Bloody Bill Anderson Read online

  Figure 5.2 Major “Ave” Johnston.

  COURTESY OF THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MISSOURI.

  Continuing to peer through his field glasses, Johnston saw the guerrillas begin to move southward. At once he called in the pickets and ordered his men to mount up. After taking one more look through the glasses, he stowed them away in their case and climbed into the saddle of his beautiful gray. Ahead was a sight few Federals in Missouri had been privileged to see: bushwhackers out in the open, outnumbered, and obviously unaware that they were being trailed.12

  Of course his soldiers, on their farm animals, could not hope to overtake them if it came to a chase. But the trail was hot, the scent strong, and maybe, just maybe, they would get close enough to pour into these men hot lead in the form of .577-caliber Enfield slugs that ripped guts to pieces and shattered arm and leg bones so badly that as a rule only amputation could prevent a wounded man from becoming a dead man. All they needed was for their luck to hold.

  Ave Johnston waved his arm and gave the command. Companies A, G, and H, each lined up in a column of twos, resumed their march across the prairie.

  What Johnston did not and could not know was that the guerrillas he had observed through his field glasses were not the same ones who had menaced Paris the evening before. Those raiders were camped southeast of Centralia and so far beyond the range of Johnston’s glasses that he could not have seen them even if they had not been concealed by the woods along Young’s Creek. In all probability, what Johnston saw was a bushwhacker band and/or some Confederate recruits seeking to join up with Anderson, Todd, and the rest. But whoever they were, by being where and when they were, they performed a key role in transforming that glorious autumn day into the most horrible one in Missouri’s entire bloodsoaked history of the Civil War.13

  Centralia, Missouri: 10:00–11:00 A.M., September 27, 1864

  Two stores, as many hotels, and a score of squat houses huddled around the large, new depot. Such was Centralia, one among dozens of little whistle-stops that had sprung up along the North Missouri Railroad. So far the great Civil War had hardly touched the hamlet. In 1861 some local secessionist zealots had wrecked railroad culverts in the vicinity, and only three weeks earlier guerrillas had surprised a freight train at the water tank and took some horses and soldiers off of it. But otherwise the war had left Centralia alone. There was simply nothing in or around the place worth fighting for. Even so, at 10:00 A.M. on September 27, 1864, Bill Anderson and his men rode in and helped themselves to what Centralia had to offer.14

  Some of the bushwhackers drifted into homes demanding breakfast. More looted the tiny stores of their pathetic stock—cloth, candy, ribbons and other notions. What they did not want, they tossed out onto the street, where their horses soon trampled the items into the dirt. Snooping about the railroad tracks, others enjoyed better luck. Although the six boxcars on the siding proved empty, inside the depot they discovered crates of much-needed boots and shoes and—glory be!—a large barrel of whiskey. A pistol butt quickly stove in its top, and with shouts of glee everyone began dipping madly with their cups. In short order most of the men became wildly drunk, and a dull morning turned into a joyous revel.15

  Few drank deeper than Anderson himself as he sat, wearing a Federal uniform jacket, in the lobby of the Eldorado House hotel. Whiskey had become more than just a good drunk; it was a warm friend. It deadened his brain and blurred his memories. The liquid fire roaring down his throat soothed his soul and melted away the hard ache within. But what he thirsted for more than whiskey was blood—the blood of Union soldiers. Only that would wipe from his mind the image of his six good men shot, scalped, and left to rot on the ground.

  Toward 11:00 A.M. the guerrillas saw a dust cloud approaching Centralia on the road to the south—the Columbia stage. Several raiders raced for their horses to be first in line to rob it. As the men galloped away, Anderson drank his whiskey and listened to the wild laughter and shouting of the men who remained behind. Let them have their fun. There was no danger of an attack. A Federal column would be spotted long before it reached the village. The broad treeless prairie offered an unobstructed view in all directions. Only to the east, where the land dipped briefly to the strip of timber along Young’s Creek, was the flat plain disturbed. Beyond that shallow valley, five miles from Centralia, the twin iron bands of the North Missouri Railroad made a bend. According to the schedule posted in the depot, a westbound passenger train was due to reach the village at 11:35 and so would be rounding that bend before long. Anderson had men posted in the woods along Young’s Creek to give warning should there be a strong guard aboard that train. That was unlikely, though. The Federals were obviously employing every soldier they could to guard the main towns and hunt down guerrillas, his band in particular. Besides, why would they put troops on a passenger train? They no doubt figured that since bushwhackers had never stopped and robbed one of them, there was no risk of that happening. If that was their reasoning, they were about to learn that there was a first time for everything. . . .

  Meanwhile, the pack of Anderson’s men, wild-eyed and more or less drunk, who had ridden off after the stagecoach caught up to it and surrounded it. “Out with your pocket books!” they shouted as the passengers stepped out of the stage. With revolvers pressed against their chests, they all promptly complied. One of them, however, protested: “We are Southern men and Confederate sympathizers. You ought not rob us.”

  “What do we care?” came the reply. “Hell’s full of all such Southern men. Why ain’t you in the army or out fighting?”

