I thought the following article on Jennison by famous Kansas newspaperman Sol Miller was interesting. I was struck by the similarity of his denunciation to Bingham’s written about a week earlier (May 6, 1862 letter), at least regarding Jennison’s reluctance to engage armed opposition. An excerpt from Bingham’s letter follows Miller’s article. Does anyone know what party Miller was affiliated with in his post-war stints in the Kansas legislature? I wonder if Miller was in the legislature at the time they voted to remove the constitutional restriction to Jennison being a member (he was previously disqualified since he had been dishonorably discharged from the Army).
The Kansas Chief; White Cloud Kansas; May 15, 1862, page 1.
"Brigadier General Jennison"
"Jennison ought to be a Brigadier, Sol. Miller to the contrary notwithstanding." So exclaimed the Wyandotte Gazette, in January last, because w expressed our opinion that Jennison was not fit for a Brigadier. What does the Gazette think of its Brigadier now? With a large regiment, containing some of the best men in the West, well mounted and splendidly equipped, at an enormous expense to the Government, what have they done, alter being m service for nine months? Nothing that will render their names memorable in history. They have burned housed, turned women and children out in the cold, and Jayhawked horses; and that is about the sum total. Whose fault is it? Not his men's, for most of them are brave, and were anxious to distinguish themselves on the battle field. Yet, while other troops were facing the foe, and making for themselves imperishable names, this fine regiment has been lying comparatively idle, not gaining even the respect of the public - becoming almost a nuisance, instead of a protection and an honor to the State.
The fault lies with their leader, and with him alone. He is simply a Jay-hawker, and nothing else. Put him at a noble calling, and you take him out of his element. While he was permitted to remain in Missouri, where horses were plenty, but no considerable body of the enemy was to be found, he was extremely active and intrepid. But at length it was thought proper to put him to work, and he was ordered to New Mexico, where a handful of brave men were contending against fearful odds of the enemy, who were more desperate and brutal than savages. But instead of obeying with alacrity, like a true soldier and patriot, he trumped up some trivial excuse to resign, and made a speech to his men, intimating that he [w]as going to Jayhawking, and virtually asking them to desert their country and join him in the business. The fact is, he never intended to fight, and in New Mexico plunder is scarce.
We now hear of this man who "ought to be a Brigadier," under arrest for violating the first principles which should govern a true soldier for mutiny and disobeying orders; and his men are in a manner demoralized. To be sure, there is a great fuss made over Jennison, and he is being lionized. But by what class of people is this being done? It is by an excitable set who have not gone to war themselves, but whose great forte in redressing imaginary grievances, is endeavoring to excite the masses to mobocracy. It was this class of men who attempted to rescue Jack Sheppard from the gallows; and who would have gotten up an excitement in favor of John A. Morrell or Rinaldo Rinaldini. They always deify adventurers and outlaws, who, in the name of Union or liberty, do the cause more harm than a score of enemies.
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This first rather severe experience which attended the military command of the Jayhawker [his attack upon Upton Hays’ band], seemed to have pretty much the same effect upon his nerves that the first burning has upon those of a child, and he thenceforward took care to confine himself to such portions of Jackson County as abounded more in cattle, horses, mules, and negroes, than rebels. He excuses himself for this cowardice before honest Germans, in St. Louis, by affirming that Hays persistently refused to come out of the brush and fight him on the open field. But these Germans lack the ordinary shrewdness and intelligence of their nation if they can be made to believe that the soil of Jackson county grows brush of a nature so very peculiar as to be penetrable to rebels and impenetrable to loyal soldiers, whose duty it is to pursue and exterminate them. Nor are they likely to regard the man, who, with a vastly superior force, has not courage enough to face a feeble enemy in the brush, as the right sort of a person to be sent to maintain the cause of our Union in a brushy country. The truth is, no man can be found who is more familiar with brush than Jennison, and there is none thick enough to turn him, if booty, instead of danger, is to be found therein. For purposes of plunder, he would penetrate a thicket of osage oranges, through which a frightened hare would scarcely be able to squeeze himself, and he really did go into the brush after Hays, but like a rat finding a weasel at the bottom of his hole, he came out a great deal faster than he went in.
Bingham: