KILLING OF THREE BROTHERS.
Something of Warfare in Arkansas In 1863.
J. Mont Wilson writes from Springfield, Mo.: The short sketch of Lieut. A. H. Buchanan (now Professor of Mathematics in Cumberland University, Lebanon, Tenn.) in the VETERAN some time ago mentioned the killing of his three brothers and father in Arkansas. It brought vividly to my mind the scenes enacted that winter inside of the Federal lines. As I was one of the three that escaped that day, I will give an account as I remember the facts after a lapse of thirty three years.
During the summer and fall of 1863 Col. Brooks occupied Northwest Arkansas and Southwest Missouri, harassing the Federal posts and supply trains and often driving in scouting and foraging parties. Going South unexpectedly, he left several squads of his command out on scouting expeditions, and others whose homes were in that section. They did not come South, but kept up their squad fighting, running in picket posts at night, picking up stragglers, dismounting and disarming them, and generally turning them loose, as they did not want the trouble of guarding them. Gen. William L. Cabell, commanding the cavalry in South Arkansas, detailed Capt. Pleasant W. Buchanan, of Buck Brown's Battalion, to take eleven picked men and horses, go through the Federal lines, gather up all the squads and straggling men, and bring them South to their command. This was a hazardous undertaking, it being in mid winter, leaves off the trees, forage scarce, and a chain of Federal posts on both sides of the Arkansas River from Little Rock to Fort Smith, also a post at every county seat, village, or mill where forage or provisions could be had. Besides, the Arkansas River is generally past fording at that season of the year, and every boat and skiff on the river had been burned, except those at the forts.
Capt. Buchanan's instructions were to be very cautious, avoid all posts and scouting parties, get the men together quietly and quickly, and to do as little fighting as possible until ready to start South. His plan was to enter the Federal lines at dark, travel only at night, and lay up, feed, and rest in daylight. When we reached their lines we bore west of Waldron, striking the Fort Smith road a few miles north of Waldron, where there was a Federal post, about ten o'clock at night. We had gone only a short distance when we ran up on a Federal scout at a house. The captain halted us, rode up to within a few feet of them, made them tell who they were, and moved us quietly on down the road in such a careless way that they did not realize we were Confederates. When out of their hearing we rode rapidly several miles and then turned through the woods due north for the Arkansas River, the North star being our only guide. Reaching the river at daylight, we hid and fed our horses in a little cove of timber, rested, and reconnoitered for a crossing. Just at sunset we forded it on a gravel bed just above the mouth of Big Mulberry, out through a dense bottom of four or five miles, to the wire road from Ozark to Van Buren, near Mr. Joel Dyers's. It was the work of a few minutes to have several sections of the telegraph wire torn down and dragged off in the woods by the horn of our saddles. We rode all night, bearing northwest, crossing the Van Buren and Fayetteville road before daylight, and on to the main mountain, avoiding all houses and roads. We were thoroughly drenched with a heavy winter rain. The drops seemed as large as a quarter of a dollar. We halted, built up a fire, dried our clothes, and rested, and moved out again.
Capt. Buchanan's instructions were to be very cautious, avoid all posts and scouting parties, get the men together quietly and quickly, and to do as little fighting as possible until ready to start South. His plan was to enter the Federal lines at dark, travel only at night, and lay up, feed, and rest in daylight. When we reached their lines we bore west of Waldron, striking the Fort Smith road a few miles north of Waldron, where there was a Federal post, about ten o'clock at night. We had gone only a short distance when we ran up on a Federal scout at a house. The captain halted us, rode up to within a few feet of them, made them tell who they were, and moved us quietly on down the road in such a careless way that they did not realize we were Confederates. When out of their hearing we rode rapidly several miles and then turned through the woods due north for the Arkansas River, the North star being our only guide. Reaching the river at daylight, we hid and fed our horses in a little cove of timber, rested, and reconnoitered for a crossing. Just at sunset we forded it on a gravel bed just above the mouth of Big Mulberry, out through a dense bottom of four or five miles, to the wire road from Ozark to Van Buren, near Mr. Joel Dyers's. It was the work of a few minutes to have several sections of the telegraph wire torn down and dragged off in the woods by the horn of our saddles. We rode all night, bearing northwest, crossing the Van Buren and Fayetteville road before daylight, and on to the main mountain, avoiding all houses and roads. We were thoroughly drenched with a heavy winter rain. The drops seemed as large as a quarter of a dollar. We halted, built up a fire, dried our clothes, and rested, and moved out again at dark, crossing over and down the mountain to Tola Gray's. The next night, I think it was, we reached Cane Hill. Here the squad disbanded and began the dangerous and tedious task of getting to their respective homes to see friends and relatives and to notify all squads and individuals in two or three counties of the time and place of rendezvous for the return South.
I went by E. W. McClellan's to see my sister. His house was in three or four hundred yards of the Federal post at Boonsboro, which was composed of negroes and "Pin" Indians, commanded by one Maj. Wright from Kansas. After meeting my sister I went on home with the captain, leaving our horses and going in on foot from back of their farm. We found his two brothers, William and James, at home, both anxious to get South and rejoin the army. We had to be very cautious, being only two or three miles from the post at Boonsboro. The captain could only go in at night to see his mother and sister, while we were waiting for the time to start on our return. The captain's father was murdered about a month before, without any earthly excuse, by a scout of negroes and Indians. They asked him for some apples. He went into his cellar, gave them all they wanted, and was locking the cellar door, when one of them shot him down. The surgeon with the scout (Dr. Willet, I believe, was his name) came back to the house and made very brutal and unfeeling remarks to his wife and daughter over their grief.
