Guerrilla Warfare in Civil War Missouri Pt 4

As promised in the last entry...
 
An unauthorized campaign / raid

The Enrolled Missouri Militia (EMM) was never designed to be the point of the spear.  It was a part-time force that was mainly used for guarding key points or responding to local emergencies, sort of a Home Guard like what Britain had in WWII.  They were also used for local guides for other military columns.  This was the case with the 68th EMM under Col. James Lindsay out of the 'Boothill' region of Missouri.  Col. Lindsay had recently been used to repair some local roads & bridges as well as providing guides to Brig. Gen. John W. Davidson's "Army of Southeast Missouri."  This duty was not very interesting to Col. James Lindsay, so he decided to be more pro-active with his command.  So on January 27, 1863, he lead his command of 140 men and two home-made cannons manufactured from a local forge, against Bloomfield, MO, which is the county seat of Stoddard County.  This action was not consulted with the regional Union authorities.  In Bloomfield was a rebel force of six companies of Col. William L. Jeffers' newly raised regiment under Captains James A Cooper, Jesse Ellison, and other unnamed officers.  Never expecting a raid by the EMM, the rebel officers broke and fled.  Col. Lindsay's men captured 52 rebels and there were no deaths on either side.  

The mutiny 

Post-Civil War group photograph, circa 1890, of either a Grand Army of the Republic encampment or a reunion of the 6th Missouri Cavalry (US)

Bloomfield, MO, was garrisoned by several different Union formations throughout the war.  In the fall of 1863, the garrison in Bloomfield was the 2nd Battalion of the 6th MO Cavalry (Co's A, D, E, & L) and the Battery E, 2nd MO Artillery.  In command of this garrison was Major Samuel Montgomery of the 6th MO Cav.  

Lt. Herman J Huiskamp, 6th MO Cav, Co. D, early 1863

By late October, there was much ill feeling about Maj. Montgomery by his men.  Several of the officers were starting to believe that Maj. Montgomery was going to betray the garrison to rebels.  There was several legitimate reasons for them to be concern that the Maj. Montgomery's loyalties might be questionable.  1) He was allowing returning Confederate soldiers to return to their homes without swearing an oath or posting a bond to not take up arms against the Union; 2) He was associating with locals of south sympathies, including being romantically involved with one; 3) He spoke harshly when referring to President Lincoln, Missouri Governor Gamble, or other noted northern leaders; 4) He also allowed the sales of contraband items to "notorious secessionists".  

On the night of October 21, 1863, several of the officers finally decided to take action against Maj. Montgomery.  So on the morning of the 22nd, they arrested Maj. Montgomery while having the whole artillery battery drawn up and aimed the post headquarters and placed armed guards with the telegraph operator to prevent a message for help to be sent.  Later that morning the mutiny finally cooled off and everyone stood down.  

Two captains and two lieutenants of the 6th MO Cav. and 2nd Lt. V.B.S. Reber of the 2nd MO Art. were arrested for the mutiny, tried, and then discharged with dishonorable discharges.  However with the invention of radical northern leaders, including President Lincoln, Gov. Gamble reinstated the officers from the 6th MO Cav., but not Lt. Reber as he was determined to be the ringleader of the mutiny.  Maj. Montgomery was not questioned by authorities regarding to the mutineers' charges of dis-loyalties.  Within weeks of the mutiny, Maj. Montgomery did married the local pro-southern lady. But things had become so critical with the morale of the garrison of Bloomfield, that the 6th MO Cav. was relocated to Pilot Knob, MO, and another unit was relocated to Bloomfield.  

