OCTOBER 16, 1864:
Benjamin Whitehead Lewis
(1812-1866) was one of the rare Missouri Unionists living in the Confederate
stronghold of Glasgow.
Early
in the Civil War, Lewis funded a school for Glasgow’s children. He was a greatly
respected citizen of the town, despite his Unionism. In his Last Will and
Testament Lewis made a bequest of funds to the community to rebuild the town’s library,
destroyed in the October 15th Battle of Glasgow.
As
both a Unionist and a philanthropist, Lewis attracted the undesirable personal
attentions of “Bloody Bill” Anderson. The bloodthirsty Anderson had been
visiting Lewis’s home on a near daily basis in the fall of '64.
“I’ll hound him and make
an example of him,”
Bloody Bill declared. “We'll show them it
ain’t just niggers we whip --- it's the niggers' white friends.” It is
unknown why Anderson believed that Lewis, who was a slaveowner, was a “friend”
of African-Americans.
One
particular day, after being told by Lewis’s wife that her husband wasn’t home, a
frustrated Anderson randomly fired his rifle into the ceiling of the house,
grazing Lewis, who was hiding in the attic.
On
this day in 1864, Anderson finally caught up with the unfortunate Lewis. He
tortured Lewis by forcing him to walk a half-mile on his knees from the Lewis
home to the bank, where Anderson demanded $10,000 from Lewis at the price of
his life. Being a Sunday, the bank was not open. Lewis’s slave, Zeb, ran to
find the bank president, who fearfully refused to get involved or to give Lewis
even his own money.
Finally,
after much begging and pleading, Lewis’s family was able to raise $7,000. Anderson
at first refused to take less than the $10,000 he’d demanded, but at last
relented. However, as a punishment to Lewis for not paying the full amount, he
lifted Lewis off the ground by his feet and dropped him on his head a number of
times. Lewis sustained severe neck and skull injuries which eventually killed
him.
Bloody
Bill Anderson’s brutality toward the Unionist Lewis was far more representative
of the Civil War in Missouri than Sterling Price’s parole of Union soldiers on
the previous day.
Price’s
“Campaign” (or “Raid”) into Missouri did nothing to seize the major
cities of St. Louis and Jefferson City, but it did much to destroy what
little civil authority remained intact in the State.
As of October 1864, Missouri was a failed State. It had been at war not since 1861 but since 1854 (“The
Border War”), combating itself (and Kansas) over Popular Sovereignty. Kansas
had become a Free State upon its admission to the Union in 1861, but raiding
and fratricidal violence persisted in Missouri even after the end of the Civil War. Peace did not come to the "Show Me" State until the mid-1870s.
In
the Civil War years, Missouri lay essentially at the center of the continent.
As an entity, it looked North and South and East and West all at once, a
hodgepodge of frontier settlers, slaveowners, free-soilers, and entrepeneurs,
Native Americans and immigrants. The centrifugal force of all these competing
pressures turned the State into a free-fire zone during the Civil
War.
A
Union State with a rump Confederate government, it was a State that never
seceded; yet, and nevertheless, the Secessionist Governor, Claiborne Fox
Jackson, had declared war on the United States in 1861 without formally allying
himself to the Confederacy.
Jackson
was long gone now, and the Missouri Unionists held the larger cities, but in
the countryside, all was a nightmare. Unlike every other State, Union or
Confederate, Missouri was a battleground State with no real front lines.
Confederates
and Unionists shared towns, shared kitchen tables, and even shared beds. “The
enemy” wore no uniform, or both, or either. “The enemy” was anyone who was
armed and wanting anything.
Not
knowing who was friendly and who was unfriendly (and indeed loyalties changed
by the day and sometimes by the hour), the men of both armies were brutal
toward everyone they met. Civilians habitually shot at strangers regardless of
their garb. Southerners disguised themselves in blue and Northerners disguised
themselves in gray. Bushwhackers in butternut fought Jayhawkers in red
leggings. Lifelong friends hanged one another upon suspicion of being with the
“wrong” side, but who was “wrong” was as changeable as the weather.
Guerrillas
like “Bloody Bill” Anderson (mostly nominally pro-Southern in outlook) burned, hacked,
pillaged, robbed, and raped their way across the ruined State at random and at
will, like ancient barbarians. The Confederacy feared them, seeing in their
tactics “unchristian” and “dishonorable” acts that besmirched the Southern
cause; but ironically the government in Richmond and the generals in the field actively supported
their efforts.
The
United States vowed to destroy them, but they moved freely through the lines,
hidden in plain sight. Running them to ground was a near impossibility --- they
were protected by regular Confederate troops and by locals too, either out of
loyalty or out of fear. In their wake they left the living maimed, and the
mutilated dead. Benjamin Whitehead Lewis was just one of thousands of innocent people whose lives were destroyed in the
cyclone that was Missouri.
Missourians
themselves often refused to submit to the bushwackers. The little town of Avila
was a Union stronghold. The Confederate flag never flew in Avila, and Avila’s
hard-bitten Unionist residents slew any guerrillas that came near, gruesomely
hanging their heads from a “death tree” on the approach to town. “Bloody Bill”
once tried to take Avila; his force was beaten back with heavy losses. Avila was
one of the few towns in Missouri to have come through the Civil War
structurally intact, and no residents of Avila died in the war.
By
1864, more Missourians lived outside the State than within it, refugees from an
incomprehensible war within a war.
