Bloody Bill Anderson Read online

  The Kansas conflict also brought a new political party into being in the North—the Republicans, dedicated to banning slavery from all the western territories as the first step toward eventually eliminating it in the South itself. In 1860 they carried every Northern state except one and so elected Abraham Lincoln president. “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” he declared, and when he added that the nation must either be all free or all slave, there could be no doubt that he meant for it to be all free. Seven states of the lower South seceded and formed the Confederate States of America, soon to be joined by four others from the upper South. Southerners believed that in leaving the Union, they were merely exercising their constitutional right, not to mention the right of revolution and the right of self-defense. Most Northerners, Democrats as well as Republicans, regarded secession as rebellion—a rebellion that had to be suppressed if the Union and “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” were to survive.

  And so the war came. Many Missourians, especially in the western part of the state, wished to join the Confederacy, but a great many more remained loyal to the “old flag” or took refuge in passive, ambiguous neutrality. Furthermore, Union states bordered Missouri on the east (Illinois), the north (Iowa), and the west (Kansas and Nebraska), whereas only sparsely populated Arkansas to the south provided a direct link with the Confederacy. Outnumbered and outflanked, prosecessionist Missouri forces under Maj. Gen. Sterling Price failed, despite initial successes, to gain control of the state during the summer and fall of 1861 and had to retreat into Arkansas. Only partisans, guerrillas or bushwhackers, as they commonly were called by others and themselves, remained to challenge Federal domination.

  In the beginning they consisted merely of small, local, ad hoc bands defending and retaliating against the persecutions of Missouri Unionists and the depredations of Kansas jayhawkers, who, under such leaders as Jim Lane and Charles “Doc” Jennison, ravaged the western border counties. Rapidly, though, they grew in strength, skill, and effectiveness until they were able to go on the offensive, harassing Federal occupation troops, terrorizing Unionists, and making raids into Kansas itself. The inevitable outcome—inevitable because of the very nature of guerrilla warfare when waged as part of a civil war—was an ever-ascending spiral of violence as reprisal begat reprisal, murder begat murder, and atrocities begat atrocities, with neither side giving nor asking for quarter.

  Also, to begin with, most of the bushwhackers were motivated mainly by a desire to fight for what they deemed to be their rights and avenge what they considered to be their wrongs. They thought of themselves as Southerners and believed that the Confederacy was needed to save the South and its way of life from Yankee thralldom. And they knew what that would mean from personal experience. Few among them did not carry in their minds and see in their dreams blue-clad soldiers ransacking and burning houses, ragged and starving families begging from door to door, jayhawkers torturing and killing old men, Union militia and regular Federal troops shooting or hanging captured comrades on orders from their commanders to treat guerrillas as outlaws, bodies floating facedown in creeks, their hands chalk white and nearly severed by a futile struggle to get free of the piano wire that bound them. Sometimes the house and families were their own, the tortured and dead men their fathers, grandfathers, brothers, friends, or neighbors. Only one response could be made to such deeds, and they gave it—that and more.2

  But in doing so they paid a price: degeneration. For many—too many—the thirst for revenge became mixed with a lust for loot, causing the difference between guerrilla and bandit to blur, then all but disappear. At the same time, a growing number of bushwhackers—probably not a majority but certainly a large minority—began killing for the sheer thrill of it or callous, cold-eyed thugs who, to quote what a Confederate general wrote about Missouri partisans after observing them in Texas, “regard the life of a man less than [that] of a sheep-killing dog.” For such as these, bushwhacking ceased to be a means to an end and instead became an end in itself. “You need not consider me a Confederate officer,” declared George Todd, one of the top guerrilla chieftains, to a captive a few days before the attack on Fayette. “I intend to follow bushwhacking as long as I live.”3

  Figure 1.1 Bloody Bill Anderson.

  COURTESY OF THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF MISSOURI.

