Jamie & Keith,

I didn't get a chance to complete my last email yesterday, so here is some more.

I intended to conclude, and probably didn't directly, that many of the 5th Prov EMM men fought against Charles Snelling and the Johnson County guerrillas during 1861 while they were members of other units in those early months of the war. I think many of those Union soldiers marked Snelling as a bushwhacker or guerrilla, and possibly deliberately ignored evidence that Snelling had since 1861 became a "regular" Confederate soldier. I think to those soldiers killing Snelling was simply "unfinished business."

Also in the notes Terry Justice sent me a few years ago, as I indicated yesterday, Robert A. Paxton was captured somewhere in Henry County on 3 August 1863. That part of his record states also that he was 23 years old and was six feet tall. The record ends with the chilling words "believed to have been operating as a guerrilla." Since Robert was not executed by the 5th Prov. EMM at Clinton, as was Snelling. Dunn, and Marshall, and was not considered "underage," like the Robbins boy, why was he spared? If Robert escaped from his captors, there should have been some mention of it. The Provisional Enrolled Missouri Militia regiments were the pick of the 80-some-odd EMM regiments, and so I doubt Robert escaped. I would have to assume that this Union unit transported Robert back to the St. Louis area military prisons as a captured "legal enemy combatant." Bear in mind that the Missouri Union prison records are spotty, and that the Missouri Confederate records are even more so, which means this is conjecture and not at all part of an exact science.

Lets look at what was happening in the last two weeks of August 1863 in that part of Missouri that MAY have a bearing on this. On 21 August 1863 Quantrill at the head of about 450 mounted guerrillas he gathered up all over west-central Missouri (including a Confederate recruiting colonel and cadre and about 100 recruits from Ray and Clay Counties just north of the Missouri River who happened upon Quantrill's force in about Cass County and joined the raid) shocked the nation with a brutal raid on Lawrence, Kansas. Part of the few remaining records of the 5th Prov. EMM Regiment indicate the regimental commander, Colonel Henry Neill, and 50 of his mounted troopers from their garrison (I think it was in Lexington, about two counties north of Henry County) between 20 August and early September took part in the pursuit of Quantrill's raiders. I would guess that LTC Brown and his different garrisons across four or five counties patrolled heavily in an attempt to intercept some of those raiders after they scattered in west Missouri following the raid.

In October 1863 LTC Brown and his battalion of about 200 troopers fought against Confederate Brigadier General Jo Shelby's great Missouri Raid. During the raid Shelby's force captured one of LTC Brown's captains with 17 men on a bridge near Otterville in central Missouri and paroled and released them ("legal combatants versus legal combatants" with no guerrilla involvement, you see).

Obviously, Sergeant Robert Paxton survived his captivity at the hands of LTC Brown and his men at Clinton, and we can surmise that Brown had enough proof that Sergeant Paxton was a "regular" Confederate soldier, despite the phrase they wrote of him that he "was believed to have been operating as a guerrilla." Maybe Brown's commander, Colonel Henry Neill, concluded that Brown had killed enough prisoners, and advised him to examine his prisoners more closely in the future. The Missouri General Assembly investigation into the conduct and leadership of the various Missouri Union militias critical of too many quickie tribunals following by quickie executions wasn't released until early 1864.

I don't know how Paxton managed to survive at the hands of LTC Brown at Clinton, and all I offer without proof is conjecture.

How may I help you with questions about your documents? You could mail photocopies of them to Bruce Nichols, 4273 Miami St. St. Louis, MO 63116-2626 and I would try to interpret them for you.
Until later, Bruce