Phantoms of the South Fork
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Phantoms of the South Fork

Captain McNeill and His Rangers

Steve French

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Phantoms of the South Fork

Captain McNeill and His Rangers

Steve French

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About This Book

At 3 a.m. on February 21, 1865, a band of 65 Confederate horsemen slowly made its way down Greene Street in Cumberland, Maryland. Thinking the riders were disguised Union scouts, the few Union soldiers out that bitterly cold morning paid little attention to them. In the meantime, over 3, 500 Yankee soldiers peacefully slept.

Within thirty minutes McNeill's Rangers had kidnapped Union generals George Crook and Benjamin Kelley from their hotels and spirited them out of town. Despite a determined effort by Union pursuers to intercept the kidnappers, the Rangers reached safety deep in the South Fork River Valley, over fifty miles away. Not long afterward, the generals were shipped to Richmond's Libby Prison. Southern general John B. Gordon later called the mission "one of the most thrilling incidents of the war."

In September 1862, John Hanson McNeill recruited a company of troopers for Col. John D. Imboden's 1st Virginia Partisan Rangers. In early 1863, Imboden took most of his men into the regular army, but McNeill and his son Jesse offered their men an opportunity to continue in independent service; seventeen soldiers joined them. In the coming months, other young hotspurs enlisted in McNeill's Rangers. Operating mostly in the Potomac Highlands of what is now eastern West Virginia, the Rangers bedeviled the Union troops guarding the B&O Railroad line. Favoring American Indian battle tactics, they ambushed patrols, attacked wagon trains, and heavily damaged railroad property and rolling stock.

Phantoms of the South Fork is the thrilling result of Steve French's carefully researched study of primary source material, including diaries, memoirs, letters, and period newspaper articles. Additionally, he traveled throughout West Virginia, western Maryland, southern Pennsylvania, and the Shenandoah Valley following the trail of Captain McNeill and his "Phantoms of the South Fork."

