My delight was when I saw the land on which the battles were fought – now Excelsior Springs, Missouri's golf course – a land so green, lush and rolling with a beautiful pond, trees and a gentle breeze caressing the course, that one could not even fathom the idea of a bloody battle taking place there, much less two of them.
But take place they did.
They weren't large battles like the Virginia battle or even the Lexington battle in Sept. 1861, in fact, these two were more like skirmishes, yet they were important to the Civil War here in Missouri and they were important to the people who fought and died or survived them.
They are still important to this day, for there are descendants who still live among the same fertile, rolling hills of Clay County.
There is a monument that sits on the southeastern corner of the golf course – the only hint that men fought each other to the death on this beautiful acreage 149 years ago.
 |
| The monument to the two Battles of Fredericksburg (Missouri) that sits on the southeastern corner of the Excelsior Springs Golf Course, Excelsior Springs, MO. (Photo by Liz Johnson) |
If you enter the golf course's clubhouse, however, one remnant of history remains. Inside sits the early 1800s O'Dell log cabin that has stood in the same spot all these years. I was once told by a 104-year-old O'Dell descendant that her great-grandmother O'Dell went into labor in that cabin as this first skirmish broke forth. Her husband got her up into the loft as she worked through birthing her child, amidst gunfire, horses screaming, shouts of victory and the death and dying assaulting the woman's ears as she carried her newborn into the world.
The golf course built its clubhouse around the cabin, forever preserving the structure, which can be toured by anyone visiting the golf course.
Fredericksburg, Mo., was a tiny little burg founded by William Estes in 1835. Estes owned and operated a general goods store. Along with his store were several homes, a blacksmith, a stagecoach inn, a doctor's office and a saloon.
The town was more of a trading post until after the war and the road, known as the Mormon Road, was heavily traveled by Mormons as they made their trek westward after the terrible Mormon wars of the 1840s.
The first Battle of Fredericksburg took place on Sunday, July 17, 1864, between about 300 guerrillas and 47 Union men from the 2nd Colorado Calvary, which included detachments from companies C and M, led by Captain Thomas Moses, Jr. This Union group was part of a force of 140 Federals that had split into three groups to search for and flush out the bushwhackers.
The men from the 2nd Colorado were headed toward the city of Richmond, east of Fredericksburg, early on the afternoon of July 17. Just as they reached Fredericksburg, they saw a group of soldiers approaching them from the opposite direction, dressed in Union blue.
Momentarily fooled by the uniforms, Captain Moses rode to the front and made the signal to the soldiers in blue that was used by the troops, which was answered correctly. Moses then sent Capt. Lyman Rouell to move forward to the men, who failed to approach the 2nd Colorado group. Before Rouell could get very far, a volley of gunfire erupted from the men facing him.
The 2nd Colorado had just stumbled upon one of the largest Rebel forces in Missouri – and the most bloodthirsty.
It is believed that by this time, Capt. William T. "Bloody Bill" Anderson was leading a group of Quantrill's men on his own, of which Frank and Jesse James were members. Quantrill himself had split off from his own group toward the end of 1863/early 1864 after his band of approximately 400 men wintered in Texas. According to biographies about Quantrill, he believed his men had become too bloodthirsty and lost of sight of what their goals were as bushwhackers. He split off with men of his own and headed to Kentucky for the remainder of the war.
Anderson had his own group and they were most likely the most bloodthirsty of all of Quantrill's original raiders. Woe be it to anyone wearing a blue Federal uniform that came across their path as the 2nd Colorado men were to quickly learn.
Fletch Taylor, another feared bushwhacker, was one of the leaders of the guerrilla group that day and as his men opened fire on the 2nd Colorado and soldiers fell from their horses, the horses became frightened and unmanageable, causing the remaining Union soldiers to dismount and begin hand-to-hand combat.
After just 20 minutes of fighting, Captain Moses realized he was far outnumbered by the guerrillas and ordered his men to retreat.
Six men of the 2nd Colorado were killed that day and, regrettably, Moses had to leave them behind. He had not escaped injury either. A minie ball had grazed his forehead, and he had been hit by two other balls, which severed his saber belt and had cut through his coat. Moses' horse had also suffered a number of hits, but managed to lead Moses and the remainder of his men out of the melee. Just about every surviving Union soldier had sustained some sort of injury.
Captain Moses returned the next day for his dead soldiers with a reinforcement of 200 men, only to find his men lying naked on the ground, stripped of their clothing, arms and money. There were no reports of the six men being mutilated as was Captain Anderson's signature, so it has been speculated that Anderson was not the leader at this first battle, but two of his men, the aforementioned Fletch Taylor, along with Captain John Thrailkill.
