Welcome to the Bleeding Kansas Home Page. Here you will find information covering the War in the Trans-Mississippi West. NOTE: During the month of October, the Bleeding Kansas Home Page will undergo major revisions to improve site navigation, appearance, and content. The site will remain open during these updates, although some portions will be under construction. Please e-mail us if you'd like to make suggestions during the process, or if you find any errors among the new links. Among the improvements, you will find a low band-width version of the site, designed for persons with slower modems or older browsers. Thank you for visiting the Bleeding Kansas Home Page. And don't forget to bookmark this page so you can find it again...

The Bleeding Kansas Home Page  To visit a page on this site, simply click on the icon.

	BLEEDING KANSAS: THE SHULERS AND THE WAR ON THE BORDER -- This long (10,000+ words) narrative follows the service of one family through years of war in Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, and the Indian Territories. Although it focuses on the Shuler family, the narrative is a good introduction to the fighting and social climate in Kansas from 1856-1865. The enhanced version contains graphics and maps.
	DOCUMENTS -- Here you will find a collection of documents and images covering the War in the Trans-Mississippi West. Written from the perspective of the men and women who experienced the war, these texts can serve as an excellent basis to begin a study of the times. This page is updated frequently; check back twice a month for new documents.
	BIBLIOGRAPHY -- Even though the Civil War West of the Mississippi has long been a neglected area of study, there are good sources to be found on the subject. If this page has whet your appetite for further study, here are a list of books for further reading.

Introduction

"Bleeding Kansas: The Shulers and the War on the Border," © 1996, Marc Alford Garrett. Portions of this document may be reproduced for review or scholastic purposes. Other reproduction constitutes infringement.

Men disappear into history. That is, their lives are codified into those few facts fitting a bureaucrat's ledger, only to be filed away after their passing. This vanishing act is especially acute for the common soldier, who enlists, trains, shoots and is shot at, may be wounded, probably sickens, survives if lucky, dies if not, and leaves service changed irrevocably. The outline of his service may be found in regimental histories, which are often written as if battles are fought by commissioned officers above a faceless mass of armed, belligerent flesh. But the student of history may breathe life into this outline through muster rolls, hospital records, pension files, and personal letters. Thus, the soldier's ghost, this disappearing chalk outline, may be limned in color, rescued from oblivion.

By the time the attack of Fort Sumter ushered in the Civil War in the spring of 1861, men had killed each other over slavery and its related issues for nearly seven years -- 1,000 miles to the west, in the territory of Kansas. For eleven years before and during the Civil War, armed bands of marauders roamed the border territories and turned Kansas into a waste land, where families sent fathers and sons to fight and die for the grand cause of union or the humble cause of a rescued farm. One such family was the Shulers. No Shuler served as a commissioned officer. No Shuler amassed a fortune. No Shuler achieved fame as a warrior or statesman. Yet to fix the Shulers' place in history is to understand how common people affect, and are buffeted by, events much larger than themselves. Joseph Shuler and his family are my ancestors. This is their story.

Antebellum information regarding the Shuler family is scarce, and the record often contradictory. Joseph Shuler was born in 1803. Family tradition has him born in Germany, where he taught school. His army discharge certificate, however, gives his place of birth as Botetourt county, Virginia. Regardless of his origins, he struck an imposing figure at six feet two inches, with a dark complexion, black eyes and brown hair.

He next appears in the record on April 19, 1835. On that day he was married to Jane Crawford by the Justice of the Peace in Hocking County, Ohio. A note in the handwriting of Jane Crawford Shuler's granddaughter lists "Ireland" next to Crawford's name; whether this refers to her country of origin or simply to her ethnicity is unclear. A separate note gives Crawford's birth date as July 10, 1814.

Joseph and Jane Shuler had either eight or nine children; their names and likely birth order were Lausia, Alonzo, Charlotte, George, Lark, Sam, Frank, and Nancy. A handwritten family tree numbers and names the children, but a ninth space is left blank. It is unclear when the last of the children was born; however, due to Jane's age, it is likely that all were born by the end of the war.

Birth information is available for only two of Joseph's children: Alonzo and George. Alonzo Barnett, called "Barney" by his family, was born in Danville, Illinois, on March 20, 1842, according to family tradition. George was born about 1846 in Dallis, Missouri.