The captain decided that he would try to mount his brothers better the night before we started South, as all they could pick up and conceal was a mule and a "plug" horse. So he suggested that we get the horses of Maj. Wright and his officers, whose headquarters were at Mr. James Hagood's dwelling, and the stables were from seventy five to one hundred feet from the house. About te
The captain decided that he would try to mount his brothers better the night before we started South, as all they could pick up and conceal was a mule and a "plug" horse. So he suggested that we get the horses of Maj. Wright and his officers, whose headquarters were at Mr. James Hagood's dwelling, and the stables were from seventy five to one hundred feet from the house. About ten o'clock the night before we were to start South we four went to Mr. Hagood's, and let down the fence to the stable lot, but before we could get any of the horses out we aroused the sentinel at Maj. Wright's headquarters, only a few steps away. We could not get them without killing him and creating an alarm, so we quietly withdrew in the dark. I went by E. W. McClellan's to tell my sister good bye, the captain going with me. We found Miss Amanda Hinds (sister of Prof. Hinds, of Cumberland University) with
156 Confederate Veteran April 1897.
a letter for her brother Dudley, a member of Capt. Buchanan's company, and Miss Emma Hagood, who had also come to see us, knowing that we were to start South the next night. They told us that just at dark they had slipped Maj. Wright's horse to the rear of the dwelling and tied him to the yard fence. I asked permission of the captain to go and get him, and he readily consented. He had slipped his halter, but I managed to catch him and get off without being discovered, rejoined the boys, and we all returned to their home for them to say a last good bye to their mother and sister and for William to bid his wife goodbye. Next morning Maj. Wright was furious at losing his horse, and started scouting parties out in all directions. That last night some of Mr. Buchanan's negroes had seen us, and told the Federals where they thought we were. A scout of some fifty, following the negroes' advice, struck our trail and followed it up. We had moved about three miles and fed our horses at noon, intending, as soon as they were through eating, to start for the place of rendezvous, the Pine Mountains, in Benton County, near the junction of Osage and Illinois Creeks.
We were joined that forenoon by Gray Blake and William Rinehart, two of the eleven men. William and James Buchanan had no arms, and the captain only his Colt's six shooter. The Federals came on us while our horses were eating, all with bridles off. I saw them first, and called to the boys just as they fired and charged on us through the open woods. I sprang on my horse (the one I got the night before), with only the halter, and set him going. Rinehart and I ran together for about one hundred yards, when the captain's mare dashed by us. I knew then that he was shot, for as I wheeled my horse, only a few feet from him, he was standing in his left stirrup, his right leg nearly in the saddle, and facing the Federals. In a few seconds they had surrounded William and James Buchanan, who had stopped to bridle their horse and mule. They jumped off their horses and shot William down, but James fought them with his bridle for fifty yards before they killed him. Guy Blake's' horse was so excited when the firing began that he could not mount, and he dashed off on foot, as fleet as a deer, and escaped in a range of bluffs a few hundred yards away. The brutal negroes and bloodthirsty Indians mutilated the boys after killing them.
This is one incident of the war in which I felt that I could see the hand of Providence, for the three brothers were truly Christians and prepared to die, while neither of us three who escaped were, but all became members of the Church soon after the war.
I never knew a nobler, braver, or truer gentleman than Capt. Pleasant W. Buchanan. He was Professor of Mathematics in Cane Hill College when the war began, and I was a student under him. I was intimately associated with him in all of his army life, being in both of the last two companies that he commanded, and part of the time in his mess. I never heard a word escape his lips that might not have been uttered in the presence of ladies. He was modest and retiring in disposition, and always ready to give others credit who really were not as deserving as himself. William and James possessed very similar virtues. Thomas Buchanan, another brother, was and is now an esteemed minister of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. He served as a private in the same company, and never shirked any duty. Pleasant W. Buchanan was elected captain of the first company of state troops organized on Cave Hill, composed largely of the college boys, the President, F. R. Earl, serving as a private in it. This company was of the Third Arkansas state troops and fought under Col. Gratiot at Wilson Creek (on Oak Hill) in front of where Gen. Lyons was killed. After this battle, the state troops being disbanded, Capt. Buchanan raised another company of infantry for the regular Confederate service, being Company H, Fifteenth Arkansas Infantry. He, with some of his men, were captured at Pea Ridge (or Elk Horn), and before he was exchanged the army in Mississippi was reorganized and, against the wish of his lieutenants and the company, the vacancy had to be filled. After being exchanged he went to Northwest Arkansas and raised a company of cavalry, when he joined Buck Brown's Battalion, which company he commanded when he was killed. Though a mere boy in my teens, I was proud to claim his friendship.
The story of this awful tragedy was told by the mother of the noble men a few years ago, only a short while before her death, to the editor of the VETERAN, and of how the murderers jeered when the bodies of the three sons had been hauled to her home and ruthlessly put out in her yard. The murder of her husband, without the least provocation, and the dastardly burning of the feet of his brother, a venerable minister, in the effort to extort money, are part of the record of the war in Arkansas.
It is comforting in this connection to call special attention to the high character of these martyr brothers as noted by Comrade Wilson, for some might suppose there were reasons for the wanton murder by the enemy other than simply capturing a horse. That is evidently all the provocation the slayers could have had.