previous next


The Sufferings of the border Missourians.

--The people of Missouri, on the Kansas border, are being slaughtered without mercy under the authority of the Yankee commander of that department — Schofield. A letter to the St. Louis Republican, (Yankee,) says:

‘ On Sunday last the desire for blood manifested itself in the southeastern part of Jackson county, not far from the village of Lone Jack. Although it was Sunday, the people of that region, alarmed and terror stricken by threats from Kansas, and cruel edicts from headquarters of the district, were hard at work straining every nerve to get ready to leave their homes before this memorable 9th day of September, 1863.

One party of these unfortunate victims of a cruel order had almost completed their preparations, and within half an hour's time would have commenced their weary wanderings in search of a home. It consisted of Benjamin Potter, aged 75; John S. Cave, aged 50; William Hunter, aged 47; David Hunter, aged 35; William C. Tate, aged 30; Andrew Owsley, aged 17, and Martin Rice and his son. While thus engaged in loading their wagons with such effects as they supposed would be most useful to them, a detachment of Kansas troops, (said to be part of the Kansas 9th, though this may be a mistake,) under command of Lieut.-Colonel Clark and Capt. Coleman, came up and took them all prisoners.

After a little parleying, Mr. Rice and his son were released, and ordered to leave, which they did, of course. They had not gone much over three-fourths of a mile before they heard firing at the point at which they had left the soldiers with the remaining prisoners. In a short time the command moved on, and the wives and other relatives of the prisoners rushed up to ascertain their fate. It was a horrid spectacle.

There lay six lifeless forms — mangled corpses — so shockingly mangled that it was difficult, my informant stated, to identify some of them. They were buried where they were murdered, without coffins, by a few friends who had expected to join them on that day, with their families, and journey in search of a home.

These are the unvarnished facts with reference to an isolated transaction. There are many, very many, others of a similar character that I might mention, but I will not.--The unwritten and secret history of our border would amaze the civilized world, and would stagger the faith of the most credulous. In the case just mentioned we find an old man who had passed his three score and ten, and a youth who had not yet reached his score, falling victims to this thirsty cry for blood.

The world will doubtless be told that six more bushwhackers have been cut off, &c. --But believe it not, sir; it is not true. These six men never were in arms, neither in the bush or elsewhere, I have been told by one who has known them for years past. The widows and orphans of some of them passed through this city yesterday, heartbroken, homeless wanderers.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Kansas (Kansas, United States) (2)
Missouri (Missouri, United States) (1)
Lone Jack (Missouri, United States) (1)
hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Martin Rice (2)
William C. Tate (1)
Schofield (1)
Benjamin Potter (1)
Andrew Owsley (1)
William Hunter (1)
David Hunter (1)
Coleman (1)
Clark (1)
John S. Cave (1)
hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
September 9th, 1863 AD (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: