By the time of Lou's arrest, women had become the target of policies implemented to halt the insurrection during the U.S. Army occupation of Missouri. Many would die in the defense of the women and often, the Partisan Rangers, also commonly known as Quantrill's Raiders, bushwhackers or guerrillas, were the ones who delivered the revenge for these acts against women.
Colonel Benjamin F. Parker, who was commissioned to enlist men into the Confederate Partisan Rangers and who assisted Quantrill in the March 14, 1862 raid on Liberty, Mo., wrote a letter to U.S. General James G. Blunt on May 3, 1863, in which he protested Blunt's killing of prisoners and the targeting of women.
"... Our soldiers and citizens have been arrested an executed without trial, basing and resting those hellish and diabolical acts upon the testimonial of one or two unscrupulous dogs – villains that are sworn to sell and barter away the lives and liberty of men.
Your officers have arrested and banished our ladies for vindicating the sacredness of their sex against the slanders and insults of the base and unmitigated scoundrels calling themselves U.S. soldiers ...
You threaten us with extinction ... you have your choice of rope."
Stories abound throughout the Little Dixie area of Missouri relating the incredible heroic acts of women during the war. Many times they were caught and arrested, and many times the women suffered far worse consequences than Lou McCoy.
As indicated throughout this series, acts against women were not the only atrocities. Families were targeted as well and the James family was no exception.
Frank James was recognized while he was in Missouri City and it was no secret where the family farm was located in Kearney.
Union soldiers, hell bent on getting revenge for the brutal slayings of Gravenstein and Sessions, and the shooting attack on Rapp at the Hardwicke Hotel, headed for the James farm around the date of May 25, 1863 – about six days after the ambush in Missouri City.
The attack at the James farm was savage and evident of the hideous tactics used by Union soldiers all over Missouri.
The events of May 25, 1863 have, over the years, become somewhat twisted as the James boys' mother, Zerelda, retold them over and over again. However, it is very likely, due to the cruelty the Union soldiers employed, that the attack on the farm did occur fairly similar to the report of John T. Samuel years later. (John T. was the younger, half-brother of Jesse and Frank).
Author's note: After several years of researching and studying Jesse James, including the very few photos that actually exist of him, the first-hand accounts of his personality and life before, during and after the war, I found it easy to imagine a young, hot-headed, 15-year-old boy out in the field plowing and having his day turned upside down by a group of enemy soldiers descending on him and beating him to a pulp.
Jesse was his mother's son. Zerelda was outspoken and so was Jesse. He was as passionate about the war as any other teenager in that day would have been. His older brother had already fought with the State Guard and now ran with what probably seemed downright cool to a 15-year-old at the time – the guerrillas under the command of the famous William Quantrill. Jesse was fired up and wanted to join, but was inexperienced and young and Quantrill wouldn't take him – yet. Nevertheless, his smart mouth most likely didn't help him that day and knowing Jesse, I'd guess he would have rather taunted the soldiers and taken the beating, than taking it all lying down like a sissy.
John T. Samuel's account:
"Jesse was out plowing in a field ... when some northern soldiers came to the place to look for Frank. Jesse was only sixteen [he was actually only 15 as his birthday was not until Sept. 5 of that year]. They beat him up. Then they went to the house and asked where Frank was. Mother and Father [stepfather Reuben Samuel] didn't know [or pretended not to], but the soldiers wouldn't believe them. They took Father out and hung him by the neck to tell. Of course he couldn't. So they hung him again. They did that three times. Then they took him back to the house and told my Mother they were going to shoot him. She begged them not to do it, but they took him off in the woods [north of the house], and fired off their guns ... but they didn't shoot him. They just took him over to another town and put him in jail. My Mother didn't know until the next day that he hadn't been shot because the soldiers ordered her to remain in the house if she didn't want to be shot too."