A family listed only as "the Shulers" was, along with the Splawn family, the first to settle La Cygne in Linn County, Kansas. Thus, the first half of Joseph Shuler's life was spent in a slow westward journey through a growing America: Virginia in 1803, Ohio in 1835, Illinois in 1842, Missouri in 1846, and Kansas sometime between 1850 to 1855.

According to a letter handwritten by Joseph Shuler's granddaughter (Mattie Shuler Miller), Joseph and four of his sons, Alonzo Barnett, George, Sam, and Lark were soldiers in the civil war. Joseph, Alonzo, and George are all listed in preserved civil war era documents. However, searches by the author at the National Archives in Washington, DC, and by reference librarians at the Kansas State Historical Society in Topeka yielded no record of Sam or Lark Shuler. Neither brother is mentioned in Kansas regular volunteer lists, Kansas militia lists, the general Union army index, and the general Confederate index. Lark's absence from any official roll is especially distressing, because he is listed as "killed in war" in the letter written by Miller, his niece. Assuming that Mrs. Miller's recollections are accurate (and they were for Joseph, Alonzo, and George), why would Sam and Lark be absent from the rolls? The most likely explanation: much of the fighting was done by irregulars, who never registered either with the Union army or with the Kansas militia. It is possible that Sam and Lark fought as such irregulars. While they may have participated in the events in the war on the border, there is no record of their having done so. Thus, their ghosts will have to be silent observers to the events in the following narrative.

While Kansas saw its first European visitors in the sixteenth century, its white population did not increase substantially until the mid-nineteenth. The increase was driven primarily by the political contest over slavery raging to the east. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 had established the principle of "Squatter Sovereignty," which allowed the settlers of the new territories to permit or outlaw slavery in their jurisdictions as they saw fit. The Emigrant Aid Company in Massachusetts was created in 1854 to promote the settlement of Kansas by abolitionists; southern partisans formed similar groups.

Pro-slavery politicians won the territory's first free elections in 1854, and a rival abolitionist government was established shortly thereafter. James Lane, who would later become one of Kansas's first Senators, presided over the Topeka convention which framed a free-state constitution. The political rivalry quickly descended into violence when a free-stater was murdered in the fall of 1855, and bands of pro-slavery Kansans joined Missourians in terrorizing free-state farmers. The tension led to the "Wakarusa War," which was closer to a game of chicken between the two factions than an actual shooting conflict.

The two largest free-state cities were Topeka and Lawrence; the latter was attacked on May 21, 1856 by an army of proslavery men carrying such banners as "Southern Rights" and "Supremacy of the White Race." The Herald of Freedom and the Kansas Free State presses were destroyed, and the town was looted.

According to family tradition, Joseph Shuler ran a feed mill in Lawrence, which was burned during the looting. Joseph was knifed, then fled after loading his family into his wagon, and hid in a ravine near the Kansas river until the looting was complete. Jane Shuler miscarried as a result of the violence.

Shortly after the sacking of Lawrence, a band led by John Brown, who would later attempt to incite a slave rebellion at Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, massacred several proslavery men. Increasingly, two groups terrorized the countryside -- Jayhawkers, who supported the free-state cause, and Bushwhackers, proslavery Kansans and Missourians. The line between political action and violence had all but disappeared: the future Senator Jim Lane frequently led the Jayhawkers on their bloody raids.

In 1858, a band of "border ruffians" -- proslavery Missourians -- crossed the Marais des Cygnes ("Marsh of Swans") River and murdered five men. The Shulers lived in the vicinity of the killings, but it is unclear whether they were involved. John Greenleaf Whittier, the Quaker poet, was moved to write of the incident:

From the hearths of their cabins, The field of their corn, Unwarned and unweaponed, The victims were torn -- By the whirlwind of murder Swooped up and swept on To the low, reedy fen-lands, The Marsh of the Swans.

This violence continued with only occasional abatement until it was formalized by the outbreak of the civil war in 1861.

