Ghosts on the River Bank

Drifting down the river nowadays one is reminded constantly of the presence of the Union Pacific railroad that parrallels the south bank for much of its route across the state. But on a foggy morning and from the seat of my canoe I'm sometimes able to penetrate the haze and see into the past. To see, not the endless coal trains, but what has passed here before.

Depending on whom you ask, I've been either blessed or cursed with an imagination that lets me see often what I wish to see rather than what's actually in front of me. When I remember what I've read about an area and look across the water to the rail line on the bank its easy for me to visualize what once was there.

On this morning I can see the grey ghosts of Gen. Sterling Price's Confederate Cavalry walking their horses along the tracks above the river bank and with only a little imagination the details begin to appear. Ragged troops in tattered dress mounted on splendid horses, weapons askew as they walk their mounts westward. I can hear the jingle of accoutrements and squeak of leather. As the breeze wafts toward me I can smell the damp odor of their mounts in the heavy air and I notice other things too.

Odors of gun oil, sweaty clothing and the smell of jerky and foodstuffs carried in their knapsacks.
And glints of sunlight sparkle from bridles and spurs.

I watch the nearly endless procession pass and fade again into the fog and I remember their exploits, now nearly a century and a half gone by.

In the spring of 1864 Price had been tasked to stage a raid across Missouri in an effort to show the northern voters that the Civil War in the west was out of control and convince them that it would take someone other than Lincoln to take control in the national elections that fall.

Price had come out of his bases in Arkansas with 12,000 Confederate cavalry, intent first on raiding the great store houses of arms in St. Louis. But even though he destroyed Ft. Davidson in Iron County and opened the way to assault that city he lost the advantage of speed and surprise.

So swinging more to the west, his hoards of cavalry swept over a brave contingent of some 200 federal militia south of Union, Missouri and descended on the river town of Washington.
At first the northern troops had erected a line of defence to the south of town along a ridge where 5th Street runs today. But having gotten word of the defeat at Union the local commander decided discretion was the better part of valor and utilized two small steam ferries to move his garrison across the river to safety.

Price entered Washington unopposed and spent two days pillaging the community before turning westward and following the rail line toward New Haven.
There with a single battery of artillery the Union men tried to fight again, but again the grey horsemen simply enveloped and overwhelmed the defenders. In New Haven the tracks run a block south of the river and here they captured a supply train holding some 400 muskets and a box car full of uniforms. These were taken upriver to Hermann and distributed among the main body which had passed New Haven by.

From Hermann the lines of horsemen passed ever westward crossing and then burning the railroad bridges over the Gasconade and then the Osage Rivers before drawing up before Jefferson City.

As they prepared to lay seige to the capitol word arrived that federal reinforcements were coming up from St.Louis behind them and on riverboats as well.

Price was forced to bypass the capitol and continued his advance up river to Boonville where he was joined by Bloody Bill Anderson whose Bushwackers, hard bitten veterans of the Kansas border wars, included Frank and Jesse James, Cole Younger and many others who would make up that famous band of outlaws after the war concluded.
Here even though the locals were heavily prosouthern in their ideals, the confederates again paused to pillage the town. Then moving onward again, to Glasgow where they captured and burned the large sidewheeler steamboat West Wind, and then captured the Union garrison who had taken up defenses in brestworks outside of town.

They moved farther west to battles at Lexington and Blue Springs and eventually to Westport before leaving the river behind and cutting a swath across southeastern Kansas where they were finally defeated. There they tried to defend their train of plunder and supplies which had come to number more than 500 wagons. This defense cost them the mobility which had been their main advantage. General Price, many of his troops now defeated and dispersed, led his remaining men now down to about 6000 in number back into the safety of the indian country of Oklahoma.

When the Union cavalry clashed with them at Westport they fought what became and still is the largest cavalry engagement in the history of the United States.

They left behind a trail of burned farms and barren country following the river all the way across the state of Missouri and no river towns were left untouched. These hard fighting, wild and desperate men rode the banks of the Missouri River in the longest, largest and finally the most tragic cavalry raid of the war. They lost their captured supplies and failed to help sway the re-election of President Lincoln. They destroyed much property and many lives, but in the end it changed nothing and was but one more chapter in the turbulent story of the Civil War in Missouri.

Whenever I paddle though the fog on an early morning on the Missouri River I'm never sure what I'll see, but whatever or whoever comes out of the fog was really there at one time or another, and seeing it from the distance of time, well if only I could draw you a picture.