Jamie & Keith,

Yes, the 22nd Missouri General Assembly brought up the Charles Snelling case as one of several Yankee, quickie, drum-head courts martial, followed by a quickie execution (and in public there in Clinton, no less). However, there was more that the investigation during the winter of 1863-64 failed to bring before District Commander BG Egbert Brown, since several of these executions were in his district. One of you mentioned that Snelling was out front for several other recruiters following a few days later, but as you will see in follow-on paragraphs, Sergeant Robert Paxton MAY not have been part of those coming a few days later. I'm quoting from my "Guerrilla Warfare in Civil War Missouri, Vol. 2, 1863" volume, since I couldn't lay my hands on my copy of the St. Louis "Daily Missouri Democrat" of 31 August 1863, as cited in the endnote #66 on page 344, backing up the text in Chapter 12, page 172 (available at many MO libraries near you or via Interlibrary Loan). The three unfortunates captured also by the 5th Provisional EMM on 24 August 1863 three miles south of Leesville in east-central Henry County included Johnson Countian PVT Thaddeus Theodore Dunn of 2nd Missouri Cavalry (CSA); a Robert Marshall supposedly from Ray County; and a Johnson County boy who appeared to be Virginian-born George W. Robbins. Lieutenant Colonel Brown, XO of the 5th PEMM, and commanding at Clinton, tried, convicted, and had shot both Dunn and Marshall as war criminals or guerrillas, but spared the Robbins boy, since he was only 12 or 13 years old (if he was indeed from the Robbins family of Washington Township of east-central Johnson County).

I need to add here that the Union forces in Missouri were bound by an 1862 Department of the Missouri General Order established by MG Henry "Old Brains" Halleck when he commanded, requiring the ranking officer present in the field to calculate from the facts when armed southerners were captured in the field to determine if they were "legal combatants" according to the accepted rules of warfare dating back to Napoleon, or were guerrillas, which made them illegal war criminals. If they flunked the test, the Union officer was supposed to execute them right there. Most Union officers in the field refused to kill even obvious guerrillas or bushwhackers, and instead brought all prisoners back to their base or garrison with their field notes applying the "legal combatant" test, and had their unit ship ALL the prisoners back to an accepted higher echelon where sitting tribunals at district or department level would read the notes and apply the test and execute those prisoners who fell into the guerrilla side of the equation.

This brings us back to Sergeant Robert Paxton, and your question. Why did LTC Brown execute Snelling and not Paxton? I would have to guess that LTC Brown and his men knew that Snelling warred in guerrilla style back in 1861, when Charles Snelling, John Brinker, Mr. Houx, and others led a band of mostly Johnson and Henry County "irregulars" against Union troops in the region. I can believe that Sergeant Paxton passed the "legal versus illegal combatant" rule, and the newspaper coverage even supplied the war crime Snelling was allegedly responsible for in November 1861. (I will get to that.) How do I know that LTC Brown and his men knew of Snelling's guerrilla past? Easy. The 5th Provisional Enrolled Missouri Militia was created in spring 1863 from the 1862 40th EMM, 60th EMM, 71st EMM, and 77th EMM Infantry units of west central MO, or rather the militiamen that Quantrill's band and other guerrilla bands of west-central Missouri failed to kill. In essence, there were so many problems with all the untrained, unpaid, poorly armed, and indifferently led MANDATORY EMM units, that bushwhackers and in some cases also southern recruiters bled some of those units to the point they could not or would not continue to face enemies who were better armed and were by 1863 battle hardened, seasoned killers. So, the Missouri Union leadership, including the provisional governor and the General Assembly, thought that the EMM would work better if they only fielded parts of the 1862 units in a sort of super EMM that basically was on active duty most of the time, rather than just whenever enemies were close.

What was Charles Snelling's great crime back in 1861 that may have led to his execution in 1863?
Missouri newspaper accounts with racy headlines like "The Notorious Snelling Killed," informed the public, so readers would understand why the 5th PEMM shot him in front of an audience in Clinton. The "Lexington Weekly Union" of 15 August 1863 got the "scoop," and other newspapers in Kansas City, Liberty, and St. Louis included the article soon afterward. Part of the short article read:

"...captured the notorious bushwhacker, SNELLING, and executed him. It will be remembered that SNELLING for many months was the terror of Johnson and Henry counties. He it was that captured and burned the wagon train, in Johnson county, and murdered the sick soldiers under escort to Kansas City, about 20 months ago. It was his conduct which brought JENNINGS into the western portion of Johnson county, where he sorely punished the people by burning and killing. SNELLING is dead, no mistake; and was executed by shooting in sight of all the people; and he richly deserved it. The hour for his execution was firmly appointed by the Colonel, after the finding of the Drum Head Court, and at the appointed hour he as executed."

I think by "JENNINGS" the article writer probably meant Colonel Charles R. Jennison, commander of the notorious Jayhawker regiment, the 7th Kansas Cavalry Regiment, that several times before and during the war ravaged Missouri border communities.

The wagon train capture at 3AM on 16 November 1861 about ten miles south of Warrensburg in south-central Johnson County, was real enough, but the Union troops of Captain Henry J. Stierlin's company of the 1st Missouri Cavalry (Union) were harassed and took cover while Matt Houx' and Charles Snelling's guerrilla band took the wagon train toward the west. The guerrillas discovered the 50-or-so wagons were pulled by oxen, not known for speed. A Union pursuit bore down on them some time later that morning about a mile or two from Pleasant Hill in the northeast corner of Cass County. The guerrillas left before the pursuit got close, set fire to some of the wagons and scattered to their homes. The pursuit recovered most of the wagons and the large number of oxen. One Union soldier was killed, and three wounded.

More later, Bruce