Of the territories and states in the border area, Kansas and Missouri remained in the Union, while Arkansas voted to secede. The Kansas population was overwhelmingly pro-Union, while Missourians may have been evenly split in their support for the warring sides. Tribes in the Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma) contributed soldiers to both sides in the conflict. Although the war on the border had little strategic effect on the civil war as a whole, the fighting was as vicious in the border region as anywhere in the country. Indeed, Kansas lost more soldiers per capita in battle than any other state in the Union.

Sometime prior to 1861, the Shulers had moved from Lawrence seventy miles southeast to Linn County. In various documents, their residence is listed as La Cygne, Trading Post, or Mound City, but these towns are only a few miles apart, just west of the Kansas-Missouri border. According to family tradition, during the summer of 1861, the Shuler homestead was raided while Joseph and Jane were out of the house. Barney, sick with chills in bed, was taken from the house, while George was left behind because of this youth. Joseph and Jane returned while the raiders were taking prisoners; Joseph hid, while Jane rode in. Her horse was taken from her, as were all of the family horses. The raiders left the area, hanging prisoners as they rode on. Barney somehow escaped death, and, according to the family tradition "immediately joined the civil war."

Union generals debated for some time over how best to use the Kansas Cavalry. Simply put, the Trans-Mississippi theater was of little strategic importance to the Union. "Should the Union armies win in the East," Albert Castel has noted, "the Confederate Trans-Mississippi would inevitably fall, while on the other hand no success west of the Mississippi could compensate for failure east of that river." This neglect by the Union meant that most battles fought in the border territories were inconclusive, "primarily of a holding nature." Small southern raiding parties would attack supply lines or outposts, be repelled by the Federals, and scatter into the countryside to regroup for another day. For the most part, Kansas troops were left to defend Kansas and attack Confederate forces in the counties bordering Kansas, but with less help than the local military commanders would have liked.

Instability in the Ozarks, and southwestern Missouri in particular, prompted the Union's Southwest Division in Springfield to issue General Orders No. 15, on June 16, 1862. The order required all persons in the district to appear before a "properly qualified officer and take the oath of allegiance to the United States of America...." Upon taking the oath, citizens were required to carry at all times a certificate demonstrating loyalty, and citizens found outside of their homes without such a certificate were subject to arrest.

In late June, the Sixth moved sixty miles south to Baxter Springs to prepare for the first large-scale expedition involving Kansas units. Located in the extreme southeastern corner of Kansas, Baxter Springs served as a way station for expeditions into Indian Territory.

The Spring of 1862 had seen the battle of Pea Ridge in northwest Arkansas, which ended any realistic hopes the Confederacy had of capturing Missouri. The Sixth did not participate in this battle, arguably the most important in the Trans-Mississippi during the entire war. But even though the major Federal victory was reason for celebration, "the good feelings were mixed with rage and horror." . As historian Alvin Josephy described the battle, Indians had fighting alongside the Confederates "had scalped, tomahawked, and mutilated the bodies of Federal wounded and dead during and after the fighting...." Moreover, the Indians were Cherokees -- residents of the territory into which Alonzo and his brigade were to ride in June and July. Thus, even though many Indians also fought on the side of the Federals, the typical cavalryman's attitude toward the Native Americans was poisonous, at best.

The Cherokee tribe's position in the civil war was precarious and complex, and deserves mention here.

The Cherokees were divided roughly into two factions at the outbreak of the rebellion: not surprisingly, one was pro-Confederate, while the other was sympathetic to the North but attempted to remain neutral. John Ross, a westernized, slave-owning, mixed race Cherokee led an "element that was composed mostly of non-slave-owning fullbloods," according to Josephy. In opposition to Ross's leadership

was a group of pro-Confederate Cherokees, principally slave-owning mixed-bloods. Composed largely of members of families who had favored removal to the West in the 1830s, they were led by fifty-five-year-old Stand Watie, a longtime rival and enemy of Ross and the lone Indian survivor of those who had signed the treaty with the government agreeing to give up the Cherokee homeland in the East. Ross's angry followers had assassinated the three other signers, one of whom was Watie's famous brother, Elias Boudinot.... One his own, [Watie] was raising and drilling a force of mixed-blood Cherokee horsemen to assist the Confederacy.

