Charles W. Quantrell

by Harrison Trow; John P. Burch

Perhaps it was now five o’clock. The September sun was low in the west, not red nor angry, but an Indian summer sun, full yet of generous warmth and grateful beaming. The crisp grass crinkled under foot. A distance of five hundred yards separated the two lines. Not a shot had been fired. Todd showed a naked front, bare of skirmishers and stripped for a fight that he knew would be murderous to the Federals. And why should they not stand? The black flag waved alike over each, and from the lips of the leaders of each there had been all that day only threats of extermination and death.

Johnson halted his men and rode along his front speaking a few calm and collected words. They could not be heard in Todd’s ranks, but they might have been divined. Most battle speeches are the same. They abound in good advice. They are generally full of such sentences as this: “Aim low, keep cool, fire when you get loaded. Let the wounded lie till the fight is over.”

But could it be possible that Johnson meant to receive the charge of the Guerrillas at a halt! What cavalry books had he read? Who had taught him such ruinous and suicidal tactics? And yet, monstrous as the resolution was in a military sense, it had actually been made, and Johnson called out loud enough to be heard by the opposing force: “Come on, we are ready for the fight!”

The challenge was accepted. The Guerillas gathered themselves together as if by a sudden impulse, and took the bridle reins between their teeth. In the hands of each man there was a deadly revolver. There were carbines, too, and yet they had never been unslung. The sun was not high, and there was great need to finish quickly whatever had need to be done. Riding the best and fastest horses in Missouri, George Shepherd, Oll Shepherd, Frank Shepherd, Frank Gregg, Morrow, McGuire, Allen Parmer, Hence and Lafe Privin, James Younger, Press Webb, Babe Hudspeth, Dick Burnes, Ambrose and Thomas Maxwell, Richard Kinney, Si and Ike Flannery, Jesse and Frank James, David Poole; John Poole, Ed Greenwood, Al Scott, Frank Gray, George Maddox, Dick Maddox, De Hart, Jeff Emery, Bill Anderson, Tuck Hill, James Cummings, John Rupe, Silas King, James Corum, Moses Huffaker, Ben Broomfield, Peyton Long, Jack Southerland, William Reynolds, William and Charles Stewart, Bud Pence, Nat Tigue, Gooly Robertson, Hiram Guess, Buster Parr, William Gaw, Chat Rennick, Henry Porter, Arch and Henry Clements, Jesse Hamlet, John Thrailkill, Si Gordon, George Todd, Thomas Todd, William and Hugh Archie, Plunk Murray, Ling Litten, Joshua Esters, Sam Wade, Creth Creek, Theodore Castle, John Chatman and three score men of other unnamed heroes struck fast the Federal ranks as if the rush was a rush of tigers. Frank James, riding a splendid race mare, led by half a length, then Arch Clements, then Ben Morrow, then Peyton Long and then Harrison Trow.

There was neither trot not gallop. The Guerrillas simply dashed from a walk into a full run. The attack was a hurricane. Johnson’s command fired one volley and not a gun thereafter. It scarcely stood until the five hundred yards were passed over. Johnson cried out to his men to fight to the death, but they did not wait even to hear him through. Some broke ranks as soon as they had fired, and fled. Others were attempting to reload their muskets when the Guerrillas, firing right and left, hurled themselves upon them. Johnson fell among the first. Mounted as described, Frank James singled out the leader of the Federals. He did not know him then. No words were spoken between the two. When James had reached within five feet of Johnson’s position, he put out a pistol suddenly and sent a bullet through his brain. Johnson threw out his hands as if trying to reach something above his head and pitched forward heavily, a corpse. There was no quarter. Many begged for mercy on their knees. The Guerrillas heeded the prayer as a wolf might the bleating of a lamb. The wild route broke up near Sturgeon, the implacable pursuit, vengeful as hate, thundering in the rear. Death did its work in twos, threes, in squads—singly. Beyond the first volley not a single Guerrilla was hurt, but in this volley Frank Shepherd, Hank Williams and young Peyton were killed, and Richard Kenney mortally wounded. Thomas Maxwell and Harrison Carter were also slightly wounded by the same volley, and two horses were killed, one under Dave Poole and one under Harrison Trow. Shepherd, a giant in size, and brave as the best in a command where all are brave, fought the good fight and died in the harness. Hank Williams, only a short time before, had deserted from the Federals and joined Poole, giving rare evidences, in his brief Guerrilla career, of great enterprise and consummate daring. Peyton was but a beardless boy from Howard County, who in his first battle after becoming a Guerrilla, was shot dead.

Probably sixty of Johnson’s command gained their horses before the fierce wave of the charge broke over them, and these were pursued by five Guerrillas—Ben Morrow, Frank James, Peyton Long, Arch Clements and Harrison Trow—for six miles at a dead run. Of the sixty, fifty-two were killed on the road from Centralia to Sturgeon. Todd drew up the command and watched the chase go on. For three miles nothing obstructed the vision. Side by side over the level prairie the five stretched away like the wind, gaining step by step and bound by bound, upon the rearmost rider. Then little puffs of smoke rose. No sounds could be heard, but dashing ahead from the white spurts terrified steeds ran riderless.

Knight and Sturgeon ended the killing. Five men had shot down fifty-two. Arch Clements, in apportionment made afterwards, had credited to himself fourteen. Trow ten, Peyton Long nine, Ben Morrow eight, Frank James, besides killing Major Johnson and others in the charge upon the dismounted troopers, killed in the chase an additional eleven.

Johnson’s loss was two hundred ninety one. Out of the three hundred, only nine escaped.

History has chosen to call the ferocious killing at Centralia a butchery. In civil war, encounters are not called butcheries where the combatants are man to man and where over either ranks there waves a black flag.

Johnson’s overthrow, probably, was a decree of fate. He rushed upon it as if impelled by a power stronger than himself. He did not know how to command and his men did not know how to fight. He had, by the sheer force of circumstances, been brought face to face with two hundred and sixty-two of the most terrible revolver fighters the American war or any other war ever produced; and he deliberately tied his hands by the very act of dismounting, and stood in the shambles until he was shot down. Abject and pitiable cowardice matched itself against recklessness and desperation, and the end could be only just what the end was. The Guerrillas did unto the militia just what the militia would have done unto them if fate had reversed the decision and given to Johnson what it permitted to Todd.