But the story does not end there.  In November, the Union command had become aware of a large Confederate force from Arkansas might move on Bloomfield and a warning went out to the new garrison in Bloomfield of 250 men and two small mountain howitzers under Captain Valentine Preuitt of the 1st MO Cav.  On November 29, Confederate Col. Lee Crandall of Arkansas, with a newly formed unit of 350 men, surrounded the town of Bloomfield.  Capt. Preuitt fell back from their fortifications outside of town to quick barricades around the courthouse in the town square.  The Union fired a few rounds from their howitzers at the rebel positions in the surrounding hills and forced them to seek cover.  About an hour later, Col. Crandall sent a request for the Union forces to surrender or be fired upon.  Capt. Preuitt replied that they can open fire whenever they pleased and the Union troops would be ready to receive it, then he open fired with his artillery again.  The rebels decided not to attack but to lay around the town and wait for reinforcements.  On the morning of Nov. 30, the Union received reinforcements from two forces, Major Josephus Robbins and two companies of the 2nd MSM Cav. from Cape Girardeau, MO, and the other force from Pilot Knob of the 2nd Battalion of the 6th MO Cav. under...Major Samuel Montgomery.  As Col. Crandall realized that now the Union had the upper hand, he retreated to the St. Francis River on the Arkansas border.  

The senior ranking Union officer now in Bloomfield was Maj. Montgomery.  Allegedly, he suffered a case timidity fearing that the rebels would be laying a trap for the pursuing Union forces.  So he only allowed Capt. Preuitt's force of 250 men to purse the retreating rebels, while he held the remaining 400 men & two howitzers in Bloomfield.  After several hours of arguing with Maj. Robbins, he finally decided to use the rest of the command to pursue the retreating rebels.  However it was too late and the rebels slipped through the Union lines back into Arkansas. 

The steamer named HOPE

CITY OF ALTON in St. Louis in the 1860's.  The HOPE was about 50' shorter.

The HOPE was a side-wheeler steamer of 238' in length and weighing in at 595-ton.  It was used during the Civil War to run supplies up and down the Mississippi River out of St. Louis, MO.  Sometime during her port in St. Louis, a rebel saboteur placed combustibles in one of her staterooms.  Then on Sept. 12, 1863, there was a fire almost got out of control, but the steamer was saved.  Shortly afterwards, the HOPE sailed down to Cairo, IL, carrying government supplies destined to go further south, probably to Memphis, TN.  While in Cairo, the rebel saboteur Robert Louden, who successfully destroyed the RUTH on Aug 4th, 1863, also placed an incendiary bomb on the HOPE.  About 5 p.m., on Sept. 16th, near Lucas Bend just a few miles south of New Madrid, MO, the incendiary device caught the HOPE on fire.  The crew was able to get the HOPE to shore and get the cargo of government horses and some of the ship's furniture off the ship with no lost of life, but lost the 1500 sacks of oats and 84 bales of hay on board.  By scuttling the HOPE, the water successfully put out the fire in the hull of the ship.  The crew worked until midnight pumped out the water and sail the HOPE back up to St. Louis.  

Lucas Bend should be somewhere between the star fort west of New Madrid and before the next fort on the map downstream.

But the story of the HOPE does not end there.  The HOPE was built on the hull of a previous steamer, the T.L. McGILL.  The T.L. McGILL was partially destroyed by a fire in St. Louis on Oct. 27, 1862.  The owners just replaced the upper structure on the hull.  Due to legal issues, the owners of the HOPE were forced to rename the HOPE back to the T.L. McGILL in 1864.  The T.L. McGILL survived the war only to be lost in 1871 in Memphis...due to a fire.

And as Paul Harvey would say, "and now, you know... the rest of the story"

Sapper

Guerrilla Warfare in Civil War Missouri Part 3

George Caleb Bingham's, 'Order No 11' - 1868

This will not be a very heavy review of the second volume of Guerrilla Warfare in Civil War Missouri, (1863), but I am well over half way through the main body of book (excluding the index, bibliographies, etc.)  In 1863, for the most part, the guerrillas are now fairly veteran (although there are some newly raised and green units too) and there is less and less accounts of Union forces catching them by surprise while at rest. However, the violence to non-combatants by both sides has really ramped up.  Citizens of both sympathies are being robbed, exiled, tortured, and murdered by both sides.  I just finished the chapter that covered the Lawrence, Kansas, raid and the Union’s “Great Guerrilla Hunt” immediately after that.  The author is very good in trying to be neutral on all of this and tries to explain why the events happened the way that they did.  A good example is the much hated General Ewing’s General Order Number 11.  He shows why Ewing ordered it and what would have probably happen had it not been given.   Most likely, there would have been a great massacre of civilians by Kansas troops in the western Missouri counties.  The author also explains why the Order was so brutal and hated at the time and why it still affects the opinion of some people today.  I was quite impressed with his very neutral tone.

