Chapter 5
Chapter 5, Part 1 of Jesse James, My Father, by Jesse James Jr. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Jesse James as a Gorilla, Part 1 Whether or not my father was in the Lawrence raid, I am unable to say. I have heard some of his comrades say that he was there, and some of them say he was not there.
Jesse James was at Centralia, September 27, 1864. A train from St. Louis reached there at 11 o'clock that morning, having on board 24 Federal soldiers. Quantrell's guerrillas were there to meet it. As the train slowed up, the soldiers looked out of the windows
and saw the waiting guerrillas on the platform. One of the Federals recognized Bill Anderson, one of Quantrell's bravest men, and said to his comrades, Lord, Lord, there is Bill Anderson. Boys, go to praying.
Bill Anderson's sisters had been killed by federal soldiers, and over their dead bodies, he had sworn a solemn oath to never spare a federal, and he never spared one. When he was killed, the silken cord on which he tied a knot each time he killed a federal soldier had 54 knots on it.
The 24 soldiers were taken off the train, stood in line, and shot. Later in the day, Major Johnson and 300 federal soldiers went three miles southeast of Centralia and attacked the 262 guerrillas who were encamped there in the timber. The guerrillas came out to meet them. The story of the fight is best told by Major Edwards, and it is a true account of it as follows.
Major Johnson halted his men and rode along his front, speaking a few calm and collected words. They could not be heard in the guerrilla ranks, but they might have been divined. Most battle speeches are the same. They are generally epigrammatic and full of sentences like these. Aim low.
Keep cool. Fire when you get loaded. Let the wounded lie till the fight is over. But could it be possible that Johnson meant to receive the charge of the guerrillas at a halt? What cavalry books had he read?
Who had taught him such ruinous and suicidal tactics? And yet, monstrous as the resolution was in a military sense, it had actually been taken, and Johnson called out loud enough to be heard from opposing force to opposing force, Come on, we are ready for the fight. The challenge was accepted.
The guerrillas gathered themselves up together as if by a sudden impulse and took the bridle reins between their teeth. In the hands of each man there was a deadly revolver. There were carbines also, and yet they never had been unslung. The sun was not high, and there was great need to finish quickly whatever had need to be begun.
Riding the best and fastest horses in Missouri, the guerrillas struck the federal ranks as if the rush was a rush of tigers. Jesse James, riding a splendid race mare, led by half a length, then Arch Clements, then Peyton Long, then Al Shepard. There was neither trot nor gallop. The guerrillas simply dashed from a walk into a full run. The attack was a hurricane. Johnson's command fired one volley and not a gun thereafter. It scarcely stood until the interval of 300 yards was passed over. Johnson cried out to his men to
fight to the death, but they did not wait even to hear him through. Some broke ranks as soon as they had fired and fled. Others were attempting to reload their muskets when the guerrillas, firing right and left, hurled themselves upon them. Johnson fell among the first. Mounted as described, Jesse James singled out the leader of the Federals. He did not know him then. No words were spoken between the two. When Jesse James reached to within five feet of Johnson's position,
he put out a pistol suddenly and sent a ball through his brain. Johnson threw out his hands as if trying to reach something above his head and pitch forward heavily a corpse. There was no quarter. Many begged for mercy on their knees. The guerrillas heeded the prayer as a wolf might the bleeding of a lamb. The wild route broke away toward Sturgeon, the implacable pursuit, vengeful as hate, thundering in the rear. Death did its work in twos, in threes, in squads,
singly. Beyond the first volley, in which three were killed and one mortally wounded, not a single gorilla was hurt. Probably sixty of Johnson's men gained their horses before the fierce wave of the charge broke over them, and these were pursued by five guerrillas, led by Jesse James, for six miles at the dead run. Of the sixty, fifty-two were killed on the road from Centralia to Sturgeon. Todd drew up his command and watched the chase go on. For three miles, nothing obstructed the
vision. Side by side over the level prairie, the five stretched away like the wind, gaining step by step and bound by bound upon the rearmost riders. Then little puffs of smoke arose. No sounds could be heard, but dashing ahead from the white spurts, terrified steeds ran riderless. Knight and Sturgeon ended the killing. Five men had shot 52. Johnson's total loss was 282, or out of 300, only 18 escaped. History has chosen to call this ferocious killing at Centralia
a butchery. In civil war, encounters are not called butcheries when the combatants are man to man, and where over either rank there waves a black flag. Johnson's overthrow probably was a decree of fate. He rushed upon it as if impelled by a power stronger than himself. He did not know how to command, and his men did not know how to fight. He had, by the sheer force of circumstances, been brought face to face with 262 of the most terrible revolver fighters the American war,
or any other war, ever produced, and he deliberately tied his hands by the act of dismounting, and stood in the shambles until he was shot down. Abject and pitiful cowardice matched itself against reckless and profligate desperation, and the end could only be just what the end was. The guerrillas did unto the militia just exactly what the militia would have done unto them if fate had reversed its decision and given to Johnson what it permitted to the guerrillas.
Father was with Todd a few days after Centralia when they made a raid from their camp on the Blackwater into Lafayette County to break up a German federal military organization. The militia knew Todd and his guerrillas were coming, and they formed an ambuscade of 100 men and some hazel brush near the road and sent 14 cavalrymen down the road to meet the guerrillas and to fire upon them and to fall back past the ambush.
Jesse James and ten men rode ahead of the main body of 163 guerrillas. These ten men met the fourteen cavalrymen and charged them, driving them past the ambuscade. Todd and his 163 guerrillas heard the firing in front and rushed up, and his command received the fire from the ambush, full in the teeth.