Ross feared both Watie and "the consequences of supporting" him, and attempted to remain neutral. Pressure from both the North and South mounted, however, and in October 1861, Ross threw in his lot with the Confederacy, in exchange for the South's agreement to assume Federal financial obligations and protect Cherokee territory.

It was in this context that the Sixth entered Cherokee country on July 2, 1862 under Colonel Lewis R. Jewell, with the goal of crushing Stand Watie's troops.

Jewell's troops encountered Watie's band of three to four hundred men on the road between Maysville, Arkansas, and Locust Grove, Indian Territory, on the third, and skirmished with the Indian's command. After a brief fight, Watie and his men fled in disorderly fashion to the south. The Sixth was forced to break off the chase at nightfall, but captured the Cherokees' supplies and horses. On the same day the Ninth Kansas had "surprised and soundly whipped" a band of Confederates in Locust Grove, and the two fleeing bands demoralized the Cherokees under John Ross. Stand Watie's force fled below the Arkansas River to lick its wounds for a time.

The Federals celebrated the Fourth of July with cannon fire and a troop review in their encampment at Wolf Creek. On the tenth, the Sixth moved south toward the Grand River, and encamped at Flat Rock Creek, eighteen miles from Fort Gibson.

But the troops' high spirits were short lived; food in the countryside was scarce, and the unusually hot and dry summer was hard on man and animal alike. The horses were reduced to foraging grass. Many of them became so hungry that when left to graze they ate the manes and tails of the other horses. Small bands of Confederates harassed the Federals. One captain at Shuler's camp wrote:

The rebels are threatening to burn me out of the country and have already made several attempts. It is almost incredible, but nevertheless true, that the grass on the prairies burns at this present writing with as much facility as in the fall or winter. We have difficulty in keeping our own camp from taking fire.

The army went on half rations to conserve food, but good fortune intervened before the situation became untenable; given the new facts on the ground, John Ross agreed to surrender to the custody of the Federals and to pledge the Cherokee's allegiance to the Union. A detachment of the Sixth was sent to escort him and his family from his home at Tahlequah. We will never know if Alonzo Shuler was among the soldiers who marched the half-mile down Ross's entry to arrive at the mansion where the leader of the Cherokees waited to be taken into the protective custody of the Federals.

With the Indian threat reduced substantially at little loss of life, the Federals were free to leave Indian Territory for the time. By the first of August, the Sixth Kansas had returned to Fort Scott, and were encamped just to the east at Drywood, "for the purpose of recuperation and rest."

The Sixth skirmished several times in August with rebels under Generals John S. Marmaduke and Douglas H. Cooper, but the fights were not decisive. Late in the month, the Sixth moved into southwestern Missouri as part of the Second Brigade, First Division, of the Army of the Frontier. For two weeks, the Sixth camped at Coxie's Creek, and, "being the only cavalry regiment in the brigade,...was kept constantly employed," according to the Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kansas.

The Kansas Federals in Missouri did not tread lightly. According to Britton, Confederate families constantly complained of abuse at the hands of the "Kansas Red Legs [who] robbed and plundered the people of Missouri of personal property which could not in any manner be applied to military purposes..." While rough treatment at the hands of an occupying army is not especially surprising, even Union families began to complain bitterly, accusing the regiments of "all sorts of depredations."

The abuse of civilians would come back to haunt Kansas, but not for another year. Union commanders felt they had more important concerns. After all, a war was on.

The Sixth next flexed its muscle in Newtonia, Missouri. According to Britton,

This little college town of for or five hundred people was located on a branch in the prairie that flowed off to the north in the direction of Shoal Creek, and on the west and northwest of it, one half to three quarters of a mile off, there was a high rolling ridge of prairie, perhaps seventy-five feet above the town, that extended to Shoal Creek timber. The Sarcoxie Road came over the ridge from the northwest, and the Granby and Neosho roads came over the ridge from the west...

On October 28, 1862, a small reconnaissance party including members of the Sixth Kansas discovered that Confederate General Cooper had amassed an army of over 4,000 men in Newtonia. This army included Stand Watie's Cherokees, who had regrouped after their defeat in Indian Territory at the hands of the Sixth. Surprised that such a large force of Confederates had crossed into Missouri, General James G. Blunt quickly ordered two brigades to drive the Confederates out of Newtonia.

On the morning of October 30, the Ninth Wisconsin Cavalry attacked from the ridge northwest of town. Confederate artillery quickly overwhelmed the Federal vanguard, which was forced to retreat. The Sixth Kansas was sent in to rescue the fleeing Federals, and came across dead members of the Ninth Wisconsin whose corpses had been stripped. According to Britton, "[T]hree or four rail pens were hastily built and the dead soldiers put into them to keep the hogs that had already come on to the ground from mutilating their bodies."

The Sixth then formed the right of the Union force on the ridge overlooking Newtonia, and could see (via field-glasses) that "a considerable force of the enemy [had amassed] around Ritchie's stone barn." On the north side of the barn, a stone fence ran along the both sides of the road to Neosho for one quarter of a mile.

The ridge overlooking town gave the Federals an advantage in the artillery duel that followed, and "in a short time [the Federals] killed all the rebel battery horses, and killed and wounded several rebel artillerymen." But the Sixth was forced to move from the ridge when a large force of Confederate cavalry rode out of town on the Neosho road, apparently to flank the Union position. Again, Britton:

As soon as the enemy emerged from the lane made by the stone fences..., they came into line and marched over the open prairie in fine order, until they reached the summit of a low ridge, when they came in plain view of the Federal cavalry under Colonel Jewell, who was marching in line directly toward them.... Presently they had approached within little over a hundred yards of each other, when the hostile forces opened fire. After a round from his Sharps carbines, Colonel Jewell ordered his men to draw sabres and charge, and away they flew over the prairie, raising a cloud of dust in their rear. When the Confederates saw the sabres flashing in the sunlight, and the dust arising from the horses' feet of the advancing foe, they instantly wheeled about and galloped back into town.

But it was a trap. Jewell and the Sixth chased at full speed the fleeing Confederates only to race headlong into the fire of hundreds of men hidden behind the stone fences. The Federals were quickly forced to retreat to the ridge northwest of town.

The left arm of the Union position (filled out by Indian regiments) was much more successful than the Sixth in the day's fighting, but the Union was forced to retire at dark without having taken Newtonia.

Union reinforcements from Springfield, Missouri arrived three days later, and when the Federals again marched on Newtonia, Cooper withdrew in the face of superior numbers without a fight. The rebel army fled through Pineville to Arkansas, and the Union army gave up the pursuit after several miles due to exhaustion. Newtonia lay in ruins, but it was back in Union hands.