Sgt. James Blake - 4th Missouri State Militia Cavalry

In the first half of 1863, certain units of the Union forces where either well respected or well hated by the guerrillas.  There were several examples of mercy given by both sides, but only to specific units or individuals.  Two examples of this are the following:  1) a well-known former guerrilla leader was caught at his home by members of the Union forces.  As they started to burn his home and to shoot him, he gave the Masonic hand signal for distress.  Probably the Union leader or at least several Union men were also Freemasons, so spared his life and his home, but took all of his weapons – this was probably only so as the guerrilla leader allegedly gave up being a guerrilla months earlier.  Had he still been active, I suspect that they would had instead arrested him, but not shoot him on the spot; 2) Several guerrilla bands, including Quantrill’s, had a respect for the 1^st Cavalry, Missouri State Militia (MSM), because they rarely harmed the southern civilians and their prisoners, whereas they had a great hatred for the 5^th (old) Cavalry, MSM, as they were normally very brutal to civilians and prisoners alike.  In one case, a steamer was captured that had unarmed soldiers on it.  The guerrillas sorted out those that they believed were from the 1^st Cav., MSM, and those they believed to have been from the 5^th (old) Cav., MSM.  The guerrillas paroled the soldiers from the First and executed those from the Fifth.  Also in this same event, the guerrillas murdered a number of black men that were escaped slaves trying to get to Kansas.

There are several good small level skirmishes and battles discussed in the book.  While they is are not very detailed, they do give you some information that can be gamed.  Again, one of the main things is the small numbers of killed on either side in the battles.  Generally, unless the guerrillas were conducting a raid, the guerrillas would run away after a few rounds from either an ambush or being discovered.  I think that the guerrillas act more in the terms as a “force in being”.  In other words, they only exist to be a threat and not to be engaged in actual combat.  If they are forced into combat except where they had planned, they must immediately withdraw to still remain a threat.  So in any games using the guerrillas, as soon as they meet any real resistance, they should break contact and escape.

Currently, I am still working away from home, so I am not sure if my Company D figures showed up yet or not.  Hopefully they will be waiting for me when I get back and I can post a review of them, plus a few pictures.  I order at least one pack of each of the items that they have available for the Missouri guerrilla war, but did order a second pack of mounted MSM and couple packs of horse holders for both sides.  I will also have to sort through my Foundry’s Border War figures that I have (I am fairly sure that I have one pack of each) and look at what size of a force that I will have for everything.  For example, the mounted MSM will have 20 men total (one command pack & two mounted packs), which will give me an average patrol at a 1:1 or 1:2 ratio from a lot of the engagements that I was reading, which is what I am basically shooting for in my theoretical future games.   Outside of doing the Border War and guerrilla, I am sort of tempted to looking at doing some USN raids in the spirit of Lt. William Cushing, but I must stay focused.

"Another stripe or a coffin" - Lt. William B. Cushing, USN

As for rules sets, I am sort of looking into two rules right now, Too Fat Lardies’, Terrible Sharp Sword (TSS) and Architects of War’s, American Uncivil War, (AUW).  Both TSS & AUW are card driven and have characters.  I want to have characters, but I really want to get away from cards (it is a pain to have to keep shuffling).  I might also give Smooth & Rifled by Dadi & Piombo a look over too.  But then again, I am working on modifying GDW’s, Soldier’s Companion for Ridgeway to reflect the fewer casualties and more morale failures in skirmishing, but there are no characters in this system.  FlyXwire (Dave S.) also recommended in the comments section on one of the previous entries about modifying Studio Tomahawk’s, Musket & Tomahawks.  I will have to look more into Musket & Tomahawks. He also mentioned H.G. Walls’, Brother Against Brother.  I have not played a game using these rules in over 15+ years and there is a reason why I have never played it again.  I found that system to be too unrealistic.

I will hopefully have another entry up by the end of the week on three accounts that I found interesting so far in this book.  A titillating hint for this next entry is that will cover about an unauthorized campaign, a mutiny of Union officers, and a steamer by the name of Hope.  