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CHAPTER 1

The Missouri State Guard

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“ … no picture stands out more clearly
than that of this grim warrior.”
John Hanson McNeill, the son of Strother and Amy Pugh McNeill, was born near Moorefield, Virginia, on June 12, 1815. John’s father, a well-off Hardy County farmer, died some three and a half years later. Like most of the boys who lived in the rich farmlands that bordered the South Branch River, young John Hanson soon learned the value of honest labor and grew into a self-reliant young man.
On January 19, 1837, McNeill, now twenty-one, married seventeen-year-old Jemima Cunningham, and the couple soon moved onto their own farm. Just eleven months later Jemima gave birth to William Strother, the couple’s first son. Not long afterward, according to historian Maud Pugh, the family packed up and moved “to Bourbon County, Kentucky, where they lived until 1844.”1
While the family lived in the Bluegrass State, two other sons, George and Jesse, were born, but by 1844 McNeill, with his wife in ill health, had sold his Kentucky property and moved back to Moorefield, and on July 18 of that year Sarah Emily, their only daughter, was born. Some four years later, however, wanderlust struck again, and the McNeill family, along with a handful of slaves, migrated to Boone County, Missouri, settling on the “Johnston place,” a farm not far from Columbia.
In Missouri McNeill, known by his friends as Hanson or “Hanse,” continued a long family tradition of raising Shorthorn cattle, a venture that not only proved lucrative but won him prizes at the local county fair as well. According to W. D. Vandiver, who as a boy knew the Virginian, “he replenished his herd with the finest stock that he could find in Kentucky and Ohio and continued to win blue ribbons and awards.” In 1855 the McNeills moved again, this time northwest to a farm in Daviess County. There, on October 7, 1859, Jemima gave birth to John Hanson McNeill Jr., the couple’s last child.2
While the McNeills lived in Missouri, their friends and relatives back in Virginia corresponded with the family. On September 21, 1855, fifty-six-year-old spinster Rebecca Van Meter, who lived with her two sisters at “Traveler’s Rest,” in Old Fields, jotted a few lines in her diary about a letter a neighbor had just received from Jemima. After commenting that her husband “was powerfully Blest at Camp M.,” Jemima added that it had been hard to get him there: “He had been thrown from his Mule broke his collarbone just able to get to the meeting with it bandaged up tight.” The family would also make an occasional trip home. On March 5, 1858, Hanse stopped at “Traveler’s Rest” and visited with the sisters for “an hour or two.”3
When the war began, McNeill promptly formed a cavalry company that included his three oldest sons and various neighbors. His recruits signed up for six months’ duty. Once organized, McNeill’s troop joined the pro-Southern Missourians then rallying around Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson, a man who was determined to take his state into the Confederacy despite overwhelmingly strong opposition from thousands of Missouri Unionists. McNeill’s company eventually became Company B, 1st Cavalry, 4th Division, Missouri State Guard. Colonel Benjamin A. Rives commanded the regiment, and Brigadier General William Y. Slack commanded the division, in Major General Sterling Price’s army.4
The company’s first taste of action came on June 17, 1861, in a skirmish at Boonville. There 1,700 federal troops commanded by Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon attacked Colonel John S. Marmaduke’s 450 barely trained recruits. In a June 18 message to Colonel Chester Harding Jr., Lyon wrote, “We met their advance[d] pickets and soon after their whole force. At first the secessionists made a weak effort, which doubtless was to lead us to their stronghold, where they held on with considerable resolution, and gave us check for a short time and made some havoc.” Moving forward slowly, Lyon reported that by two o’clock that afternoon his men had taken the town.5
On July 5, though, the State Guard rebounded with a victory over Colonel Franz Sigel’s force in the Battle of Carthage. Commanded by Governor Jackson in person, his four thousand troops pushed the heavily outnumbered federals back ten miles to Carthage, where some street fighting then took place. As the enemy retreated from the town, daring horsemen dashed off after the federal wagons. In his after-action report, Colonel Rives mentioned McNeill, the first of many official commendations he would receive during the war: “Captain McNeil of Company B, being separated from my command, succeeded in capturing a portion of the transportation and baggage of the enemy.”6
Seven months later, in a February 13, 1862, letter to Department of Missouri commander Major General Henry Halleck, Brigadier General John M. Schofield, soon to be commanding the District of Saint Louis, commented on the dubious military merits of Sigel, whom McNeill was destined to harass farther east in the spring of 1864. The brigadier noted Sigel’s mediocre performance at Carthage:
Sigel had about two regiments of infantry, well-armed and equipped, most of the men old German soldiers, and two good batteries of artillery. Price had about twice Sigel’s number of men, but most of them mounted, armed with shot-guns and common rifles, and entirely without organization and discipline, and a few pieces of almost worthless artillery. Sigel retreated all day before this miserable rabble, contenting himself with repelling their irregular attacks, which he did with perfect ease whenever they ventured to make them.7
Over the next three weeks after Carthage, Price’s officers trained their “miserable rabble” at Cowskin Prairie, a remote spot in the state’s far southwestern corner. Soon they had organized a fighting force of some 7,000 men, including about 2,000 without weapons. On July 25 the State Guard marched northeast toward Springfield. Four days later at Cassville, Brigadier General Ben McCulloch’s Confederate Brigade, a 2,700-man contingent that included troops from Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana, joined the Missourians. General Nicolas “Bart” Pearce’s Arkansas Brigade, nominally under McCulloch’s command, also coupled with Price, bringing Southern numbers up to 12,125. Although Price outranked McCulloch, “Old Pap” met with him and turned over command of the so-called Western Army to the celebrated former Texas Ranger.8
