Suggested
by the Reunion of Pindall’s Men at Moberly”
“Fighting by day,
fighting by night. Now stopping a wild charge of Patterson’s
cavalry in and around Helens, now kneeling quietly on the
banks of Red river and picking off the “feds” on some
passing government steamer; fighting as they ate, fighting
while they rested, snatching perchance, when the noise of
battle rolled away into the lowering night, some brief moment
to talk of home, some brief moment to talk of home, friends
and sweethearts in far away Missouri. Such was the daily
history of Pindall’s famous battalion from 1862 to 1865. The
whole Confederate army did not contain a more daring or
determined lot of fighters and it was only with the most
tearful regret that they stacked their arms at Shreveport in
June of 1865 and began their long and fateful journey
homeward. The battalion was made up in Monroe and surrounding
counties and was one of “Pap” Price’s main standbys in
the long and desperate running fight from the Missouri to the
Red river, a distance of 500 miles, a campaign which will some
day take its just rank among the military achievements of the
century. Every day and hour nearly was a fight. Now throwing
out a regiment behind to check the pursuit of a horde of blue
coats, cutting the tall cypresses to impede their artillery,
now beating their way against overwhelming numbers in front,
and Pindall’s battalion always led the fight.
It’s personnel was picturesque, and gathered around it was
an air dashing romance and chivalry that would furnish
material for a novel that would make Conan Doyle’s “Micah
Clarke” or Stephen Crane’s “Red Badge of Courage” pale
in comparison. It was made up almost entirely of young men,
most of them indolent young fellows, sons of wealthy slave
holders, who could make love furiously and fight in the same
manner. Leaving comfort and ease, sweethearts and sisters,
they jumped into the saddle and followed the young Virginian,
Col. L. A. Pindall into the South, for three years of the most
bitter fighting the world ever saw. There was Elliott Majors,
the handsome and dashing Elliott, with his company of Monroe
countians. What a picture tradition paints him to be. Tall,
sinewy and graceful, idolized by women and brave to be
foolhardiness, he was a typical cavalier. Swinney, the one
handed bersiker, who fought like a madman, and a hundred
others from Monroe county, constituted a body of troopers
whose deeds should be preserved to the credit and honor of the
grand old ‘county’ from whence they came. Col. Pindall
came to Monroe county from Virginia, and was a typical
Southerner in every respect; frank, openhearted, gallant and
hospitable, and a natural born soldier. He too, left a sweet
heart behind and tradition still tells of the sweet young
lady, Nora, they call her yet – for old people are ever
young in a memory – Nora Snell, who kept her long troth
until the young Virginian again rode up to the gate of her
father’s home and dismounted, war-worn and weary, to claim
his promise. She was the daughter of Ashby Snell, of Middle
Grove, one of the most extensive slave owners in Monroe county
at that time, and loved the Virginian from the time she met
him as a guest under her father’s roof until he came again
when the negro cabins had been emptied and the tide of war,
sweeping over the land, had changed the old order to the new.
Gathered at Moberly last week were 20 survivors of the old
battalion – John Baron, Granville; E.P. Noel, Clarence; R.F.
Noel, Labelle, Mo.; J.R. Baker, Enterprise; W.H. Eads, Arrow
Rock; (Jas. McLeod, New Francine); E.A. Hatfield, Dalton;
Thos. O. Meals, Evansville; E.A. Wilson, Glasgow; W.K. Howell,
Holliday; G.O. Mitchell, Woodlawn; E.A. Ellsbury, Madison; R.H.
Smithey, Paris; C.E. Price, Paris; I.N. Turner, Woodlawn;
Henry Bryan, Ash; W.A. Kleigh, Ash; Joseph Boulware, Ash; Jas.
I. Majors, Paris; W.M. Farrell, Paris; T.J.C. Smith,
Greenfield, Kan. They mingled, talked and rehearsed the
stirring scenes of the long ago, but their joy was unbounded
when they heard the battle flag of the battalion had been sent
to them by the widow of their old commander, together with a
letter of greeting from his son. The letter follows and was
read by W.H. Kennan, who broke down almost completely before
he finished:
Arkansas, Ark., Sept 23 d.