Be seeing you,

Sapper

Just a few pictures that I took

So, I am going through my collection of 30,000+ pictures that I have taken over the past 15 years (digital cameras are great!) I am deleting some bad or repeats photos, editing a few others, and renaming all of them so that I got them in the order that I took them.  I am slowing uploading them on to my Google + / Picasa account so anyone can look at them.

I came across these three that I took while on a boat ride to see Fort Sumter just few months over 5 years ago. I think I really liked these pictures and I was lucky to get a rainbow that day.  I hope you enjoy them.

Sapper

Take My Money! 28mm Guerrilla War & 54mm Gangsters

This will be a short entry as I am typing up something for part three on the Guerrilla Warfare in Civil War Missouri.  As you can see over to the right, I finished the first volume and now in to the second volume.  

So why the title for this entry?  Well, I have spent too much money today.  First, I made an order to Company D for some miniatures of the Missouri State Militia & southern guerrillas in 28mm since he has just now released the command and horse holders for both forces.  Yes, I am getting into another gaming period...and in 28mm to boot (that should make Don & Blake happy.)  I exchange some emails with Phil Murphy, the owner of Company D, and he told me that he will be expanding his line for the 28mm Civil War in Missouri line.  Miniatures coming up will include Federal foot troops in the Western Theater look first, and following that, will be Native Americans troops on horse and foot (hopefully not in 'Hollywood' style),  Jayhawkers, Redlegs, and Enrolled Missouri Militia, which can also double for guerrillas, or even triple for the Kansas militias during the 1864 Price's Raid.

But also, I pre-ordered a few painted 54mm figures from Black Hawk Toy Soldiers.  Why, oh why, did they have to release these figures?  I think you can figure out the two figures that I ordered along with a certain 1932 Ford V-8, (even though it is missing the interesting hood ornament), especially if you have been reading my blog entries of old.  Unfortunately, there is no certain retired Texas Ranger figure to go with the figures that I ordered. OK, first a hint of which figures I order:

The same car that the Black Hawk toy car is designed on

Now here are the pictures of the new figures:

Yeah, there is no fooling you all...here are a few pictures of the car and outlaws that I ordered:

A 1932 Ford V-8 B-400 that was stolen from Robert F. Rosborough of Marshall, Texas.  The thief is standing in front of the car.

A failed actress, gun moll posing at the grill of Rosborogh's stolen vehicle.

A couple of mad dog, small timers in love in front of Rosborgh's stole car.

Cheers,
Sapper

Guerrilla Warfare in Civil War Missouri 1862 Part 2

So I got a little farther into the book, ( I am now about 75% of the way through it) and ran across more skirmishes that again just blows the whole theory that the southern guerrillas were actually elite, at least in 1862.  Again and again, the Union forces regularly inflicted more damage on the guerrillas, even when outnumbered.  It seems only when the guerrillas grossly outnumbered the Union forces, in the case where 500 men captured a garrison of 20 Enrolled Missouri Militia (EMM) men (part-time soldiers); catch the Union totally unprepared as in the Battle of Independence; through trick of disguise by wearing captured Union uniforms which was a new tactic (although some times this was a problem for the guerrillas as they would approach an actual Union patrol thinking that they were fellow guerrillas only to be shot or captured); or finally the momentary lack of morale by the Union commander.  Also, I found it interesting that probably more times, it was the Union forces that caught the guerrillas or southern recruiting parties unprepared.  Time and time again the southern forces regularly failed to put out pickets for guards before going to rest.

Here is one more example of a skirmish at I found since my last entry. I am adding it because I found it humorous in a dark way.

Example of the "uniform" of the majority of the EMM.  Only those companies on duty would be wearing the blue uniform, if they had them in 1862.  The only thing missing is the white cloth band that was normally worn on the crown of the hat or on the arm.