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| Pictured is Jesse James' great-granddaughter, Betty Barr, holding a portion of the coffee bean tree from which Dr. Reuben Samuel had been hung on May 25, 1863 in the yard of the James home. Betty descends from Jesse's daughter, Mary (her grandmother). Photo taken by Liz Johnson at the Friends of the James Farm reunion 2013. |
[J.T. Samuel was born in 1861 and was only two at the time of the attack at the James Farm. He died n 1934.]
Zerelda was about 4 1/2 months pregnant at the time of the incident with daughter Fannie Quantrill Samuel. One can only imagine the emotions Zerelda felt that day as the beating of her boy Jesse, and hanging and possible shooting of her husband swirled around her – all the while carrying an unborn child in her belly.
Note: Fannie Quantrill Samuel would be born on Oct. 18 later that year. She married Joe C. Hall on Dec. 30, 1880, and I serve on the Friends of the James Farm board of directors with Fannie's great-grandson Monty Griffey.
Other accounts of the day, notably by James researcher, Phillip Steele in his book, "Jesse and Frank James: The Family History," stated that Jesse was "severely whipped" by the soldiers, "leaving him lying bloody and battered in the field. Half crawling back to the farmhouse, he found his mother desperately trying to revive her husband, while Jesse's sister Susan, half-sister Sarah, and small half-brother John T. looked on."
According to Ted P. Yeatman's book, "Frank and Jesse James: The Story Behind the Legend," Zerelda herself told anyone who would listen for years that she cut down her husband after the soldiers left.
The fact is, after being hung three times, Dr. Reuben Samuel did break down and tell where the guerrillas were – camped in the woods north of the house.
The Federals found the small group of bushwhackers playing Poker and began shooting. Three of the guerrillas were killed, a few injured and the rest fled into the woods. Yeatman believed that it was this shooting that a young John T. Samuel heard that day and thought it was his father being shot.
As Civil War lore states, the war often pitted father against son, brother against brother and neighbor against neighbor. This incident at the James farm was a perfect example. Two of the Union soldiers in the hanging party were Brantley Bond, a neighbor of the James' who had served with Frank in the State Guard and now was fighting for the Union. Alvis Dagley was another neighbor in on the torture and it was reported that these two were the ones who strung up the older gentleman, their neighbor, for the interrogation.
Partial hangings such as what poor Dr. Samuel endured were quite common during the Civil War as a form of torture. It worked on Samuel and, unfortunately, resulted in a lifetime of mental illness for the man. He was no longer able to practice medicine, but was forever revered by Jesse and Frank as the only father they truly knew. Due to the ravages he suffered during this raid on the farm, Dr. Samuel later had to be placed in a home for the mentally insane in St. Joseph, Mo. It was there that he died on March 1, 1908. He is buried in Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Kearney, where his wife joined him in 1911.
Zerelda, despite being halfway through her pregnancy, her Jesse bloody and battered and several young children clinging to her legs, was brave and, as was typical of the outspoken woman, gave the soldiers quite the tongue lashing as they strung her husband up on the coffee bean tree in the yard.
Her first husband's brother, Rev. William James, arrived at the farm just as the soldiers were hoisting Dr. Samuel up on the rope.
"In the center of a group of militia," he recalled, "was Mrs. Samuel, making such an outcry and giving them such a tongue-lashing as only she could give."
The reverend told her to stop, but she retorted, "How can I be still when they are hanging my husband?"
Dr. Samuel was taken to Liberty and jailed, then transferred to St. Joseph, most likely the same place Lou McCoy was incarcerated. Allegedly, Zerelda Samuel was also imprisoned and both finally took the Oath of Allegiance on June 5, 1863.
However, despite taking the oath, it didn't mean the Samuel's really sided with the Union and they were forced to flee Missouri under General Order #11 and take refuge in Nebraska until the end of the war.
While his mother and stepfather were in jail, Jesse still managed to get a good crop of tobacco out and look after his siblings. No doubt, however, the beating and hanging of his stepfather so angered him that he was itching to join his brother and Quantrill – to exact revenge on the men who had caused his mother so much anguish.
Jesse would join the guerrillas sometime in the spring of 1864, and life would never again be the same for the James brothers – or their family.
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