Todd and his men dismounted and rushed into the brush and killed all but 22 of the 100 militiamen hiding there. While this was going on, Jesse James and the 10 guerrillas with him had killed 10 of the 14 cavalrymen farther down the road and were pursuing them when they ran at full speed into the advance of a Federal column 200 strong. There was nothing for the 11 guerrillas to do but turn and run for dear life, pursued by the 200 Federals shooting and yelling. My father's splendid race mare that had borne him so well in the Centralia fight was killed beneath him.
Father was shot in the left arm and side. He fell behind his dead horse and fought from there, shooting down five of the Federals closest to him. The balance of the guerrilla company came up at this critical time and drove off the Federals. In this day's fight, 117 militia were killed and Jesse James killed ten of them. There is not room in a book of this size to tell one hundredth part of the adventures,
the comings and goings, the hot battles, the victories, and the hair-breadth escapes of Quantrell's guerrilla band, of which my father was a member. Only a few of these events, in which my father took a prominent part, will be mentioned here. The attack of Plattsburgh, Missouri by the guerrillas was one of the most thrilling events. The courthouse in the center of the square in Plattsburgh was held by 46 federal soldiers, heavily armed.
Twelve guerrillas marched to the town in the night. Three hundred yards from the square, they formed fours and made a charge forward. The garrison in the courthouse was warned of their coming, and every window was full of guns, and the square was swept by miniballs. The twelve guerrillas attacked the courthouse in the face of a pitiless fire and captured it.
Forty-six federal soldiers surrendering to twelve guerrillas, who broke to pieces the two hundred muskets they found in the courthouse and appropriated $10,000 in Missouri defense bonds they found there. The forty-six federal soldiers were paroled under sacred promise that in the future they would treat non-combatants and southern sympathizers with more mercy than they had done in the
past. Leaving Plattsburgh, the guerrillas crossed the Missouri River to Independence. Four miles from Independence, there was a disorderly house kept by several women, and it was a resort for the officers of the Federal Garrison at Independence. The guerrillas set a trap to catch these officers.
Jesse James, dressed as a young girl, rode on horseback up to the house and called its mistress out. Imitating the voice and manner of a girl, my father told her that he lived not far away, he was a girl fond of adventure and would like to come to the house that night, bringing two or three neighbor girls to have a good time. The mistress of the house consented,
and the supposed girl on horseback said she and the other girls would be there that night. The mistress sent word at once to the federal officers in Independence that four new girls would be at her house that night. It was after dark when Jesse James and the other gorillas rode up to the house, and dismounting, crept up and peered in at the windows. Twelve Federal officers were in there with the women. No guards or sentinels were out. The Federals felt secure.
All the company was in one room, five women and twelve men. A cheery fire blazed and crackled on the hearth of the old-fashioned fireplace. Jesse James, with five men, went to one window. Bill Gregg with four men went to another. Each of the nine guerrillas in the darkness outside selected his man. At a signal that had been agreed upon,
there was a crack of nine revolvers that sounded like the discharge of a single gun. The glass shivered in a thousand bits, crashed, and nine of the Federal soldiers fell dead at that first volley. The remaining three fell dead an instant later. The guerrillas mounted and rode away.
The next fight of these guerrillas was in June 1863. Todd led the command of 70 guerrillas, and the plan was to capture and burn Kansas City. But on the way to Kansas City, the 70 guerrillas met in the old Santa Fe Trail near Westport, a column of 200 Federals. These were soldiers from Kansas on their way to Kansas City.
Todd drew his men up in line and said to them, These Kansas soldiers are the fellows we want. They had better be fought out here in the open than behind brick walls. Todd formed his men behind a knoll near Brush Creek and himself rode forward to reconnoiter the advancing column.
The signal for the gorillas to advance was when Todd lifted his hat. Todd, mounted on a superb horse, stood in the middle of the road and watched the advancing federal column. At the proper moment, he turned to the knoll behind him and lifted his hat, at the same time hitching his revolvers around to his front. The seventy guerrillas came over
the hill and galloped down like a whirlwind into the faces of the two hundred soldiers who were a part of the 9th Kansas Cavalry under Captain Thatcher. It was a hot day. The dust rose in clouds from under the hooves of the horses and rolled above them. The battle was a hand-to-hand conflict. The guerrillas, with their bridle reins in their teeth and a big revolver in each hand, rode right into the column, firing with the right and left hand at once and
never missing a man. In this fight, my father, although he was only a boy, won this remarkable compliment from old Bill Anderson. For a beardless boy, he is the keenest and cleanest fighter in the command. Eighty Federals were killed before their column wheeled in a mad, clattering route back to the Kansas prairies they had just left. The seventy guerrillas chased them, firing and killing as they went. The fleeing Kansas cavalry ran straight into a solid regiment of the Federal infantry
and formed behind it. The guerrillas had to retreat, but they had lost only three men. After this, the guerrillas were unusually active. Eight of them came upon eight Federals and drove them into a barn and then set it on fire, and as the eight soldiers ran out to escape the flames, each was killed in turn. Twelve guerrillas came to a tavern west of Westport in Kansas and killed eight federal soldiers who were stopping there.
Todd, with ten guerrillas, met 18 Kansas redlegs on the road to Independence and killed 15 of them. Poole and 30 guerrillas hid in the woods on a hillside that overlooked a spring on the road three miles west of Napoleon. Eighty-four federal cavalry came along and stopped there to water their horses. Thirty-three of the 84 federal cavalry were killed and 11 badly wounded. Jesse James was in all of these combats.
End of chapter 5, part 1