There was a southern recruiter, Captain Crabtree, who went by his self proclaimed rank, "General."  He acted more of a guerrilla than a recruiter while rounding up recruits to take back to Arkansas, as he and his little band terrorized the northern civilians around central Missouri.  In late September, "General" Crabtree was once again back in Cole Country just south of Jefferson City.  One day, "General" Crabtree decided to go and terrorize a specific northern farmer.  The "General" not only stole the farmer's food, as he normally did, but also stole the farmer's wedding suit.  Unfortunately for "General" Crabtree, he stole the wrong man's wedding suit!  It turns out that this farmer was a member of local EMM and immediately set out to round up other members of local EMM after "General" Crabtree left.  Our little plucky band of EMM soldiers tracked "General" Crabtree's forces down to barn where they were relaxing (again, where are the pickets for security?)  The EMM soldiers took them by surprise and badly wounded "General" Crabtree and unknown others.  However, "General" Crabtree and his band escape in the fight.  But the EMM soldiers were determine to end the career of "General" Crabtree (I also have a vision of our hero even more determine to get his wedding suit back). After three days of hunting, the EMM soldiers finally found the body of "General" Crabtree in a cave laying in state wearing the stolen wedding suit!  Unfortunately, history has hidden the name of our poor unfortunate farmer and if he kept the wedding suit after that.  

Another ironic twist to this engagement show how bad the Union military intelligence was in Missouri at this time.  After the killing of Crabtree, the upper command either 1) never was told of his death, 2) was told, but refused to believe he was killed, or 3) knew that he was killed, but never could figure out the name of his replacement, because for the next two years, they accredit "General" Crabtree for what his former command did after his death.

Final note,  I also forgot that Redoubt Enterprise has a small number of Missouri Guerrillas, including some personalities, in 28mm.  Plus the 28mm Perry's plastic should work for some of the Federal troops.  The Rebels would be less so.  But Rebel cavalry officers could work for the southern recruiting officers as they normally wore their uniforms so not to be accused of be a guerrilla if caught.

Cheers,

Sapper

Guerrilla Warfare in Civil War Missouri 1862

Hello,

I am about half way through the first volume (the year of 1862) of the four volume set of Guerrilla Warfare in Civil War Missouri by Bruce Nichols.  (That is before my Kindle Fire started to go down hill - see my previous blog entry.)  By now, I feel I can reasonably give an opinion on the book, as well as give a couple of examples of some actions that are covered in the book, but first is a quick review of the book itself.

9th Missouri State Militia Cavalry on parade in St. Joseph, Missouri (1862)

The book sort of has a Southern slant to it, but it is fairly neutral.  The author admits in the preface that he was going to be focusing more on the guerrillas and southern recruitment missions and their leadership than on the Union forces.  I think he covered a fair bit on the various Union forces too, but I wish that he did spend some more time covering them.  The first book is broken down into four main parts, covering the four seasons of 1862: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall.  Between the four seasons, the author has a couple of chapters on various subjects, like why the guerrilla bands started to be created, or the raising of the pro-Union Enrolled Missouri Militia (a part-time militia force.)  Each seasonal part is then broken down into four regional sections of Missouri, Northwest, Northeast, Southeast, and Southwest.  This way the author discusses a events in the northwest part of Missouri during the winter before moving on to discuss the next region, until everything is covered for that season and proceeding on to the next season in the same fashion.  I actually like this method as if you were only using the book to research the events in the southwest region of Missouri, you can easily found the various regional sections in each seasonal parts.  Finally, each regional section is broken down again into sub-sections that covers specific events, leaders, actions, or counties which would help to speed up research.   Unfortunately, a lot of actions are not very detailed as there is not much information on them other than causalities listed.

Best name ever for an ACW commander - Odon Guitar, commander of the 9th Missouri State Militia Cavalry and later a Brigadier General.

One of the few things I started to noticed while reading the various accounts is that Union forces, in general, came off better in any engagement with the guerrillas or southern recruitment parties, even when outnumbered, except when the guerrillas conducted an ambush and immediately ran away or when small group of individuals, generally less than six, where encountered.  This is even true when some of the poorly armed Union cavalry companies get into a fight, like some of those from the 1^st Iowa Cavalry and 6^th Kansas Cavalry that only had pistols and sabers.  But that is not to say that there were not some big problems for the Union forces at times.  In one encounter, a patrol of cavalry with poor carbines had almost all of them fail in firefight with guerrillas and had to promptly retreat. 

