Thank you, Michael, for finding that report on the murder of Dr. Weaver about the same time as Mr. Harrison's death and not too far away.

I remember writing about the Weaver case in my 1863 book, so I read it again this morning. In my own writing I told about a murder squad of picked Union soldiers that worked out of the Springfield garrison during July and August of 1863 that ranged for miles around Springfield. They worked off a "kill list" composed by unknown parties that identified for them southern men to assassinate. This team wearing blue uniforms rode into their victims' barnyards or waited in hiding near their targets' homes and killed men with multiple gunshots in what we would call gangster fashion. I figured this out from corresponding over the years with several descendants like you whose ancestor was killed in this way during those few weeks. Like you, they placed queries in Missouri and Civil War forums to try to find an explanation why their peaceable ancestors were suddenly murdered by strangers. I cited several of those cases in my 1863 book with references. I have discovered five or six such cases and there may have been more. Many of the northern supporters were growing frustrated with the tenacious ability of Missouri southern guerrillas to continue their irregular warfare in spite of all that the Union military could do and took matters into their own hands. There are numerous examples across all of Missouri as the war continued, and this frustration changed Missouri Republican politics from moderation to radicalism that continued into the postwar period.

Ironically, famous westerner Wild Bill Hickok was stationed in Springfield during the war in a Union unit and mentioned to one of his biographers that he was part of something at Springfield that he was ashamed of later in life. I don't think he was referring to his famous shootout on the Springfield square with the husband of a woman he was seeing, which some call the first showdown of the Old West. Hickok would have been just the man to place on such a kill squad.

Ron, since there was no other Civil War violence anywhere around Humansville during these weeks except these assassinations, I would assume Mr. Harrison was another victim on that kill list. I don't know why I didn't associate that before.

Bruce