This 1854 map shows Fort Wayne and Maysville. The latter town is listed variously as belonging in Indian Territory or Arkansas. Indian Territory is colored red, Missouri is yellow, and Arkansas is pink. Source: Library of Congress.

~~~

The Union command under General Blunt tracked Cooper's force as he fled south, and after a chase through "rough, wooded, and hilly country" caught up to the rebels at Old Fort Wayne, near Maysville, Arkansas, on October 22. Blunt, says Josephy, "fell on Cooper's force... capturing his artillery, and sending the shattered Confederate Indian units [under Stand Watie] in flight to the south side of the Arkansas River." Cooper's "battle-flag fell into the hands of the Sixth."

The Sixth and the rest of the Army of the Frontier under Blunt remained in camp at Old Fort Wayne, and its days were spent scouting the country and skirmishing with bushwhackers. Lieutenant Colonel Lewis R. Jewell, a Massachusetts native who had settled in Kansas in 1856 and fought early in the border war, was soon promoted to the command of the Sixth, and his brief tenure proved popular with soldiers and civilians alike; according to Cory in a monograph on the Sixth, when "Colonel Jewell passed through the [Boston] mountains, the inhabitants greeted the Stars and Stripes with cheers, which clearly demonstrated the sentiments of the people of Northwestern Arkansas who had been forced to accept secession."

Sometime in mid-November, the Army of the Frontier learned that Brigadier General John S. Marmaduke had advanced a large force of Confederates on Cane Hill, Arkansas with the goal of "gathering subsistence... procuring flour and meal from the mills around Cane Hill and corn, potatoes, and apples from the nearby farms." Estimates of the size of Marmaduke's force vary wildly, from 2,500 to 8,000. Regardless of the force's size, dislodging Marmaduke from Cane Hill would do more than deny supplies to the Confederate army – according to Britton, at stake was "the contest... for the possession of Northwestern Arkansas and the Indian Territory." Marmaduke's force consisted of several regiments under General Joseph "Jo" Shelby as well as guerrilla followers of William Quantrill, a killer who will figure prominently later in our story.

As soon as supplies arrived in the Federal camp, the Army of the Frontier marched south over mountainous terrain toward Marmaduke's men. At 5 a.m. on October 28, Blunt's force entered Cane Hill from the north and immediately encountered stiff resistance; in Blunt's words, the Confederates "were prepared for us."

After an extensive artillery duel, Marmaduke's men were forced to retire, and according to Britton,

took up another position behind a low ridge running east and west just south of town. [Marmaduke] concentrated his entire force along this ridge, and his line of battle was about half a mile long. There was a deep ravine in his front, which the Federal troops would be obliged to cross before attacking him with small-arms.

Blunt again brought up his artillery, "and ordered a hot fire of shot and shell upon the Confederate line, and soon demoralized it so much that his infantry crossed the deep ravine without serious resistance."

Marmaduke fled south again into the Boston mountains, this time through a valley leading toward Van Buren, and Blunt kept up the chase. At one point many of the Federal cavalrymen were forced to dismount and, "springing from one ledge of rocks to another," chase the rebels on foot. This exhausting pattern continued -- stand, retreat, stand, retreat -- until late in the day Marmaduke found an advantageous position which he vowed to defend bitterly.

From the summit of the mountain, advancing south, the Cane Hill and Van Buren Road gradually descends into Cove Creek Valley. This valley is very narrow, and on descending it the mountains on each side gradually rise to great height, perhaps one thousand feet in some places.

Marmaduke, then, would make his stand in the sheltered valley. Colonel Jewell and the Sixth Kansas formed the vanguard of the advancing Federals, and it quickly became apparent that only a small force of men would be able to charge through the valley to attack the rebels. Jewell made a speech to his men, as recounted by Cory:

He told them that he had a very dangerous expedition before them, with the chances against them. He reminded them that Marmaduke and Shelby had somewhere about 7000 men. He would order no man to go. He wanted volunteers. He got them.

It was decided that a separate Union regiment under Colonel William F. Cloud would flank the rebels by climbing over a ridge and fire into the valley at the exposed enemy below. With this understanding, Jewell and the volunteers of the Sixth charged into the valley with such ferocity that the defending rebels fled in terror.

After firing several rounds with their Sharps carbines and Colt's revolvers into the ranks of the enemy, Colonel Jewell ordered his men to draw sabers and charge into the midst of the Confederates, which they did, sabring them from right to left for about half a mile, and causing the greatest consternation. Many of the Confederate soldiers threw down their arms and fled in the wildest disorder....

The charging Federals hacked at the buckling rebels in a frenzy of killing; "every man was yelling like a fiend." But unbeknownst to Jewell, Cloud had been ordered by Blunt to withdraw from his flanking position for reasons that are still unclear. As the Sixth reached the narrowest point of the defile, a large force of rebels awaited in ambush from the cover of the trees and boulders lining the valley walls. Once Jewell's men came into range, the rebels opened fire.