Most of the engagements were Union patrols or escorts of 20 to 40 men against larger numbers of guerrillas or southern recruits.  But in some of the larger Union sweeps with a small battalion sized force, they would sometimes even have a battery of light guns with them too.  Two examples of a typical engagement are the following:

June 15, ’62:  A patrol from the 7^th Missouri Volunteer Cavalry (no size given) ran up against William Quantrill and about 30 men near Pink Hill in east Jackson County.  After the battle, the guerrilla losses were 2 dead, 2 wounded, and 3 captured.   The Federals suffered no losses.  While there is no more detail than that, I included this engagement as it had the feared Quantrill’s guerrillas in it. 

The ACW era Johnson County Courthouse in Warrensburg, MO - this was a vital building as it was one of the few brick building in the county during the war

June 17, ’62:  Prior to this engagement, a guerrilla force of 80 to 90 men under the leadership of John Brinker (from Warrensburg, MO) and Benjamin Snelling (from southwestern Johnson County) went on a three day terror campaign.  During that time, they murdered a civilian farmer plowing his field and another man in front of his family, in addition to wounding another man and his 13 year old daughter who got in the way.  They also robbed four homes and burned another one or two homes as well.  So on June 17, a patrol from the 7^th Missouri State Militia Cavalry (whom by this time were a veteran guerrilla hunter force) with Lt Sandy Lowe and 18 men left out of Warrensburg to go looking for the Brinker-Snelling guerrilla band.  They discovered several of the guerrillas sitting down for dinner at the home of Mrs. Davenport about 9 miles west of Warrensburg.  Lt. Lowe’s patrol charged and scattered the guerrillas and chased them about a half of a mile through the brush until they ran into the rest of the Brinker-Snelling band.  Lt Lowe sent a messenger back to Warrensburg to get reinforcements, while he was conducting a fighting withdraw.  Lt Lowe’s patrol fought it out for about thirty minutes and covered 6 to 7 miles back to Warrensburg before a relief column under Major Emory Foster of the 7^th Missouri State Militia Cavalry arrived on the scene.  With the relief column showed up, the guerrillas fled.  So the only real fighting was between the 80 or so guerrillas and the 18 man patrol.  The results of that fight was 11 guerrillas dead and the Union only lost 2 dead and 2 more wounded.  After the fight, the Davenport’s home was burnt by the Union for supporting the guerrillas and Benjamin Snelling’s sister and younger brother were arrested on allegedly carrying messages for the guerrillas.  (Warrensburg was my old stomping grounds in college, so I had to include this engagement.)

Company D's Missouri Guerrilla Band 1

Company D's Missouri State Militia pack 1

As a gaming note, there is a fairly new miniature company that now making 28mm figures specifically for the Guerrilla in Missouri, called ‘Company D’ out of the UK.  I have not seen the figures in the flesh, but as you can see from the pictures below of their figures from their website, they are quite nice.  They might fit in the Foundry’s ‘dead’ Border War line, which is now in their Old West line.   Hopefully Company D will continue down this road and release some Enrolled Missouri Militia and Kansas Redlegs too.  I am very tempted to order a set of each, but I am waiting for the Missouri State Militia & Guerrilla command sets to be released first.  

Column of twos, March!

Sapper

Update - Wild West outlaws that became movie stars

From Midlist Writer: Al Jennings in The Lady of the Dugout (1918)

This is just a minor update to my previous post ten days ago about two Wild West bank robbers that became Hollywood movie stars (direct link).  One of the blogs that I follow, Midlist Writer, which belongs to a great writer, Sean McLachlan (Amazon link) (I have several of his books), just put up a blog entry on another Wild West bank robber that became a Hollywood movie star, Al Jennings (direct link.)  I was not aware of him before this.  In this blog entry, he also has a link to another blog entry of his on a different blog, Black Gate.  It is a worth while read as well (direct link) as I also discovered that Jesse James, Jr., Jesse James' only son, was also a movie star.  I knew about that he also tried out his dad's occupation of train robbery, but did not know about his Hollywood career.

Cheers

Sapper