  One of the passengers had a lot more to worry about than losing his money. James Sidney Rollins happened to be a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, not to mention a two-time candidate (unsuccessful) of the Whig Party for the governorship of Missouri. If the guerrillas found out who he was, they would either kill him on the spot or—more probable—hold him prisoner until they obtained a large ransom and then put a bullet into him, if not worse. Although a conservative who had opposed immediate and universal emancipation of slaves and the Radical Republicans who espoused it, Rollins also was a staunch Unionist and well-known to be such. In Confederate eyes he was a traitor.

  So when one of the bushwhackers asked him his name, he answered, “The Reverend Mr. Johnson, minister of the Methodist Church, South,” emphasizing the last word. This seemed to satisfy his questioner, and Rollins relaxed a little. Then the robbers began searching the pockets of their prisoners and going through their luggage. Rollins carried letters and other papers bearing his real name, and the clothes in his bag had been inscribed with the initials JSR. They surely would learn his true identity. And then. . . .16

  Mexico, Missouri: 11:05 A.M., September 27, 1864

  The shrill whistle sounded, and with a screech of brakes and clank of iron, the train jolted to a halt. A warm sun bathed the depot, just beyond which lay the pretty town of Mexico. A number of well-dressed passengers stepped from the cars and onto the platform. Most of them were delegates to a convention of Missouri’s Conservative Party, the convention to which Rollins had been traveling until he was abruptly stopped on the outskirts of Centralia.

  Tom Goodman and his fellow soldiers sat staring out the windows. Nearby, a construction train loaded with men and gravel sat on a siding, steam up, waiting for the coaches to pass that it might follow. The ride up from St. Charles had proved to be nothing like the suspenseful trip imagined by the soldiers. Wentzville . . . Wright City . . . Warrenton . . . Wellsville . . . Jefftown . . . a monotonous succession of tiny towns dropped down on land as flat as a griddle. Far from being charged with rumors and alarms, the hamlets along the line were as quiet and drowsy as Iowa on the Sabbath. The noise at St. Charles about guerrillas had been, like that in north Georgia about Wheeler’s cavalry, just another humbug.

  Then, to their surprise, Goodman and his companions noticed a commotion around the station. Men paced the platform, pausing from time to time to cast quick, nervous glances u
p the track. Others—their faces long and serious—stood in small clusters, for the most part silent. From what little those in the coach could glean, something was occurring not far ahead up the line. The stir around the station spread rapidly through the train until a buzz of excitement swept the cars.17

  Richard Overall, the train’s conductor, left the depot and started across the platform. Several excited men followed, urging him to remain in Mexico. It would be madness, they argued, to proceed farther. The train should not leave the station without a proper guard.

  While he listened to these pleas, Overall pondered what he had been told earlier that morning at Jefftown by an eastbound conductor: Guerrillas had been spotted around Centralia. But it was only twenty miles west from Mexico to Sturgeon, with its blockhouse and garrison, and broad, flat prairie all the way—that is, except at Young’s Creek just east of Centralia. There, three weeks ago, by a water tank at which trains normally stopped so that the steam locomotives could replenish their thirsting boilers, a band of bushwhackers had dashed out of a belt of timber and captured a freight train. Not only had they seized four carloads of good horses, they had also led away a half-dozen soldiers to be held as hostages for a captured comrade. Since then, however, no guerrilla attacks on trains had occurred, and traffic continued to run normally.

  Overall made his decision. As conductor he had a schedule to keep—which the presence of the superintendent of the North Missouri Railroad on his train made him all the more resolved to do. Besides, if trains stopped for every report or rumor of guerrillas along the line that had buzzed about like a swarm of bees during the past few weeks, the road might as well shut down for good. When all was said and done, these alarms had been nothing more than whiffs of smoke, and each sighting of guerrillas had turned out to be merely some farmers on horseback going to town. As for guards, blue uniforms already filled one car, and even now seven troopers of the First Iowa Cavalry were boarding it, several with sidearms. No, the train would continue as scheduled, and that would be the end of it.

  Overall climbed aboard the lead coach and glanced up and down the train: engine, tender, express car, baggage car, and four coaches containing 125 passengers, one-fifth of them uniformed soldiers. He then checked his pocket watch; it read 11:05. He closed up the watch and waved the signal. The locomotive’s whistle answered, and with a mighty heave, the train pulled away from the station.18

  On the Prairie South of Long Branch Creek: About 11:10 A.M.

  Throughout the morning Johnston’s men had continued southward, but ever so slowly. Their plow horses and mules, most of them poor specimens even of their kind, simply could not move fast, and it was necessary to rest them periodically to keep them moving at all. Worse, the bushwhackers’ trail had soon become lost, resulting in a long halt while scouts tried to find it again.

  Finally they did. It swerved off to the southwest, in the general direction of Centralia and Sturgeon. Johnston decided to head for the first of those towns, some ten miles distant. His march resumed.19

  North Missouri Railroad Between Mexico and Young’s Creek: 11:15–11:30 A.M.

