The Missouri in the Civil War Message Board

Veracity of Shelby quote about Border Wars?

In the final weeks of his life Jo Shelby supposedly made the following statement to Kansas Historian William E. Connelley (per p. 44 of O'Flaherty's "General Joe Shelby: Undefeated Rebel"):
"I was in Kansas at the head of an armed force at that time. I went there to kill Free State men. I did kill them. I am now ashamed of myself for having done so, but then times were different from what they are now, and that is what I went there for. We Missourians all went there for that purpose if it should be found necessary to carry out our designs. I had no business there. No Missourian had any business there with arms in his hands. The policy that sent us there was damnable and the trouble we started on the border bore fruit for ten years. I should have been shot there and John Brown was the only man who knew it and would have done it. I say John Brown was right. He did in his country what I would have done in mine in like circumstances. Those were days when slavery was in the balance and the violence engendered made men irresponsible. I now see I was so myself."

Has there been any modern examination of this claim? Going to the source, in Connelley's "Quantrill and the Border Wars" (1909?) his footnote about it reads:
"In the last years of his life General Shelby was United States Marshal for the western district of Missouri. His office was at Kansas City. This was during the last administration of Grover Cleveland. General Shelby died while yet in office.

General Shelby was a Kentuckian, as I am. I lived then in Kansas City, Kansas, and I often visited him at his office to talk over olden times and historical events. We often discussed the Territorial times of Kansas and the border troubles. General Shelby always denounced Quantrill in the, severest terms. He had outlived and outgrown the bitterness of border times. He was a very just, earnest, sincere man. He told me without reserve of the raids he had made into Kansas during the troubles in Kansas Territorial days. He repented his actions and reproached himself that he had ever done these things. He said he was wrong, that he had no business in Kansas on any guch errands, that the policy of the South which sent him there was damnable, that John Brown was the only Kansas man who had the right idea of the conditions existing there and the only
man who had the courage to resist Missourians at the muzzle of the rifle. He believed John Brown was right. I have heard General Shelby say more than once that Virginia would some day erect a great monument to John Brown. He was an admirer of John Brown and often said that Brown was the bravest man who ever stood upon a scaffold. He said Brown would have shot him had he found him harrowing Kansas settlers, and that it would have been just and right. That in so doing Brown would have done no more in Kansas than he, Shelby, would have done in Missouri.

The words in the text are as nearly what General Shelby said as I could write them after our interview. He expressed the sentiments of the text to me many times."

I'm hesitant to accept unverifiable statements like this, especially if published long after the death of any party that could confirm/deny them. Did others who knew Shelby near the time of his death ever confirm any of this sentiment attributed to him?

Messages In This Thread

Veracity of Shelby quote about Border Wars?
Re: Veracity of Shelby quote about Border Wars?
Re: Veracity of Shelby quote about Border Wars?