miles off. He not only carried a black flag himself, and swore to give no quarter, but he declared on his return that he would devastate the country and leave of the habitations of the southern men not one stone upon another. He was greatly enraged towards the last. He cursed the people as “damned secesh,” and swore that they were in league with the murderers and robbers. Extermination, in fact, was what they all needed, and if fortune favored him in the fight, it was extermination that all should have. Fortune did not favor him.
Johnson rode east of south, probably three miles. The scouts who went to Singleton’s barn, where Anderson camped, came back to say that the Guerrillas had been there, had fed there, had rested there, and had gone down into the timber beyond to hide themselves. It was now about four o’clock in the afternoon.