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Charles W. Quantrell

Chapter 39: Little Blue
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About This Book

A firsthand account by a veteran follower describes guerrilla warfare along the Missouri–Kansas border during the Civil War, chronicling raids, ambushes, and pitched engagements led by Charles Quantrell. It traces his rise from early life through violent campaigns, including major assaults, reprisals such as the Lawrence raid, contentious encounters with militia and Jayhawkers, and retaliatory measures like forced depopulation. The narrative records recruits who would later gain notoriety, battlefield tactics, narrow escapes, captures, surrender, and the leader's death, and concludes with the postwar trajectories of companions, blending battle reports, personal reminiscence, and local perspective on a turbulent border conflict.

Little Blue

Captain Dick Yager, commanding ten men, the usual number the Guerrillas then operated with, engaged twenty Federals under Lieutenant Blackstone of the Missouri Militia regiments, and slew fourteen.

Yager had ambushed a little above a ford over the Little Blue and hid behind some rocks about fifteen feet above the crossing place, and Blackstone, unconscious of danger, rode with his troops leisurely into the water and halted midway in the stream that his horses might drink. He had a tin cup tied to his saddle and a bottle of whiskey in one of his pockets. After having drunk and while bending over from his stirrups to dip the cup into the water, a volley hit him and knocked him off his horse dead, thirteen others falling close to and about him at the same time.

Jarrette and Poole, each commanding ten men, made a dash into Lafayette County and struck some blows to the right and left, which resounded throughout the West.

Poole pushed into the German settlement and comparatively surprised them.

Where Concordia now is, there was then a store and a fort, strong and well built. This day, however, Poole came upon them unawares and found many who properly belonged to the militia feeding stock and in an exposed position. Fifteen of these he killed and ten he wounded severely but not so severely as to prevent them from making their way back to the fort.