"The Eagle of the 11th Kansas": Wartime Reminiscences of Colonel Thomas Moonlight

Abstract

FORTY-TWO YEARS AFTER SERVING WITH Col. Thomas Moonlight, a veteran recalled was no better or braver man in the Civil War.1 While many might disagree with this grandiose assessment, there can be little doubt that Moonlight led an extraordinary life and was a significant participant in that conflict. Born in Forfarshire, Scotland, in 1833, Moonlight ran away from home at the age of thirteen, boarding a ship bound for America. Landing at Philadelphia, the destitute youth worked numerous jobs before his enlistment in the Army in 1853. He served in the artillery and proved a capable soldier, rapidly rising to the rank of orderly sergeant. After participating in numerous military campaigns against Native Americans in Florida and Texas, Moonlight was ordered to Kansas. Mustered out of the Army in 1858, he settled near Leavenworth, Kansas, and worked as chief clerk in the commissary department of the nearby fort before purchasing a farm south of Leavenworth in 1860. When the Civil War began, Moonlight, despite his military knowledge and an acute need for experienced veterans, found it difficult to secure an officer s commission. As a committed Democrat, he was initially unable to obtain such an appointment from the state's Republican leadership. Trained military personnel, and in particular artillerymen, were rare commodifies on the Kansas-Missouri border, however, and Moonlight was soon mustered into service. He quickly rose from captain in command of a single small howitzer to lieutenant colonel of the Eleventh Kansas Infantry. While an officer with that regiment, he was assigned the additional duty of serving as chief of staff to Brig. Gen. James G. Blunt, the commander of the District of Kansas. Promoted to colonel in 1863, Moonlight would end the war as the commander of the Eleventh Kansas Cavalry. Moonlight penned his memoir soon after the war. As it was addressed to Kansas adjutant general Thomas Jefferson Anderson, who served from April 1866 until August 1867, perhaps it was to be included in the Official Military History of Kansas Regiments during the War for the Suppression of the Great Rebellion, printed by his office in 1866. If so, it was not, for some reason, included in that work and is published here for the first time.2 The memoir offers a rare primary account of the war in the Trans-Mississippi. It includes vivid descriptions of the Battles of Prairie Grove and Cane Hill and the Federal expedition against Van Buren that will be of particular interest to students of Arkansas history. Certainly Moonlight did not write an unbiased general history. He caustically evaluated the performance of others while lauding his own actions. But Moonlight's observations on the early fighting add immeasurably to our understanding of the extremely violent nature of the war on the border and the rise of reciprocal terrorism. His comments on the loathsome patronage battles within Kansas shed further light on the feud between the state's leading politicians and military leaders, a war within a war. Historians exploring the pivotal battles of the Trans-Mississippi theater will find the memoir an indispensable primary resource, and Moonlight s perceptions of Maj. Gen. Samuel Curtis's handling of Sterling Price's 1864 raid proves both fascinating and controversial. Finally, his observations offer unique insight into the role African Americans played in the conflict, both as slaves and as their own armed liberators. The Moonlight reminiscences are part of the Western Americana Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. The transcription preserves Moonlight's writing style by retaining many of his abbreviations and errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation, although some changes in these areas have been made when deemed necessary for the sake of clarity. The original manuscript is difficult to read in places and may have resulted in the inadvertent misspelling of place names. …