To the survivors of Pindall’s battalion,
DEAR FRIENDS – I sent today to Gen. W.H. Kennan, at his
request and Maj. Newman’s request, your old battle flag, to
be displayed upon the occasion of your reunion at Moberly. To
say that it affords my mother and me great pleasure in thus
being able to allow you to view again in memory’s vision
some of the scenes now hallowed and almost sacred in which
this old flag played a prominent part, is but feebly
expressing our feelings. We wish that it could be so that we
could be with the flag and meet you grand old heroes, who, to
his dying hour my noble father cherished as companions far
dearer than friends. Your well wisher,
X. O. PINDALL.
In memory’s vision they did live again the past and see again the dead faces
of them that sleep in unmarked graves beneath the spreading cypress trees in the
far southland, brave fellows who came not back to home, wife or sweetheart, some
dying in battle and some of fever, but the greater number giving up their lives
in the great unwritten tragedy immediately after the war, when the rage of
battle had spent itself and they were looking eagerly forward to a joyous return
home; going down beneath the sullen waters of Red river in one of the most
criminal and inexcusable catastrophes in the history of the nation, and that,
too, after peace had been declared.
On June 9th, 1865, Pindall’s battalion then at Shreveport and
having stacked their arms and surrendered with the remainder of the
Trans-Mississippi army under Gen. Kirby Smith, were given transportation, and
with paroles in their pockets, were placed on board the transport steamer,
“Kentucky,” together with several hundred other Missouri troops, and started
to New Orleans on their journey homewards. They were glad enough to leave the
scenes of disorder succeeding the surrender at Shreveport, during which two of
Kirby Smith’s trusted staff officers had been shot down by a Monroe county
seargant, the latter remaining unmolested for fear of a mutiny from the
troopers, who at that time acknowledged but little discipline. The
“Kentucky” was a lower Mississippi packet and it was in some degree a happy,
though ragged crowd of Missourians that swarmed her deck as she swung out from
the wharf at Shreveport, and for the last time in the southland they sent that
terrorizing Missouri yell floating back over the sluggish waters of Red river,
in which within a few hours, so many of them were to sink to death, after having
passed through three long years of blood and carnage where death had been denied
them. It was a strange, wild crowd, not a company of church deacons, but a
throng of disbanded soldiers, free from restraints, civil or military. Few of
us, to day, know what such a thing means. They were mongrel in dress, being clad
in the odds and ends given them by the government after the surrender, caps too
small, pants too short, no shirts to speak of, in fact there being only one
white shirt in the remnants of the Monroe county company, and that belonged to
James I. Majors of Paris. It was indeed a Falstaffian band in regard to shirts.
The river was low and the packet, with its consignment of vanquished heroes,
drifted slowly down stream, now running alongside low flat banks, now striking
the hurricane deck against the overhanging maples and thrown toward the middle
of the narrow stream, slowly by surely making its way, and they were content,
for they counted every turn of the wheel, every vanishing cypress as only
another step nearer home. Night (paints …unknown… lower) decks the tired
troopers were lying about, most of them asleep, all those who had them with
coats beneath their heads. On the upper deck the same scene was visible, the
poor fellows dreaming no more of the battle’s din, of sudden charges, uplifted
sabers and groans of the dying, heard not perhaps the long roar of artillery
rolling over woodland and prairie, but in dreamland’s fancy, perhaps, were at
home again listening to the low, sweet greetings of mother, sister or
sweetheart.