  Thus the men riding along the Glasgow Road. Some still wore Federal uniform jackets, the disguise by which they had come close to catching Fayette’s garrison off guard. Most, though, were clad in loose-fitting, low-cut, large-pocketed hunting shirts ornately embroidered across the front and around the cuffs with green garlands and red and blue flowers, the loving handiwork of mothers, sisters, and girlfriends but rarely a wife—bushwhacking did not lend itself to connubial ties. All colors of ribbons dangled from felt hats cocked on one side by a crescent- or star-shaped pin to which was attached a plume or squirrel tail. Pants tucked into knee-high, Mexican-spurred boots completed the costume, except for the most important feature of all—a pistol belt with two holstered revolvers and often a couple more thrust into the belt. They were, typically, five- and six-shot .36-caliber Colt Navies—the best, because they were the most accurate and reliable handguns of the time. The bushwhackers did not carry so many of these weapons out of vain bravado but for the very practical reason that they wanted to be able to keep firing rapidly without stopping to reload, a tricky and risky business on horseback in the midst of a fight, even if you had, as they did, preloaded spare cylinders, in those large shirt pockets. In their hands the revolvers were not simply tools of war but instruments of execution.4

  This was especially true for the man riding at the head of one portion of the column. Dressed entirely in black—hat, velvet shirt, pants, boots—he was lean and sinewy and looked taller sitting in the saddle of his large black horse than his actual height of five ten. Long, thick, dark-brown hair, a thin mustache, and a short pointed beard framed his narrow, high cheekboned face. The eyes—cold, blue-gray, unfathomable—struck one observer as a “cross between an eagle and a snake.” In sum, he looked like what he was: a killer—a point driven home by the scalps of Federal soldiers dangling from his horse’s bridle.

  His name was William T. Anderson, but Unionists and secessionists alike called him Bloody Bill. By autumn 1864 this man had incarnated the savage war raging across Missouri, a savage war about to reach its savage climax.5 How and why did he become this? The answer—at least as much answer as can be attained—lies back in time and in another place.

  Agnes City, Kansas: Night, July 3, 1863

  Bill Anderson and his younger brother Jim stood in the dark at the side of the building, long steel-gray revolvers in their hands. They said nothing. There was nothing to say. They knew what they were going to do, and it was too late to turn back even if they wanted to. They didn’t.

  Bill and Jim had come to Kansas in the spring of 1857, along with their mother, Martha, a brother named Ellis, and three sisters, Mary Ellen, Josephine, and Janie. There they had joined their father, William Anderson Sr., on his land claim and helped build a log cabin some thirteen miles east of Council Grove near the fringe of the western frontier. For Anderson Sr. this was yet another beginning in a life of beginnings that had seen him wander from his native Kentucky into Missouri, next up to Iowa, and then back to Missouri, from where he journeyed to California in quest of gold. Like most, he did not find it—at least not much—and after a year or two he returned to his family and farm outside of Huntsville, Missouri. Then in 1855, soon after Kansas was opened up to settlement, he went there and acquired his claim, which was located on the east bank of Bluff Creek beside the Santa Fe Trail, the passageway for wagon caravans bound to and from New Mexico. Still in his mid-thirties, he was not old, yet he was no longer young as age was reckoned then. It was time to settle down. If he and his family could not make it in Kansas, there might not be another chance, certainly not as good as this one appeared to be.

  And they di
d make it—not big, but enough. By 1860, according to the United States census, the Anderson homestead had an estimated value of $1,000, which was above average for the time and place. In addition, Anderson engaged in the freighting business and operated a grocery store on the Santa Fe Trail, selling provisions to passing wagon trains. To be sure, his family still lived in a log cabin—one room with a sleeping loft—but such dwellings were standard and by no means indicated poverty, given that the same census credited the Andersons with possessing one horse, two milk cows, two oxen, and 320 acres of land, half of which was owned by young Bill and appraised at $500. Likewise, the Andersons being from Missouri did not cause problems, even though the vast majority of settlers in the area were midwestern Northerners. On the frontier the main concern was Indians, not Border Ruffians, and the sole violent incident that was purported to be politically motivated occurred on September 14, 1856, during the height of the “Bleeding Kansas” troubles, when a band of men calling themselves Freestaters raided the village of Neosho Rapids, killing a woman in the process. No one could rightly blame Southerners like the Andersons for this outrage, and none did. 6