The results were disastrous. Without Cloud's covering fire to protect them, the Federals fell dead and dying in the valley floor and stream. Jewell fell instantly, his horse shot out from under him as a bullet ripped through his chest. The Federals were quickly forced to retreat to the north and regroup with Blunt' main force.

General Jo Shelby may have been the first man to reach Colonel Jewell. When the rebel asked the fallen Colonel if he could do anything for him, Jewell replied, "Yes, General, you can get me a cup of water."

As Blunt amassed his force to prepare for a full-scale frontal assault on the defile, he was greatly surprised to see a rebel officer ride up with a white flag. As Blunt described it,

on sending an officer to receive it, they requested the privilege of taking off their dead and wounded. Consideration for the fate of Lieutenant-Colonel Jewell, and others who had fallen on the ground they then occupied, and whom I feared they might brutally murder, induced me to respect their flag of truce, convinced though I was at the time that it was a cowardly trick, resorted to to enable them to make good their retreat and save their guns. It now being dark, and my men entirely exhausted and without food, I considered further pursuit useless, and returned with my command to Cane Hill.

Jewell was carried back to the Union camp, and died of his wounds on November 30.

Alonzo's regiment was assigned to Rhea's Mills, about ten miles north of Cane Hill, and remained there for several weeks. The battle of Cane Hill resembled so many others in the war on the border: inconclusive, with heavy losses on both sides.

On December 8 Marmaduke's forces, still looking for food, struck at Prairie Grove near Rhea's Mills in the hopes of capturing Union supply trains. The Sixth had little part in the fighting because the thick forest nearby hampered the effective use of cavalry. But surely the weary soldiers of the Sixth were grateful not to fight, particularly upon learning the circumstances of the battle at Prairie Grove. Wounded Federals, seeking warmth from the cold December air, covered themselves with piles of straw in an apple orchard. Stray artillery shells soon ignited the straw, burning alive the wounded soldiers. One Confederate who witnessed the conflagration later wrote in horror that

Two hundred human bodies lay half consumed in one vast sepulcher, and in every position of mutilated and horrible contortion, while a large drove of hogs, attracted doubtless by the scent of roasting flesh, came greedily from the apple trees and gorged themselves on the unholy banquet. Intestines, heads, arms, feet, and even hearts were dragged over the ground and devoured at leisure.

Three weeks later, on December 27, the Sixth moved south to Van Buren under Blunt's command. In a much needed victory, the Federals overran the town and captured a large store of Confederate supplies.

The next three months passed without event for Alonzo's company, which wintered at Crane Creek, near Springfield, Missouri. In late March 1863 the Sixth was assigned to Fort Scott and granted short furloughs.

Alonzo and Company D spent much of the summer escorting supply trains from Fort Scott, Kansas to Fort Blunt, Cherokee Nation, and back. But compared to the fevered pitch of fighting the previous fall, the summer of 1863 was relatively calm. This, of course, would not last.

While Alonzo's company escorted supply trains in Indian Territory, a massacre would occur three hundred miles to the north which would inflame the Union and draw another Shuler into the war on the border.

Among the many bands of pro-Confederate marauders roaming the Kansas-Missouri border was one led by William Clarke Quantrill (also spelled Quantrell), described by Geoffrey C. Ward as "a former schoolteacher from Ohio with little interest in slavery but limitless enthusiasm for looting and killing." Quantrill is said to have been cruel since childhood; one account tells of his tying two cats, one to the other, by their tails. He then hung the cats over a fence rail and watched as they clawed each other to death.

Quantrill's followers included Cole Younger and Frank James -- who would later gain infamy as leaders of the James-Younger gang -- and "Bloody" Bill Anderson, a horse thief and killer who decorated his horse's bridle with the scalps of his victims. In an attempt to curb the predations of Quantrill, Union forces rounded up many of the female relatives of his men. Several of the women were killed when their Kansas City holding cell mysteriously collapsed; Quantrill's ruffians swore revenge.

Quantrill selected Lawrence, Kansas as the site of this next raid; "We can get more money and more revenge there than anywhere else in the state of Kansas." The city, according to Jay Monaghan, "epitomized everything the South despised in the North. Its New England reformers, its widely circulating newspapers had roweled the nation with abolition propaganda for seven years. The hated Jim Lane was out there now on vacation from the Senate."

Quantrill gathered over 400 men, and on the morning of August 21, 1863, pillaged undefended Lawrence. His orders were simple: "Kill every man and burn every house." According to Monaghan,

The street patrols robbed all houses systematically. At the gate to each residence two or three men waited on their horses. Others dismounted, strode up the walk, spurs jingling, and knocked. If the door was opened by a man, he was shot down, if by a woman, she was ordered to deliver all money, watches, and jewelry in the house. Then the dwelling was set on fire. Any man who appeared from the smoke was killed. Some women grappled with their husbands' murderers. Most of them stood with their children, helpless and horror-struck. An occasional heroine ran recklessly to her spouse only to feel him killed in her arms.

Senator Lane escaped the slaughter -- either by fleeing through a cornfield, or by hiding behind a log, depending on the source. Quantrill fled back to the Missouri countryside, and dispersed his army amongst sympathetic civilians -- but by the time he led his men out of town, 183 men and boys were murdered, and Lawrence lay in ashes.

As news of the slaughter spread, Kansans reacted with outrage and demanded vengeance. Most Kansans had believed that Lawrence, over forty miles inside the Kansas border, was safe from attack, and were shocked to discover otherwise.

The first official Union response came four days later when General Thomas Ewing issued the General Orders No. 11, clearing all persons living in several Missouri counties thought to be most sympathetic to Quantrill, and seizing all of the grain and hay in those counties. According to Monaghan, "Dispossessed homesteaders packed their wagons, drove into Kansas City and Independence to live miserably on government bounty as the Creeks and Seminole had been doing since the winter of 1861."

Colonel Charles Jennison was commissioned to recruit a cavalry regiment for the defense of eastern Kansas, and in September Captain George Hoyt traveled through several towns in the area, exhorting men to enlist.

Hoyt was no ordinary army captain; he had led an outlaw band known as the Red Legs, named for the red leather leggings worn by its members. Castel described them:

The Red Legs operated primarily in the border districts of Missouri, but also robbed and molested Kansans whom they claimed were proslavery and pro-Southern.... Perhaps more than anything else, they helped to keep alive the bitterness and resentment of the Missourians against Kansas and to provide a cause and excuse for bushwhacking.

The product of the massacre at Lawrence, and of Hoyt's subsequent recruiting drive, was the Fifteenth Kansas Volunteer Cavalry -- George W. Shuler's regiment.

On October 1, 1863, George Shuler, age 17, volunteered at Mound City, Kansas for a term of service of three years as a Private in Company M. His enlistment information is similar to his father's and brother's: he listed his occupation as "farmer," and had black hair, black eyes, dark complexion, and stood five feet eight inches tall.

On the 17th, he mustered in at Fort Leavenworth, and his regiment was soon encamped on the "Blue Grass" nearby. As with the Sixth, the Fifteenth Kansas had an inauspicious beginning. According to the Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Kansas,

The first arms received... were Hall's carbines and sabres, insufficient in numbers, and the former particularly worthless, and long before condemned by the Army Board. With such as these about one half of the regiment was armed -- this is, for a total of over eleven hundred men we were furnished six hundred and sixty-six rusty breech loading carbines of the worst pattern extant....

Many of the horses died for lack of stables. The winter of 1863-1864 came harsh and early, and many of the men were "badly frozen." The companies were stationed in various towns in southeastern Kansas: Olathe, Coldwater Grove, Paola, Trading Post, Fort Scott, Osage Mission, and Humboldt. On January 31, 1864, Company M was assigned to Camp Plumb, Kansas under Captain Edward B. Metz (who had enlisted George) and soon thereafter received a shipment of Sharps breechloaders to replace the inferior Hall's.

For months, this regiment born of vengeance sat in camp, never seeing action. But Missourians feared their very existence, as the following letter from one Union commander to another in February, 1864 attests:

The citizens of Kansas City and other towns on the border are under apprehension of danger to the peace of that district of country from the Fifteenth Kansas (Jennison's regiment), if it should be stationed near the line. They state that many of the old Red Leg organization are in this regiment. I do not know whether this is so, but I respectfully suggest ... that some other troops stationed in that district of country would have good effect.

The following months saw several moves for Company M, but apparently little action. By August 31, 1864, Company M was stationed at Mound City, Kansas -- home, or very close to it, for George and many of his fellow soldiers.

After months and months of inaction, as related by the Adjutant General’s Report,

the Fifteenth was, for the first time, brought into the field against its natural enemy -- the rebels and bushwhackers under Gen. Price, in Missouri -- more than a year after its organization, and after its animals were worn out on escort duty and bootless scouts, and it had comparatively lost the esprit du corps so necessary to a healthy military condition.

But the Fifteenth would have to whip itself into shape; it would soon take part in the war's biggest engagement west of the Mississippi.

This page was created 8/21/98. All original contents © 1998, Marc Alford Garrett.