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Why a Civil War marker at
Deerfield? Two reasons in
particular, another just in general: Contrary to popular conceptions,
Vernon
County was as embroiled in that great event as any out-of-the-way comer
of Virginia.
Little tragedies and stirring dramas took place almost everywhere. The
two bigger brushups are known to history buffs by name. And both of them
took place in the Deerfield vicinity, more-or-less book-ending the war
between them.
Missouri, seeking to mark all
Civil War sites in the state, leading up to the war's sesquicentennial
in 2011, has at last gotten around to commemorating those two.
On Nov. 15, Jim Denney of the
Department of Natural Resources met with others at Leon Emery's truck
stop and planted the plaque pointing out for buffs and other bypassers'
benefit that a battle took place off this-away, and a skirmish off thataway.
The skirmish came first, and it's
already had its reminder. A few years ago the Sons of Confederate
Veterans erected in the old jail yard in Nevada
a monument, one of a series honoring the Missouri State Guard and the
engagements it fought. The back side explains the State Guard, the front
the Battle of Drywood, actually only a skirmish, though the winners
blazoned it proudly on unit flags, along with Carthage,
Wilson's Creek, and Lexington.
The 19 out of 20 Vernon Countians
who in summer 1861 "favored the Southern cause" sent forth more than one
MSG unit, but most notably the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the 8th Division,
including some 483 county men, most of them by now "known but to God,"
under the command of 30-year-old Nevada attorney Col. DeWitt C. Hunter.
They "first smelled powder" at
Carthage, and played a pivotal if mercifully unbloody part at Wilson's
Creek, where word reached them that things might not be well at home,
Jayhawkers "committing all sorts of excesses" against their defenseless
families. Softhearted Gen. Sterling Price let them return home, himself
soon following with an eventual 12,000 men.
They camped first near Montevallo,
then near Nevada. Early on Sept. 1, 1861, Price sent out a large force,
guided by some 75 of Hunter's men, to feel out Federal strength at
Fort
Scott. It was Sunday. The "Army of Kansas," really just Jim Lane's
private killing and pillaging gang, was holding services in a grove in
the Marmaton Valley.
The Rev. Capt. James Montgomery,
sometime Campbellite preacher, as usual was passing out hellfire when
the 75 Rebels got between the Kansans and their horses and mules.
"Yelling like Comanches" they herded 86 mules home eventually into
Price's camp. From this farcical beginning the whole engagement to come
would at times be humorously known as "the Battle of the Mules."
Lane determined to abandon Fort Scott. Trading his Bible for a
Sharps rifle, Montgomery led 448 men out to confront the Missourians and
cover his leader's retreat.
Meanwhile, the Rebel scout group
reconnoitered across Big Drywood Creek at Hogan's Ford, a mile or so
south of tiny Deerfield. Soon the enemies sighted each other. The
Missourians showed their inexperience.
"Incautious and unwary," some
future notorious Bushwhackers were captured. Price himself arrived and
ordered up his artillery.
It, too, proved amateurish, and
was "well-nigh silenced" by a lone howitzer manned by future famous Sgt.
Thomas Moonlight. A rifle and pistol duel broke out. Price here showed
the caution or sluggishness that often would prove his undoing, standing
on the defense till at last, an hour and a half into the fight, it
dawned on him the Kansans had only a fifth his numbers, and ordered his
line to advance.
Considering his purpose
accomplished, Montgomery turned tail, back toward Kansas in good order.
Vernon County's
Maj. W. W. Prewitt, "who knew the ground well," led the pursuit. But the
chase was "desultory and ineffective, and soon called off." Price's
whole army camped on the field, traditionally the earmark of the
victors. But Price hadn't achieved much, except to panic the Kansans,
especially Fort Scott
itself. The Missouri loss was two killed and 23 wounded, that of the
Kansans, five killed and six wounded: pretty much of a draw.
Not all the Vernon Countians took
part; many being still scattered in their homes, on furlough. Price
himself was dining with Col. Sample of Deerfield Township,
3 miles east, when he first heard cannon fire, mounted his horse, and
rode to the scene.
At Fort Scott, pandemonium prevailed.
Price, with his 12,000, was expected at any instant. Citizens fled in
droves. Lane completed his evacuation in a heavy rainstorm, ordering
Montgomery with 800 mounted men to hold out as long as possible, and
then burn everything. The would-be protectors passed their last hours
tipsily hurrahing and pillaging the town, proving a far worse foe than
Price, who at that time had no thought of invading Kansas.
In his Drywood camp, all was
drenched. So many guns were discharged in cleaning that "at a distance
it seemed as if a skirmish were in progress."
The next day, Sept. 4, the
Missourians resumed their march north for Lexington, hoping to recapture
the heart of their own state. They reached Lexington on the 12th, and on
the 20th, following a fabled siege, the town surrendered. It was the
high watermark of Southern fortunes in the Western theater. Within weeks,
Price reluctantly pulled back south, behind the Osage, to spend the late
fall days of 1861 in the so-called "Sauk River Camp," around the scenic
overlook west of Osceola, recruiting and training for
all-too-soon-to-come battles.
Price's diversion to Drywood
failed to achieve its aim of preventing the Jayhawkers from "forming an
army to fall in behind him and harass his rear." While he was waging
conventional war at Lexington, the Kansans were heroically torching
Osceola and other towns, "clearing out everything disloyal, from a
Shanghai rooster to a Durham cow." This "mutinous rabble" hauled home
from Osceola wagonloads of women's dresses and grand pianos. The
"regimental chaplain" lugged stolen altar furnishings to equip his own
unfurnished Kansas church.
Drywood didn't protect Vernon
County
long, either. At news of the fate of Osceola and Price's pullback, "all
roads leading southward were fairly thronged with fugitive families,"
till hardly a Southern family was left west of Nevada. Not long after the Drywood
fight, the first "Federal" troops (some of Montgomery's bravoes) entered
Nevada. They murdered a civilian and drove off a herd of horses, no
doubt making up for those 86 mules!
Editor's note: Another account of
this battle was described through the eyes of a soldier in "Battlefield
Dispatches," a column by Arnold Schofield, Fort Scott, in the Sept. 2 edition of
the Herald-Tribune. The surprise attack and capture of the Kansas mules
also is in the 1887 "History of Vernon County" A rescue mission failed
to bring those mules home. |