  But if the Andersons stayed clear of political involvements, they failed to escape hard luck or resist the enticing temptations of the frontier, where semianarchic conditions offered all sorts of opportunities to those who had enough courage, yet not too many scruples, to grasp them. First Ellis, the second oldest son, had an altercation with a drunken Indian; he shot him through the head and fled to Iowa, from where it was reported falsely that “he got in a row . . . and was killed.” Next, in the latter part of 1860, Mrs. Anderson died when a lightning bolt struck her while she was gathering wood chips. She was thirty-six, and she left six children behind, the youngest a boy only a year old named Charles. And then Bill, the eldest son, succumbed to the temptations.

  Born in Kentucky in 1839, on coming to Kansas with his family, he initially enjoyed the reputation of being a “good boy, steady as a clock.” For a couple years he worked for Eli Sewell, who had a ranch on Elm Creek, west of Council Grove. When he reached twenty-one he acquired his own claim and seemed, like his father, to be making it. Then he started accompanying wagon trains on the Santa Fe Trail. After several trips he became “second boss” of one of those trains. Soon after it set out, however, he and the top boss returned to Council Grove and claimed that they had “lost” the train because the horses and mules had strayed. If true, their tale indicated gross negligence. More likely, they had sold the animals and pocketed the money.

  Suspicion that such was the case increased when Bill began taking ponies into Missouri, then returning with horses, which he sold around Council Grove. Where and how did he obtain the ponies? An interesting question, particularly for ranchers with ponies missing from their stables.7

  The coming of the war did not put an end to Anderson’s “pony business.” Instead, he expanded it to include all-around banditry—or as it was called in Kansas, jayhawking. He was being far from unusual in doing this. During 1860 and on into 1861 Kansas experienced severe drought, the “granddaddy” of many more to come. Weeks and months passed with little or no rain, and not a flake of snow fell throughout the winter. Crops withered in the fields, streams stopped running and rivers dwindled to a muddy trickle, wells dried up, and cattle had to be butchered before they became too scrawny to eat. Only food sent in large quantities by relief societies in the East prevented mass hunger, even famine. Thousands of people left Kansas, which in January 1861 finally achieved statehood. Thousand of others would have done the same had they not been too destitute to leave. Among them were large numbers of men who followed the same course taken by Bill Anderson—a course that became all the more appealing when the chaotic conditions created by the war provided a ready-made excuse to carry out plundering forays into western Missouri in the name of suppressing rebellion and liberating slaves. Nor was jayhawking confined to the eastern side of the border. In August 1861 Kansas governor Charles Robinson sent a posse into Johnson County when its inhabitants complained that they feared jayhawkers more than invasion by Missourians, and in his January 1862 message to the state legislature, Robinson declared that the whole state was “overrun with thieves and highway robbers.”8

  Among those hard hit by the drought and accompanying depression was Arthur Inghram Baker of Agnes City. Indeed, for all intents and purposes Baker was Agnes City. He had founded the place in 1856, naming it after his mother, and he owned all of its buildings, with the main one being his two-story stone house, the finest dwelling for many miles around. Furthermore, he had been the postmaster, justice of the peace, and a probate, then a district judge. Last, but hardly least, he possessed land holdings valued at $6,000—$1,000 in personal property, “one of the best corn fields” in Kansas, a large cattle herd, and along with practicing law he operated a highly profitable provision store near his house at the Rock Creek crossing of the Santa Fe Trail, eight miles east of Council Grove. Manifestly, Baker, a native of Virginia and just thirty-seven in 1861, was a person of substance and status.

  Yet he wanted more of both—a lot more. To that end, in January 1861 he became the owner and editor of the Council Grove Press and purchased that town’s only hotel. This proved to be a mistake. Owing to drought and war, neither the newspaper nor the hotel attracted sufficient patronage, with the result that in the fall of 1861 he had to sell them at a large loss. At the same time his Agnes City farm suffered a total crop failure and lost many of its cattle. Intensifying these woes and quite likely contributing to them, in March 1861 his wife, Susan, died at the age of thirty-four, leaving him a widower with a young daughter.

  Figure 1.2 Jim Anderson.

  COURTESY OF CARL BREIHAN.

  Little wonder then that by late 1861 Baker was a despondent and desperate man—so much so that soon after the failure of his newspaper and hotel enterprises, he decided to join those other Kansans who were “stealing themselves rich in the name of liberty,” and he took up jayhawking. He induced a group of young men in the Agnes City area to accompany him on a raid into southwest Missouri—one of them was Bill Anderson and another, according to some sources, was Jim Anderson, now eighteen and a partner in his brother’s “pony business.”

  Their foray ended in fiasco. While they were camped along Drywood Creek in Missouri, a Union patrol came along and, evidently thinking that they were bushwhackers, attacked them. All escaped except a man named John Ratcliffe, who was killed, and Baker, who was captured, accused of attempting to join Brig. Gen. James S. Rain’s unit of Sterling Price’s army, and incarcerated in the military prison at nearby Fort Scott, Kansas. Here he languished in durance vile until March 24, 1862, when he came before a military commission—only to be released because the officer prosecuting his case preferred no charges against him. Those in a position to know subsequently asserted that he owed his freedom to the “influence of friends,” with the most influential one being U.S. Senator James H. Lane of Kansas, the Republican political boss of the state and an occasional “general” whose plundering, burning sweeps through western Missouri during the summer and fall of 1861 gained him the well-deserved title of “King of the Jayhawkers.” Although nominally a Democrat, Baker had supported Lane politically and, it is safe to assume, financially as well, especially after being arrested.9

  Meanwhile, Bill Anderson resumed his former activities around Council Grove and also began conducting raids into Missouri, where his main, although not exclusive, victims were Unionists. Given his family background, no doubt Bill possessed Southern sentiments, but his motive for engaging in bushwhacking along with jayhawking was financial, not ideological. Thus, when he attempted unsuccessfully to recruit a neighbor named Charles Strieby for one of his Missouri expeditions, he stated, “I don’t care any more than you for the South, Strieby, but there is a lot of money in this [bushwhacking] business.”10

  Early in April, Baker returned to Agnes City and promptly published a letter in the Emporia News declaring that his “obj
ect in going to Missouri was not to act in antagonism to my Government, but, on the contrary, [I] was advised by those who have the welfare of the Nation and Kansas at heart,” and that it was “impossible for me to be a secessionist” because “all I love best on earth is here”—his family, his home, and his business and financial interests. Evidently this explanation satisfied the people around Council Grove and Emporia, or at least most of them, for he was not subjected to any persecution or harassment despite Kansas being a place where, in the words of a New York Tribune reporter, the “mere suspicion that one is disloyal may result in his being shot.”11

  What Baker most needed and wanted, now that he was again a free man, was a new wife. With that object apparently in mind, he began making trips to the Anderson cabin, only five miles away, to visit Mary Ellen, who at fifteen had attained marriageable age. So frequent were his calls and so warm (if not intimate) did his relationship with Mary Ellen become that her father assumed that they soon would be married. Hence, when in early May word came that Baker had instead become engaged to Annis Segur, a seventeen-year-old schoolteacher, the senior Anderson exploded with rage, as did Bill and Jim. Baker, they believed, had betrayed Mary Ellen and in so doing dishonored both her and her family.12