When Major-General Rosecrans, on January 30th, 1864, assumed command of the Department of Missouri, he delivered to his predecessor, General Schofield, a complimentary farewell address. He warmly commended him for what he had done in our State, and congratulated him that he was about to take part in great campaigns. It was no flattery, but a candid, sincere utterance of which the recipient was altogether worthy. It was an honor both to him who uttered it and to him on whom it was bestowed.
General Rosecrans himself came to us from active campaigning, where he had rendered the most patriotic and arduous service, but had failed in attaining the highest success. At the eleventh hour he had lost the great and hotly contested battle of Chickamauga by giving a blundering order to one of his subordinate generals.[94] His intimate friends thought that ever after he carried in his face the sadness of that defeat. But his spirit was not soured. He was still ready to serve his country in any way that he could, and in any position to which he might be called. So he could heartily congratulate one, then subordinate in rank, upon entering the service that he had been compelled to abandon, while he himself cheerfully took up the military administration of the most distracted region in the Union.
We have already seen him filling the office of president of the Mississippi Valley Sanitary Fair, and doing all that he could to promote its interests by being present evenings with his staff. To those who did not, or could not, look below the surface, the battle in Missouri for the Union seemed to have been fought out. So, I am sure, most of the loyal in St. Louis at that time regarded it. But the general, and a few of the inner circle, already had an inkling of a deep-laid plot to promote the rebellion of the Southern States and if possible to make it successful. They were persuaded that the surface of things was deceptive; that beneath the dead ashes there were smouldering fires that might suddenly burst out into flame; that there never had been a more urgent demand for diligence than at that hour of superficial quiet.
Having found a clue to the furtive foe, the general, through wisely chosen and trusted lieutenants, followed it up. He discreetly kept his own counsels. He was sleeplessly persistent. His adroit agents or spies wormed themselves into the confidence of the clandestine enemies of the Republic, joined their secret organization and learned all their plots; at the same time they kept constantly in touch with their chief, by whom they were directed. They reported to him each startling fact that they unearthed. One discovery quickly led to another. To be sure the existence of a hostile secret organization had been hazily known for many months, but through the efforts of General Rosecrans its extensive ramifications were traced out, and its treasonable designs were laid bare. It proved to be the most formidable secret political organization that probably ever existed in America; it was conceived in treason; its avowed object was the dismemberment of the Union, the overthrow of the government of the United States. Its members were bound by oath to effect this nefarious purpose. They were to hesitate at no crime in order to reach their end. Rather than fail in it, they swore that they would commit perjury, arson, pillage, assassination. The penalty for disobedience of any command, even one that demanded the committing of these diabolical crimes, was death.
The organization, while one brotherhood, bore in different localities different names: the most notorious of which were: “The Knights of the Golden Circle,” “The Order of American Knights,” “The Order of the Star,” and “The Sons of Liberty.”[95]
Its ramifications were found both north and south of Mason and Dixon’s line. It claimed in Missouri twenty-five thousand members; in Illinois one hundred and forty thousand; in Indiana one hundred thousand; in Ohio eighty thousand; in Kentucky seventy thousand; and some in New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland. Vallandigham of Ohio was supreme commander of the northern wing of this secret organization, while General Sterling Price was the supreme commander of the southern wing. The northern wing for many months had done what it could to supply the rebels with provisions and war material; it had also done for them the work of spying, keeping them informed as to what was transpiring in the North. It was still committing these treasonable acts, and even a few officers in our army were suspected of lending a hand to help on this villainous work. And, in that summer of 1864, the northern part of this oath-bound society had planned to put forth a united and desperate effort to aid the rebels in invading and revolutionizing the northern States of the Middle West[96].
Now all this our general had quietly ferreted out. The knowledge acquired by his skilful manipulation was of vast importance not only to our city and State, but also to the general government. All the evidence pertaining to this secret organization was carefully written out and transmitted to President Lincoln. It covered one thousand pages of foolscap.
But at first only a very few of the loyal of St. Louis, and, in fact, of the nation, had any definite knowledge of the existence of this secret, insidious foe. The great mass of our fellow-citizens stood in blissful ignorance over a destructive mine, that might at any moment be exploded. But thanks to our general, the President and his counsellors knew it more perfectly than heretofore. He made known what he had recently discovered to a few in our city in whom he reposed special confidence. He also revealed it to his most trusted lieutenants. And what was all-important to us, he knew the facts of the whole case probably more thoroughly than any loyal man in the nation. And this knowledge shaped every order that he issued and inspired his most weighty acts.
It was still necessary to garrison all parts of the State. Those in command of the garrisons were instructed to keep the sharpest possible watch of all whose loyalty was suspected; to break up all rendezvous of such men wherever found; to permit no illicit gatherings of secessionists, and to deprive of arms all who expressed sympathy with the rebellion. Thus the general laid a strong, repressive hand upon “The Knights of the Golden Circle” in our State. And before our story ends we shall see how wise such action was.