Most of the Monroe county men were on the upper deck, some asleep, others
standing in groups, talking lowly, too, of home and watching the ascending of a
rich southern moon, which had just peeped above the cypress trees. The boat had
struck a cypress knee in the stream that day and had (shoved) an immense (hole)
in her side, but the Federal officer in charge, with a reckless disregard
deserving death, had ordered it to be run on. A few hundred ex-rebels were of
small consequence. The river was getting wide and deep. It was about 11
o’clock when a crowd of Monroe countians, J.I. Majors, Bob Smithey, Wm. Baker
and others, standing on the hurricane deck, felt the boat quiver. Immediately
the cry went up that she was filling, and before the sleepy and half-dazed men
could gain their senses the transport was nearly half under water. The wild and
tragic scene that the moon looked down on that night beggars description. Some
escaped over a gang plank that had been hastily run out, hundreds jumped into
the river and amid fighting, cursing and strangling, struck out for the shore,
some of them reaching it in safety while others sank in the wild struggle or
were swept out into the middle of the river. Men fought friends, had their
clothes torn from them, and were choked with mud and loam. How many sleepers on
the decks failed awaken will never be known.
To add to the weird and tragic scene dried leaves were gathered and fires
kindled on the banks, besides which the shivering and almost naked men dried and
warmed themselves. The reflection intensified the outlines of the ill-fated
transport, with nothing but her stern shining against the moon, while far out
over the waters could be seen their unfortunate companions and could be heard
their despairing cries as they were swept away. Many were rescued when they
drifted near the bank. Most of the Monroe county boys who were standing on the
hurricane deck escaped, some of them grasping the flag pole when the boat
careened, which, however broke from the weight of the half-hundred desperate men
(clinging) to it and the crowd being first in the water succeeded in getting out
without much trouble. Wm. Baker, however, went down with the boat. He stood as
if paralyzed and never moved after the alarm was given. Other Monroe countians
were lost also, including Doc Wilson and a man named Clayton, an uncle of Elisha
Grigsby in the same company.
It was a wild night on the bank by the fires. Some of the men had nearly all the
clothes torn from them, and Neal Price still tells of the noble rescue work done
by R.H. Smithey, at present the giant sheriff of Monroe county, as, with only a
shirt on, he stood in a clump of willows and pulled out drowning men as they
were swept by. Next morning when the sun arose the scene was indeed a desolate
one. The waters rippled silently, over the decks of the ill-fated, transport and
flowed sluggishly among the willows, but never a message of their dead did they
whisper, to the ragged shivering men on the bank. That day, another transport
was sent down the river to pick up the remainder of the joyous crowd that had
left Shreveport the day before, (unknown) the journey home was resumed. About
midday the river began to give up its dead, and from the decks of the boat the
men could see the upturned faces of dead friends as they floated past on their
journey towards the sea. Some were seen in the mud along the banks, others
caught in the clumps of willows that lined the stream. Where they were
recognized friends got off the boat and gave them burial. Clayton was discovered
on a scorching mud bank, his face turned toward the boat. He sleeps today in a
lonely and unmarked grave among the cypress trees where a few of his old
comrades in (arms) laid him to rest.
What a more pathetic tragedy than this does the page of history contain? Little
wonder that the Federal commander at Shreveport wept when he heard of it and
cursed the criminal stupidity of the officer detailed to take the boat to New
Orleans. Coming, as it did, fight after four years of bloody strife, in which
human life was wasted as chaff, it attracted but slight attention. Probably for
the first time it is given in its terrible details in the Mercury today.
Far from the battle’s din, beyond the sounds of clanging strife, these gallant
Missourians sleep the dreamless sleep. The battle death of heroes, sought in
blood and carnage, denied them, while yet thinking and dreaming of the distant
home, the prattling – children, mother, sister, sweetheart, they went down to
death among the willows and waters – a mute, inglorious death for such a band
of heroes. The same moon looks down, the same winds sigh among the southern
cypress trees, but the silent sleepers, each with his long parole, wake not, but
wait for the last roll call when earth, sea and river shall give up their dead
and all the brave, the good and true shall be marshaled again within Wahalla’s
Hall.”
Source: Newspaper article from the Paris Mercury, Vol. 60, No. 41, on
October 8, 1897. From the files of Neil Block, Commander, William T. Anderson
Camp #1743 SCV, Huntsville, Mo; transcribed by Lisa Perry |