The guerrillas were in the habit of stripping their victims of clothing and firearms, as well as other personal possessions. That's how they acquired the blue uniforms they wore in their surprise ambushes of Union soldiers.
J.C. Isley, the owner of the Fredericksburg general store was hired to gather the six Colorado men and take them to Pisgah Baptist Church (yes, the very same church that Jesse and Frank's father helped found and where he preached). The men were buried in an unmarked mass grave in the churchyard cemetery.
Sixteen Rebels were killed in the skirmish and allegedly buried in the Seybold family cemetery located behind the Seybold Tavern – the owner of the tavern at the time being a southern sympathizer. Research shows others saying Louis Seybold, the original owner of the tavern, was the man who offered his land for burial of the bushwhackers, however, land records of the time show that a Ralph Faucett owned part of the tavern's land at that time, and a Thomas F. Williams owned another section of the property.
According to oral legend, the Seybold Tavern was established in 1821 by Louis Seybold and his wife, however, land records show the first warranty deed passing out of the hands of the United States of America into that of Andrew McCrosky in March 1821 – not Louis Seybold. But that mystery is for another day.
The Seybold Cemetery was plowed over by one of the owners of the property in the mid 1900s, an illegal act that nothing was done about. The Seybold Tavern house itself burned to the ground in 1952 and at some point (March 1870), the property was owned, after the Civil War, by Bob and Charlie Ford's father's brother (John W. Ford).
Interesting how the lives of the Fords and James' sometimes crossed in strange ways.
Fletch Taylor, guerrilla co-leader of the first Battle of Fredericksburg, survived that battle with nary a scratch, however, on Aug. 8, 1864, he was seriously wounded in another skirmish about four miles outside of Independence. His right arm, shattered by buckshot, had to be amputated.
An interesting side note to the Fletch Taylor story: After the war, he became a wealthy man from his lead mines in Jasper County, thus becoming an influential citizen of Joplin, Mo. He was elected as a state representative and served on the Missouri General Assembly. Taylor moved to California in 1892 and died in San Francisco on April 24, 1912.
So you see, some of those bloodthirsty guerrillas moved on after the war, became wealthy, leading citizens of the new industrial United States.
Sadly, the names of the six members of the 2nd Colorado who lost their lives were unknown for 140 years until Excelsior Springs High School teacher Brian Smarker began investigating the six men – successfully revealing their names in May of 2004.
It is not known why Capt. Moses did not identify the six men when he returned to the battlefield to bury them, but it was a busy war and the bodies had lay in an open field for close to 24 hours before he returned for them. Thus, they had to be buried quickly.
Five of the men were privates of the 2nd Colorado Calvary, Company B: Charles H. Godfrey, 17; David Good, 29; John Picard, 29; William W. Robson, 24; and Simon Simpkins, 20. The sixth was Sgt. Truman C. Greenslit of Company C, age 31.
 |
| This headstone was placed at the site of the mass burial of the six, previously unknown men of the 2nd Colorado Calvary who were killed in action during a skirmish with guerrillas July 17, 1864. The identification of the six men was due to the extensive efforts by Brian Smarker of Excelsior Springs and Past Camp Commander, Westport Camp #64. (Photo by Liz Johnson) |
One-hundred forty years after their deaths, the men were finally memorialized in a ceremony held Sunday, July 17, 2005 with a granite memorial presented by the Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War Westport Camp #64, thanks to the extensive, exhaustive research of Brian Smarker.
Smarker was able to track down descendants of four of the six soldiers, and three were able to be present at the memorial dedication of their long lost ancestor. The fourth was Sgt. Greenslit, whose descendants were unable to attend, but in a stroke of excellent genealogical research, Smarker learned that he and his mother shared ancestry with Greenslit, thus were able to represent him at the ceremony.
Virginia's own Fredericksburg battles were bloody and offered up astounding casualties – 18,000 in the first, fought from Dec. 11-15, 1862 and the second, fought on May 3, 1863, yielded 2,000 casualties. Fredericksburg, Virginia's soil was thick with blood after those two battles, making the Missouri Fredericksburg battles seem inconsequential.
Whether casualty amounts were staggering or small, each loss represented a man who was a son, husband, father, brother or cousin. Each had his beliefs about the war and were fighting for those beliefs. Each endured extreme cold and heat, hunger and sickness, loneliness and fear.
So it should be, to remembering this, as one walks the battlefields today, most turned into parks, such as Fredericksburg, Virginia or Lexington, Missouri – or plays a round of golf on the lush grass of Excelsior Springs Golf Course – that men shed their blood on that very ground for a cause they believed in.
Lest we forget.
No comments:
Post a Comment