From the Story of Cole Younger - 1903
Lawrence
Disguised as a cattle trader, Lieutenant Fletcher Taylor, now a prominent and wealthy citizen of Joplin, Mo., spent a week at the Eldridge house in Lawrence, Kansas, from which place had gone out the Jayhawkers who in three months just previous had slain 200 men and boys, taken many women prisoners, and stolen no one knows how many horses.
William Gregg At the house of Capt. Purdee on the Blackwater in Johnson County, 310 men answered August 16, 1863, to the summons of Capt. Quantrell to hear the report of Lieut. Taylor's reconnaissance. The lieutenant's report was encouraging. The city (Lawrence, KS) itself was poorly garrisoned; the camp beyond was not formidable; the streets were wide. “You have heard the report,” said Quantrell when the lieutenant finished. “It is a long march; we march through soldiers; we attack soldiers; we must retreat through soldiers. What shall it be? Speak out. Anderson!” “Lawrence or hell,” replied Anderson, instantly. With fire flashing in his eyes as he recalled the recent wreck from which his sister had been taken in Kansas City, he added: “But with one proviso, that we kill every male thing.” “Todd?” called Quantrell. “Lawrence, if I knew that not a man would get back alive.” “Gregg?” This was Capt. William Gregg, who still lives in Kansas City, one of the bravest men that ever faced powder, and in action the coolest, probably, in the entire command. “Lawrence,” he replied. “It is the home of Jim Lane; the nurse of Jayhawkers.” “Jarrette?” “Lawrence, by all means,” my brother-in-law answered. “It is the head devil of the killing and burning in Jackson County. I vote to fight it and with fire burn it before we leave.” Shepherd, Dick Maddox, so on, Quantrell called the roll. “Have you all voted?” shouted Quantrell. There was no word. “Then Lawrence it is; saddle up.”
We reached Lawrence the morning of the 21st. Quantrell sent me to quiz an old farmer who was feeding his hogs as to whether there had been any material changes in Lawrence since Lieut. Taylor had been there. He thought there were 75 soldiers in Lawrence; there were really 200. Four abreast, the column dashed into the town with the cry: “The camp first!” It was a day of butchery. Bill Anderson claimed to have killed fourteen and the count was allowed. But it is not true that women were killed. One negro woman leaned out of a window and shouted: “You—of—.” She toppled out dead before it was seen she was a woman. The death list that day is variously estimated at from 143 to 216 and the property loss by the firing of the town, the sacking of the bank, and the rest, at $1,500.000. Maj. John N. Edwards, in his Noted Guerrillas, says:
“Cole Younger saved at least a dozen lives this day. Indeed, he killed none save in open and manly battle. At one house he captured five citizens over whom he put a guard and at another three whom he defended and protected. The notorious Gen. James H. Lane, to get whom Quantrell would gladly have left and sacrificed all the balance of the victims, made his escape through a cornfield, hotly pursued but too splendidly mounted to be captured.” My second lieutenant, Lon Railey, and a detachment gave Jim Lane a hot chase that day but in vain. When I joined Brother-in-law Jarrette's company, he said: “Cole, your mother, and your sister told me to take care of you.” That day it was reversed. Coming out of Lawrence his horse was shot under him. He took the saddle off and tried to put it on a mustang that one of the boys was leading. Some of the boys say he had $8,000 in the saddlebags for the benefit of the widows and orphans of Missouri, but whether 33 that is true or not I have no knowledge. While he was trying to saddle the mustang, he was nearly surrounded by the enemy. I dashed back and made him get up behind me. The saddle was left for the Kansas men. One of the treasures that we did bring out of Lawrence that day, however, was Jim Lane's “black flag,” with the inscription “Presented to Gen. James H. Lane by the ladies of Leavenworth”. That is the only black flag that I knew anything about in connection with the Lawrence raid. Lawrence was followed by a feverish demand from the North for vengeance. Quantrell was to be hanged, drawn and quartered, his band annihilated; nothing was too terrible for his punishment.
Four days after the raid, Gen. Thomas Ewing at St. Louis issued his celebrated General Order No. 11. This required that all persons living in Jackson, Cass, and Bates counties, except one township, or within one mile of a military post, should remove within fifteen days. Those establishing their loyalty were permitted to go within the lines of any military post, or to Kansas, but all others were to remove without the bounds of the military district. All grain and hay in the proscribed district were to be turned into the military post before Sept. 9, and any grain or hay not so turned in was to be destroyed. It was the depopulation of western Missouri. Any citizen not within the limits of the military post after Sept. 9 was regarded as an outlaw. Pursued by 6,000 soldiers, the Confederates in that vicinity must ultimately rejoin their army farther south, but they harassed their pursuers for weeks in little bands rarely exceeding ten. The horrors of guerrilla warfare before the raid at Lawrence were eclipsed after it. Scalping, for the first time, was resorted to. Andy Blunt found Ab. Haller's body, so mutilated, in the woods near Texas Prairie on the eastern edge of Jackson County. “We had something to learn yet,” said Blunt to his companions, “and we have learned it. Scalp for scalp hereafter.” Among the brave fighters who were participants in the fight at Lawrence were Tom Maupin, Dick Yager, Payne Jones, Frank Shepherd, Harrison Trow, Dick Burns, Andy McGuire and Ben Broomfield.
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