  James Clark knew every inch of the North Missouri Railroad. From the hilly banks of the Missouri at St. Charles to the flat plains around Macon City, every bridge, culvert, switch, crossing, grade, bump, twist, and turn on the route was known intimately by the twenty-five-year-old engineer. Since 1860 the young English immigrant had been hauling freight and passengers over the two-hundred-mile ribbon of iron until he had come to know the moods and currents of the surrounding countryside as well as he knew the valves and gauges of the great fire-consuming monster he operated. Although the risks seemed remote, in Clark’s mind if there was any truth to this latest rash of rumors, the most likely spot would be at the tank, just before Centralia. In all that flat and treeless plain from Mexico to Sturgeon, the brush along Young’s Creek was the only possible place where a large group of men could lay in wait unseen.

  When the conductor had given the go-ahead back at Mexico, Clark ordered his fireman to lay on the wood with a will. They were blowing her through, he said, all the way to Centralia, fourteen miles ahead. The engineer also took the precaution of making sure there was plenty of water in the boiler. There would be no stop at the tank this trip. James Clark had already suffered one close shave on this line—or so it had appeared—and it was more than enough to last a lifetime.

  Back early in the war, Clark had been in his cab at some quiet village depot, getting set to take her out. Suddenly a wide-eyed telegraph operator burst from the station, screaming that the guerrillas were coming. In his scramble to leave the station, Clark had jerked the throttle back so hard that the lurch almost “ditched” the train—tender, cars, and all. Although he had soon learned that the cry had been a false alarm—just a few locals celebrating word of a victory somewhere—the shaken engineer, on reaching the nearest military post, announced that without a large guard for his train he’d not go one tie farther. When the officer balked, Clark had made good his vow.

  Things had quieted down somewhat since, and over the years Clark had mellowed and learned to abide surprises on the North Missouri. But the memory of that one terrifying moment was a thing not soon forgotten, and he would do whatever it took to avoid a repetition.20

  Back in one of the coaches, Tom Goodman became aware of the train’s acceleration. It had pulled out of the Mexico station as usual. But then it began moving faster and faster, and now it rattled along at an almost frightening pace. And as the speed increased, so did the passengers’ concern. Obviously the engineer thought that there might be trouble up ahead. Perhaps the rumors about guerrillas were true after all. . . .

  Goodman sat tensely in his seat, eyes fixed on the sun-washed prairie flying past the window. To the west, a long strip of trees appeared on the horizon.21

  Nine miles out from Mexico, the locomotive swung around the final bend before the water tank. Beyond, Centralia came into view. With a full head of steam the train thundered down the slope into the valley of Young’s Creek, clattered across the short bridge, and roared past the tank. James Clark gave a sigh of relief. There would be no trouble that day.22

  Someone glanced out and spotted several horsemen watching the train from the edge of the woods. Other passengers saw the same and yelled for the conductor. Richard Overall went to a window and stared out for a moment. He then turned around and announced that there was nothing to worry about. The horsemen were just farmers—or perhaps hunters.23

  The engine cleared the valley and leveled out again. James Clark had a straight shot into Centralia, less than a mile away. As he drew nearer, he beheld a large group of blue-clad horsemen lined up along the south side of the track across from the depot. He prayed that they were soldiers, but he knew that the guerrillas, too, often wore Federal uniform jackets.

  “We may strike the wrong gang this time,” he yelled to the fireman. “If we do, look out for yourself.”

  Then he saw men around the station piling ties onto the track. That settled it. They were bushwhackers. He briefly thought of reversing the train, but to do that, he would first have to stop it, and before he could get it going backward the bushwhackers would be swarming all around. And even if he somehow managed to get away, there was the danger of colliding with the gravel-filled work train following behind his own.

  So he decided to jerk open the throttle and throw himself onto the deck of the engine house. Maybe traveling at full tilt as it was, the train could smash through the obstructions on the track without derailing. If so, it could go on to Sturgeon and safety. Not even the guerrillas’ fastest horses matched the speed of an iron horse.24

  Leaning from a window, someone in Goodman’s car shouted that there were riders around the Centralia station. Another passenger looked out and declared that they were militia on drill. An Iowa trooper sitting beside Goodman jumped to the window to see for himself; he knew guerrillas when he saw them, for he had seen them many times and could tell them from mili
tia no matter what they wore. He peered intently up the line.

  When he turned around, his face drained of color, he muttered: “There are guerrillas there, sure!”

  No one seemed to notice the brakeman scurrying down the aisle, doing what a brakeman is supposed to do: setting the brakes, located at the rear of each car, when approaching a station. The train began slowing. It was stopping. The shrill whistle blew and from below came the awful screech of grinding brakes.

  Goodman listened to these sounds. He listened to the shouts of the blue-uniformed men riding around outside the train. And, rising above the groan of spinning wheels and grinding brakes, he listened to the sobs and screams of the women and children inside the train.25

  Now he could understand the uneasiness he had felt while passing through Kentucky and why he had trouble sleeping the last night before in St. Louis. He had been experiencing a presentiment of what was about to happen to him: death.

  He would not be going home. He never would see and hold his wife and children again, nor they him. Not in this world.

  Chapter Six

  You All are to Be Killed

  Centralia: High Noon, September 27, 1864