Evidently with his eye on this secret fraternity of the disloyal, that a little later he so fully unearthed, on March 1st, he forbade any one to take negroes from the State, but demanded that by every legitimate method they should be encouraged to enlist as soldiers. He declared that in all such enlistments the property rights of the master would be guarded; the government would compensate him for his chattels, but the slaves by their enlistment would become freemen. The general felt that he should soon need, to circumvent any threatened disloyal uprising, as many soldiers as he could secure, whether they were white or black.
To diminish as far as possible the incitement of the secretly disloyal to open rebellion, on the 26th of March, he prohibited the circulation, in the Department of Missouri, of the Metropolitan Record. This was a bitter rebel sheet published in New York. It professed to be a Catholic family newspaper. On that account it was specially offensive to the general, who was a devout Catholic. He felt that by it not only was his country betrayed, but also his church was greatly misrepresented and traduced. He declared it to be “without ecclesiastical sanction,” and so “traitorous” that it could not be tolerated even by the most liberal interpretation of the freedom of the press.[97] Nor did he relish the fact that such a journal found so many eager readers in St. Louis and in the State at large. It was an alarming symptom of what was going on hidden from the public view.
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.
In St. Louis we were as yet safe. But we breakfasted and supped on horrors. Our hearts bled for our suffering brethren in the State. We did what we could to help them; but we were able to effect very little. The persistent rumors that a large army of invaders would soon sweep into our State from the South made us apprehensive that there might at no distant day be fighting at our own gates.
At last these rumors of invasion were followed by the ingress of a veteran rebel force under the command of General Price. They came up from Arkansas. On the 24th of September, General Shelby, one of Price’s division commanders, with five thousand men and several pieces of artillery, was reported as just south of Pilot Knob, about eighty-five miles from St. Louis. It was the vanguard of an army of at least fifteen thousand men.
Excitement ran high among us. We had no force at all adequate to our protection. As we have already seen, most of the soldiers in and around St. Louis had been sent to the front. Of this state of things, the rebel general had undoubtedly been informed. He expected to capture our city, and, comparatively defenceless as we were, we thought that his expectation would probably be realized; at all events, we could not see why it should not be. Still we all deeply felt that we must do our utmost to save that for which we had so successfully contended for more than three years.
Days before, when rumors of this invasion filled the air, and evidences multiplied that rumor would soon be transmuted into reality, at the earnest solicitation of our general, the military authorities at Washington had halted at Cairo, General A. J. Smith, with about four thousand five hundred infantry, when on his way to join General Sherman, and ordered him to turn back and assist Rosecrans in defending Missouri against the hostile forces of Price. To our great relief he came up to St. Louis, knowing full well that our city was the coveted prize and the objective point of the invading army. He wisely determined to stand, with his brave soldiers, between our comparatively defenceless city and the invaders when they should appear on our soil.
But he was not our only defence. When the invading rebels were reported as being in the southern part of the State all the Home Guards of St. Louis were called out. Their whole strength was from four to five thousand men, none of whom had ever been under fire. Under the best officers that could be secured they were daily drilled. Moreover, some one hundred days’ volunteers, then in Illinois, who had more than served out their time, with great alacrity and generosity came to our support, but refused under the circumstances to go beyond the city. They were willing to fight there on the defensive, but were unwilling to join in an offensive campaign, which might require long and perhaps forced marches. We could not blame them, and were glad that they stood ready with us to defend our city if it should be attacked.
Now, with such force as was at hand the defensive campaign began. General Ewing was sent with about fifteen hundred men, half of whom were raw recruits, to Pilot Knob. He was ordered to hold that position until he found out as nearly as possible the number of the invading army. He was an able, gallant soldier, and we knew that he would do his utmost to carry out the command of his chief.
At the same time, General Smith marched with his division of infantry in the direction of Pilot Knob. His movement was noted by Price, who, wishing to prevent him from uniting his force with that of General Ewing, sent General Shelby to oppose him and if possible check his advance. General Smith, having discovered that the enemy was moving west and north, was ordered to keep between the rebel force and St. Louis; so he retired behind the Meramec, a little river a few miles south of our city.
In the meantime, full of anxiety, we at St. Louis waited for tidings from General Ewing. Hours seemed to be days, and days weeks. At last the thrilling news came. Ewing, after using part of his troops to guard a portion of the Iron Mountain Railroad, with a thousand men took his stand at Fort Davidson, a small field work in a valley surrounded by hills. It commanded the opening between the mountains through which Price had determined to pass. Throughout the whole of September 27th, he was terrifically assaulted by the invaders. While half of his thousand troops were undisciplined volunteers, he pluckily held his ground, repulsing the attacking army and killing and wounding fifteen hundred of them; while his own loss in killed, wounded and missing was only two hundred and fifty. A part of this number in the desperate fighting of the day had been taken prisoners and soon after were paroled. The general had triumphantly accomplished his object. He had developed the fact that the whole of Price’s army was in the State, and for a whole day he had confronted and fought all of it except Shelby’s division.