In the subsequent Battle of Wilson’s Creek on August 10, the Confederates defeated General Lyon’s 5,200-man Army of the West, inflicting over 1,300 casualties on the federals. The unfortunate Lyon was among the federal dead, wounded twice before going down with a bullet through his heart. But the victory was inconclusive. Just like the July 21, 1861, Battle of Bull Run in Virginia, the graybacks had suffered substantial losses—1,232—and could not pursue the federals and follow up their victory. Rives’s command, numbering 284 troopers, suffered 4 killed and 8 wounded. Luckily, all the McNeills came through the bitter fight unscathed.9
On August 25 the State Guard marched out of Springfield. Eight days later Price’s men defeated some Kansas bluecoats in a sharp skirmish at Drywood Creek before moving on to Lexington. There on September 13, General Price, now with additional recruits swelling his ranks to 15,000, attacked Colonel James Mulligan’s 3,500-man force consisting of the colonel’s own 23rd Illinois Infantry, the 1st Illinois Cavalry, and miscellaneous troops from Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri. Sporadic skirmishing and sometimes heavy fighting continued in and around the town for the next eight days. Finally, with his men heavily outnumbered and out of water, Mulligan surrendered.10
Today historians of the battle and other interested persons remember the fight for the strange tactic the Missourians used in their final attack. The night before the assault on Mulligan’s trenches, the men soaked hemp bales in river water and the next day used them to form a movable breastwork two hundred yards long that proved to be almost impervious to cannon and rifle fire. Upon nearing the trenches, Price’s troops rushed the fortifications and carried the day.11
But the Battle of Lexington had been very costly to the McNeill men and proved to be their last combat as members of the State Guard. On September 16 a Union marksman shot twenty-one-year-old George while he was on picket duty, and the young sergeant died about an hour later. Two days later, Hanse suffered a serious wound to his right shoulder.12
After the surrender, an ironic incident occurred between Colonel Mulligan and Captain McNeill. The two men, who in 1863 and 1864 would constantly match wits against one another in West Virginia, reportedly rode out of Lexington in the same carriage. Unlike the enlisted men and most officers in his command, the thirty-two-year-old commander refused to sign a parole and therefore remained a prisoner, destined to travel with the Missourians for some time before being exchanged. Governor Jackson later offered the use of his personal carriage to the wounded Mulligan, disabled “the last day of the fight by a ball that passed through the calf of his leg.” The colonel accepted, and the injured McNeill accompanied Mulligan and his young wife, Marian, when they left Lexington.13
Much of the information we have about McNeill in the following months comes from the pen of the aforementioned W. D. Vandiver. According to Vandiver, William S. McNeill returned home not long after the battle. Meanwhile, his father and Jesse continued with the State Guard as Price withdrew from Lexington. Later, though, the pair stopped at Neosho to give the older man’s wound some time to heal. Then, taking a furlough, they visited relatives at Arrow Rock before crossing the Missouri River and stopping at the Vandiver house, located “a few miles southwest of Columbia,” where Mrs. McNeill was staying temporarily. Along with Jemima was “Uncle Sam,” the family servant. Sam, who back on the farm had two wives, was determined to go along with the men when they returned to the army. He told W. D. and others that he “could get another wife but might never get another good master.”14
The time spent with the McNeills forever impressed the young boy. Over fifty years later, W. D. reminisced: “In my childhood recollections of Civil War times in Missouri no picture stands out more clearly than that of this grim warrior in well-worn Confederate uniform and heavy dark whiskers extending almost down to his waist, and his son Jesse, a beardless and long-legged young man just grown, as they came back from Price’s army in the fall of 1861.”15
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James Mulligan. Library of Congress.
Soon the pair moved on to stay with David B. Cunningham, Jemima’s brother. Early on the morning of January 18, 1862, Hanse and Jesse were fast asleep at the farmhouse when troopers from Colonel Lewis Merrill’s 2nd Missouri Cavalry, also known as “Merrill’s Horse,” surrounded the dwelling and called for them to come out. With nowhere to run, the pair surrendered. Once back in Columbia, their jailers quartered the men in the university.
Their stay in Columbia, however, proved to be very pleasant. Colonel William F. Switzler was a former acquaintance, and he arranged for the father and son to “visit their friends in town during the day, but return to prison at night.” Referring to Hanse, Switzler once said to Merrill, “Let him go anywhere in the country and I guarantee he will return when he promises to do so.” Later, the federal commander let the pair roam up to ten miles out from town.16
Surprisingly, Merrill even permitted Jesse to go back to his uncle’s farm. When he returned, the young man swapped the colonel a fine mule in exchange for his captured horse. Merrill also allowed some local women to make the captain some clothes to replace his shabby outfit but was somewhat surprised when the ladies fashioned McNeill a Confederate uniform. Jesse later commented that their stay in Columbia “was more like an extended visit among friends than an enforced confinement.”17
After a little over two months in Columbia, their captors transferred father and son to a military prison in St. Louis. According to Vandiver, their new jailers confined them with numerous other prisoners in an “old slave market.” If correct, this would have been the Myrtle Street Prison, formally Bernard Lynch’s Slave Market. Federal records, however, do not note this but show that on April 8 Hanse arrived at Gratiot Street Prison, the former McDowell Medical College. It is certainly possible that the federals first housed the men in the overcrowded slave market for a short time before transferring them to Gratiot or separated the men, placing Jesse in the former and Hanse in the latter. The Unionists used Gratiot, like the slave market, to hold prisoners temporarily. It housed not only rebel soldiers, “but also Southern sympathizers, political prisoners, mail-runners, bridge burners, and even Union deserters.”18
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Jess...

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