Mrs. Adams meant what she said. Upon seeing the soldiers leave with Lou in their custody, she immediately sent word to her brother, Louis Vandiver, who was serving with Quantrill. Vandiver was just across the river and he, in turn, informed Moses McCoy of his wife's arrest while he was still in Jackson County and en route to return to General Jo Shelby's command.
Capt. McCoy paid a visit to Quantrill and asked for his help. Vandiver was one of the first to volunteer his services, along with a squad of six- to eight hand-picked men including Lt. Fernando Scott, under whom Frank James was serving. Additional men included Laugh (Laftish) Easton of Clay County, Joe Hart of Andrew County, and Charles "Fletch Taylor." There is also a possibility that William Gregg, John Jackson, James Little, Henry Coward and James Bernard also joined the squad.
The mission was to go to Missouri City and exact revenge on the men responsible for arresting Lou McCoy. It was quite possibly Frank James' first guerrilla action.
On May 19, 1863, the squad crossed back over the river and went to the home of one of McCoy's neighbors, a known southern sympathizer.
Lou McCoy reported in her 1912 article in Confederate Veteran Magazine that the neighbor threatened to report the men. "Boys, I shall have to report on you. You know we are ordered to report at once if we see any bushwhackers, as they call you; and if we do not, we will be arrested, and that means prison, if not death."
However, reporting them is just what the bushwhackers wanted the man to do.
"You go straight into Missouri City and tell Sessions that Joe Hart is here with a handful of men and he can come right out and get them if he will be quick," said Hart.
Union officer Captain Joseph Schmitz of the 25th Missouri infantry, had sent 16 men from their post at the Liberty Arsenal to Missouri City sometime prior to May 19 with the idea to set up a three-part pincer maneuver to smash the guerrillas whom they believed were east of Missouri City along the Fishing River.
The mouth of the Fishing River is about eight miles east of Missouri City and 11 miles east of the Liberty Arsenal, traveling north and northwest over Missouri City. Schmitz's plan was to move forth at 9 p.m., Tuesday, May 19, with the infantry to go to the lower bridge on the Fishing River and lie in wait for the guerrillas while they would be pushed into the trap by troops coming from Camden, east of Missouri City.
However, the bushwhackers were one step ahead of Schmitz and his troops. After leaving the man's home earlier, they stationed themselves on both sides of the road in a wooded area they knew the Union soldiers would have to pass.
Meanwhile, their local man reported the guerrillas with his own contrived story. He carried a load of firewood as a decoy and informed the soldiers that the guerrillas were quite drunk and would be easy pickings.
While all this was taking place, Capt. Schmitz, unaware that the guerrillas were already in place, sent another group of men, approximately 23, under the leadership of Lieutenant Fleming at round 6 p.m. that same day to meet Lieutenant Shinn's men at the mouth of the Fishing River. The plan was for them to sweep northward at 9 p.m. to force any stray guerrillas into the infantrymen's position.
Shinn's men were part of the Provisional Enrolled Missouri Militia (PEMM), a select group of Enrolled Missouri Militia who were considered more loyal and effective than the other soldiers. They were the Union's version of today's special forces.
As soon as the guerrilla's Missouri City man reported the drunken bushwhackers, Captain Darius Sessions, not only mayor of Missouri City, but also the local militia captain of Company K, 48th Enrolled Missouri Militia, was joined by Lieutenant Grafenstein, the same feisty soldier who had escorted Lou McCoy from her home a few days earlier. They took three other 25th Missouri infantrymen with them on horseback and set out after the bushwhackers.
The five soldiers galloped out of town and straight into the trap set by Quantrill's men.
"They had not long to wait (the guerrillas), for Missouri City was only about two miles away; and soon they came in at a gallop, Sessions in the lead, Lieutenant Gravenstein next, with Rapp (one of the additional three men) and others following. They were fired into from both sides of the road," reported Lou McCoy in her 1912 article.
"Sessions fell, mortally wounded. Grafenstein was hit, but went on for a hundred yards or more before he fell from his horse. A woman passing nearby begged for his life, but the guerrillas shot him repeatedly.
"Rapp was thought to have been killed outright, but must have feigned death. The others (2 men) ran away unhurt," said Lou.
Louis Vandiver went to Sessions as he lay in the road dying. Sessions told Vandiver that he was dying and to please not shoot him anymore. But Vandiver turned to Moses McCoy, who had accompanied the guerrillas on this quest to avenge his wife's honor, and told him to finish the job.
"He is at war with you and yours – you can finish him," said Vandiver.
A person passing by with a wagon took the injured Rapp, believed to be dead by Quantrill's men, and carried him back to the Hardwick Hotel in Missouri City, where the proprietor's wife looked after him. However, upon entering the town after the ambush, the guerrillas learned of Rapp's survival and went to the hotel looking for him.