The enemy, towards evening, had gained the slopes of the adjacent mountains and were planting batteries there which would command the fort that Ewing had so tenaciously and gallantly held. Fully eight thousand five hundred men with ten pieces of artillery were prepared to attack him in the morning. His position was no longer tenable. He therefore spiked his big guns, blew up his magazine, destroyed as far as he was able the supplies that he could not carry away, and with his field battery and what remained of his command retreated under the cover of darkness toward the Meramec valley. When his absence was discovered, the enemy pursued and greatly harassed him and his small intrepid army. The only wonder is that his whole command was not captured or destroyed; but he got upon a ridge of land between two creeks, and so was able, as he marched rapidly on, to repulse again and again the pursuing forces. He reached at last Harrison Station, a little more than a day’s march from our city. Here he hastily occupied and extended some earthworks that had been thrown up by a regiment of militia, and with his raw troops, now become a Spartan band, withstood the assaulting army for thirty-six hours, when he was re-enforced by a detachment of cavalry. The enemy now withdrew. Ewing and his brave men escaped to Rolla.
We were soon in possession of all the facts. A great burden was lifted from our hearts. The well-earned fame of Ewing and his dauntless little army floated on the lips of the multitude. But why Price did not take St. Louis was to us all an inscrutable mystery. He could have done so. He came for that very purpose, and yet passed by us to the west and north. He was a cautious general; as we have before observed, he never wished to attack unless he felt quite sure of victory. And like most overcautious commanders, he overestimated the strength of his enemy. We know now, what we did not then, that he sent a spy to our city, one in whose judgment he placed the utmost confidence, who reported to him that we had for our defence two soldiers to his one. How that spy could have been so deceived is still an unsolved riddle. Price had almost two soldiers to our one. His soldiers were veterans; ours to a great extent were raw and undisciplined. With a little resolute, hard fighting he could have seized the prize which he and his troops so intensely coveted. But the God of nations and battles, who holds in his hand the hearts of kings and generals, had graciously decreed otherwise.
It would be aside from my object to present in detail the events which belong to this invasion of our State. When we saw that the rebel general had evidently abandoned the purpose of attacking St. Louis, its loyal inhabitants felt the intensest satisfaction. We now saw with increasing delight that the distance between the invaders and our city was daily growing greater; that General Price, overestimating the number of Union troops at Jefferson City, just as he had at St. Louis, passed on to the west and north, leaving the State capital unharmed. Soon the scattered detachments of Federal troops began to concentrate in his rear, and he hastened his march. Near the western border of the State, Union troops from Kansas joined in the pursuit. Now in every battle the rebel forces met with defeat, and were soon driven from southwest Missouri into Arkansas, never more to return. This was the last invasion of our State.
But in this invasion the rebel general was in some ways largely successful. He killed and wounded very many of our troops. During this campaign, though it lasted only a few days, there were more than forty skirmishes and about fifteen battles, some of them of considerable dimensions. Many places, either utterly without defence, or inadequately defended, were temporarily occupied, and plundered. Houses of Union men were burned. Railroad tracks were torn up, and the rails twisted and destroyed. Bridges, depots and warehouses were reduced to ashes. Horses, mules and wagons in large numbers were carried away. Vast quantities of commissary stores were ruthlessly gathered for the Confederate army. Price, in his report of this campaign, claims that he destroyed full ten million dollars worth of property. Perhaps that is an exaggeration; but he marched by a circuitous route from one end of our State to the other, devastating a strip of territory about twenty miles wide.
He, to be sure, lost heavily. Ten pieces of his artillery, two stand of colors, large numbers of wagons, mules and small arms, and nearly two thousand prisoners were captured by the Federals. Many of his men were slain in battle. He had also been compelled in his flight to burn very many of the wagons that he had confiscated, and to destroy much of his ill-gotten plunder.
Moreover, he had utterly failed, politically. He anticipated the uprising of the “Order of American Knights,” fully twenty-five thousand in number, and that most of them would join his army; he also expected to take St. Louis and swing our State into the Southern Confederacy; march into Illinois, where, re-enforced by the one hundred fifty thousand Knights of that State, and greeted by the Knights from Indiana and Ohio, with Vallandigham at their head, he hoped to establish a Northwestern Confederacy and put a stop to the war, which was being waged for the maintenance of the Union. But divine Providence had decreed that this audacious scheme of rebels and copperheads should never be realized. The effort to make the airy fabric of that dream a reality had been attended with devastation, misery and blood, and had ended in inglorious defeat.
But one sad outcome of the devastating march of Price’s army was patent to every eye. Before it Union men with their families fled for their lives. Many of them hastily left their homes at night, lighted on their way by their flaming houses. Avoiding their pillaging foes, they made their way to St. Louis. They came in great numbers, and like the refugees that preceded them, were kindly received and abundantly cared for.[112]