Another, less lethal, encounter between old enemies took place in Chariton County in October 1866. As noted by Southern sympathizer William Hill, the fight consisted in its entirety of the following exchange: “Old Dave came down here last week & told Jube West he came down to straighten out the damn Rebels. Jube immediately knocked him down twice & beat him vere [sic] severly [sic] in the face. Dave left immediately on the stage. Everyone was glad and said it was the best thing ever happened here.”

Not even ministers were exempt from the postwar violence. Unionists still nursed a grudge against Baptist and Methodist ministers who had supported the South during the war–or, on some occasions, had merely counseled Christian charity to a defeated foe. One such victim was a Reverend Hadlee of Webster County, in south central Missouri. Reputed to have been a “bitter Rebel” by the pro-Union sheriff at Springfield, Hadlee had fled the state during the war and had only recently returned. One Sabbath day in August 1866, Hadlee attempted to resume preaching at his old church, but he was refused entry by Union loyalists who told him that he was “obnoxious” and that because of his “rebellious acts” they did not want him to preach to or teach them.

Enraged, Hadlee pulled down the American flag flying outside the church and started down the road toward his own land, where he intended to preach to a group of pro-Southern followers. He did not make it that far. A conveniently unidentified gunman rode alongside the minister and shot him dead; no one was willing to identify the killer, either from fear of reprisal or in support of his decidedly unchristian act.

Such acts, whether comparatively harmless fisticuffs or coldblooded murder, were the natural fruit of a decade-long planting of bitter, mean-spirited seeds. For everyone in the war-torn states of Missouri and Kansas, the scars of both civil war and Civil War were a long time in healing. Talk to many residents of the area today, and you will find that they have never totally healed, even now.

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Bowen Kerrihard has been a student of the Civil War for more than 40 years. For further reading, see Inside War, by Michael Fellman; Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy, by Richard S. Brownlee; or Jennison’s Jayhawkers, by Stephen Z. Starr.

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