Guerrilla Fletch Taylor, who figured prominently in riding with the James brothers during the remainder of the war, and who after the war, became a Missouri state representative, went into the hotel to finish Rapp off.
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| Fletch Taylor, left, Frank (seated) and Jesse James, around the end of the Civil War. Taylor would lose a hand in one of the battles of Fredericksburg (Missouri), but would go on to become a Missouri State Representative after the war. He lived to the ripe old age of 70. |
Taylor pushed aside Mrs. Hardwick, wife of the hotel proprietor who was tending to Rapp, and raised his gun to shoot. Mrs. Hardwick flung her arm up to knock the gun aside and the minie ball missed Rapp, who immediately rolled off the couch he was on and under it. (account of Lou McCoy, 1912)
According to Captain Schmitz's report of the day's events, Rapp was shot three more times, but survived anyway.
As mentioned in the first of this series, it was the guerrilla's policy to kill the enemy as no quarter was given to them. An article that ran in the Liberty Tribune's May 22, 1863 edition stated, "The rascals when firing on the wounded man in town (Benjamin Rapp), declared that when any of their men were captured, they were killed, and that they intended to do the same thing – that they neither asked for nor gave quarter."
After shooting up Rapp at the hotel, the bushwhackers headed into one of the general store's in Missouri City to wreak havoc on it. The store was owned by Brian and Sam Nowlin, the same Brian Nowlin who served as an elder at Pisgah Baptist Church, at the time when Frank James' father had founded and served as the first pastor of the church in 1850.
It is most likely that Brian Nowlin knew Frank James and Frank certainly knew Brian's son, Sam, as the two had served in the Missouri State Guard together in 1861 in General Stein's Division. Indeed, both men fought in the Battle of Lexington in Sept. of 1861.
Because the two Nowlin men had been southern sympathizers and Missouri City was under Union occupation, they'd paid $5,000 bond to the Federals because of Sam's service in the state guard.
The bond would have been forfeited had the Nowlin men aided the guerrillas, so it is believed that the guerrillas faked a robbery on the Nowlin general store to make it look like they had plundered it.
The guerrillas left Nowlins' store and went to the store of James Reed where they truly did rob the man of $180 in gold, stole goods and destroyed all of Reed's valuable papers.
The Liberty Tribune reported shortly after the May 19 events in Missouri City that the guerrillas then went to Plattsburg in Clinton County, north of Liberty, where they took $11,000 in cash and destroyed 100 military muskets. Completing that task, they re-crossed the Missouri River on May 25 and rejoined Quantrill in Jackson County.
The men from the 25th Missouri Infantry who had been lying in wait for the guerrillas on May 19 were most likely in position on the Fishing River while the guerrillas, miles away, ambushed Sessions, Grafenstein, Rapp and the other two men closer to Missouri City.
The leader of the guerrilla ambush, Lt. Fernando Scott, a saddle maker from Liberty, would be dead within the month.
Survivor reports from the Union men stated that Scott was ferocious in the assault on Sessions, Grafenstein and Rapp. James writer and founder of the Kansas City Times, John Newman Edwards, described Scott in his book, "Noted Guerrillas, " that Scott was of a highly nervous disposition, sensitive and slept very little. Edwards said Scott never showed emotion or physical fear and that while under fire, Scott was cool as a cucumber. However, he also said that Scott was greatly admired by his men, gentle, rarely spoke harshly, was tender-hearted and scarcely killed anyone unless in open battle.
However, just less than a month after the ambush on Missouri City, Scott was sitting on his horse, one mile away from the fighting at Westport (now in Kansas City limits) on June 17, 1863, when a bullet from an Enfield rifle shot him through the heart, killing him instantly.
According to the Union report of the Missouri City ambush, the guerrillas attacked Sessions' group around 7:30 p.m. on the night of May 19 – a mere 90 minutes before the scheduled 9 p.m. ambush on the guerrillas by the Federals.
The Union report of the ambush was grisly. It states that Sessions and Rapp fell first from the ambush, followed by Grafenstein, then the men were rushed by the bushwhackers. Rapp was robbed and left for dead. Sessions, after pleading with Vandiver to stop shooting, was shot two- or three-times through the head. Grafenstein surrendered after his first shot, but was then shot cooly through the head two more times. Both men were stripped and robbed.
The arrest and jailing of 20-year-old Lou McCoy had been avenged.
Despite the Union occupation of Missouri City, most of the residents in and around the town were southern sympathizers, whether they had signed a loyalty oath or not, thus were not forthcoming with providing information to Union officers investigating the events of May 19.
Within a few days of the bloody ambush on Missouri City, Frank James' family would feel the repercussions. Fifteen year old Jesse would be beaten, his stepfather hung as a form of torture. The worse was yet to come.
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