Moral Bushwhacking and Political Quantrellism: Thomas Ewing Jr. and the Clamor of Guerrilla Politics

Abstract

Moral Bushwhacking and Political QuantrellismThomas Ewing Jr. and the Clamor of Guerrilla Politics Jeremy Neely (bio) By the spring of 1863, no military commander seemed capable of suppressing the irregular violence that raged along the Kansas-Missouri border. The partisan warfare that began five years before Fort Sumter had exploded in scale and intensity with the outbreak of the Civil War. A succession of Union generals cycled through Kansas and Missouri, each devising more stringent policies than the last, but the danger posed by Confederate guerrillas who burned, killed, and roamed the western countryside with apparent impunity only grew worse. “There seems to be no concerted plan,” exclaimed one exasperated Missourian. “Very little is being accomplished now, while every interest of loyal and peaceable citizens is suffering severely from the ravages of these wretches. Is there not a man somewhere equal to the emergency?”1 Thomas Ewing Jr. believed he was such a man. An unlikely champion, he had no military experience before the Civil War, but like many former novices who came to lead Union or Confederate forces he moved quickly through the ranks due to some combination of performance, luck, and political influence. The namesake of a former Ohio senator, Ewing was familiar with the rough-and-tumble of midcentury Washington and the factionalism of his adopted Kansas home. In 1861 he won election to the state supreme court but a year later resigned to help raise the Eleventh Kansas Cavalry. “During the war the [End Page 11] Chief Justice of Kansas should be an old man or a cripple,” he explained to his father.2 Their family included three future Union generals—brothers Hugh and Charles Ewing, plus foster brother William Tecumseh Sherman—and by April 1863, the younger Thomas became a brigadier general himself.3 His appointment to lead the District of the Border nonetheless caught observers by surprise, particularly in Kansas, where most expected the position would fall to Maj. Gen. James G. Blunt, Ewing’s commander during the Union army’s victory at Prairie Grove, Arkansas.4 Click for larger view View full resolution Brigadier General Thomas Ewing Jr. (Courtesy Library of Congress) Eager to prove himself, Thomas Ewing Jr. rode twenty miles southwest from district headquarters in Kansas City to deliver an address that set forth [End Page 12] his intentions for the new command. His jurisdiction included the Missouri counties south of the Missouri River, where no natural barrier separated the states, and all of Kansas north of the 38th parallel. The Kansas town where he chose to speak, Olathe—just five miles from the open border—was an apt spot to confront the challenge before him. Almost a year earlier Rebel guerrillas, led by William Clarke Quantrill, sacked the village, killing two people and pillaging every store. The perception that citizens must rely on themselves for mutual self-defense stretched back to the earliest days of Kansas Territory, but after Quantrill’s 1862 attack, doubts grew about the ability of Union troops to protect noncombatants. T. Dwight Thacher, a newspaper editor in nearby Lawrence, expressed confidence in Blunt, then the Federal commander, but cautioned his readers, “Let our other towns take warning. The success of this raid will encourage similar ones on a bolder scale.”5 At Olathe, Ewing announced there was little for civilians to fear, as he would employ a “rough hand” to halt the plunder of innocent households. Kansas and Missouri had previously been put in separate military departments but now were under the command of a single general, who vowed to aggressively pursue the raiders who once eluded capture as they slipped between jurisdictions. “I will keep a thousand men in saddle daily in pursuit of [guerrillas],” said Ewing, “and will redden with their blood every road and bridle path of the border, until they infest it no more.” Such thieves, he added, “will be compelled to quit stealing, or get out of this District, or get me out of it.”6 In the weeks that followed, the general noted with satisfaction that the wide circulation of his June 27 speech “made a decided impression” among newspaper editors in each state. Confident that he had earned...