The Men Who Went South

The men who went to the front in defense of the Union ; those who enrolled in the militia for defense of the city, and for emergency duty in the city and and county and along the railroads and other avenues of approach; and those capable of defending their homes, but exempt from military service, are matters of official records, some of which have been published in books that treat of those troublous times.  Not so with the hundreds of men who went from St. Louis and made their way to the Confederate armv.  With the aid of Captain Joseph Boyce, a Confederate veteran who lives in St. Louis, residents of Clayton, Mrs. Wageley, of Olcott Station, and several others, nearly all reprentative of pioneer settlers, we have succeeded in rescuing from oblivion a few names and incidents  concerning the men who went south.  The number will never be known with definiteness.  A number of infantry and artillery organizations were made up almost entirely of St. Louis city and county men, and many more were attached  to regiments composed of soldiers from all parts of the South.  Colonel Bowen, of Camp Jackson memory, had a regiment of St. Louisians in Memphis in the summer of 1861.  It is estimated that the Southern army contained at least
5,000 men who went to it from this locality.  Guibor's, Barrett's, Wade's, and, possibly, Lesneur's batteries were manned mostly by St. Louis and St. Louis county volunteers.  Of 114 who had belonged to the St. Louis Grays, ten got back to St. Louis. This was Captain Boyce's company, of Bowen's First Missouri Regiment.  The St. Louis contingent appears to have made up in quality what it lacked in quantity, but quantity is usually a very influential factor in a scrap, as you may have learned by personal experience, and bullets are no respectors of  persons-they are great levelers-and doctors and truck-gardeners; lawyers and divinity students and section men and teamsters and men of all classes; Irish and "Dutch" and French and Negro and American; aristocratic humanity and plebeian flesh and blood; look alike to men who are facing each other behind antagonistic guns.  Martial law had been declared very early in 1861 and those men who left the county had to go with the utmost secrecy as to their methods of eluding the eyes and guns of the home guards, who paced the banks of the Missouri river; watched the Meramec in the vicinity of "Rebel Bend" (now called Crescent); or guarded the Franklin county line.  In another place is given the names of some of those who did this duty.  Under the reign of martial law, a passport containing a pledge of loyalty to the Union was necessary to men who wished to leave St. Louis. Eighty-five thousand of these passes were issued in three months in 1861. The following list may give some names of residents of the county who "went South," but did not go from these parts. In such cases, note is made of the fact. Among those whose identification with the county and with Confederate army life is believed to be indisputable are:
 

                   The foregoing were residents of and went from St. Louis county proper, from homes then located in what we call the "new" county. From within the limits now included in the Imits of St. Louis, went:
 

             There were other men who went South and came back an indefinite number of times. They carried information and quinine and prohibited freight in small quantities and at great peril. One of these was Captain Absalom Grimes. And still others went South with the full knowledge and assistance of the government, making the journey on one of the palatial steamboats of the period.  We have been told of a group of about thirty of these people-men and women  who made the trip to a point above Memphis, ultimately reaching a point called Pontotoc, Mrississippi, where they found themselves among their Southern friends.  They were "aiders and abettors" and had been banished.  Some of them carried mail and 'contraband" articles. One of the men was named Pullis and there was a Sappington and possibly a Goodfellow in the party of exiles.  Apprehending a search of their effects one of them, a lady, took the precaution to copy sundry letters on the slats of the state-room bed, was searched with equanimity and after that ordeal had been passed re-copied  her dangerous documents and carried them to their addresses. A member of this group is a lady now living in St. Louis.  She is now seventy-seven years old, her place of residence is on Fairmount avenue, St. Louis, and her name is Miss Harriet Snodgrass.  Her parents came to this locality from McKeesport, Pennsylvania. Her sister married John Goodfellow of St. Louis county. Before the war ended this lady succeeded in getting to Washington city where her banishment papers were revoked and she returned to St. Louis.  Since the war she has lived for many years on a plantation near Texarkana, but now makes her home in St Louis.

"Dad"  has carried his United States flag in front of the Hancock School children at the school picnics for many years.  The flag mentioned was given to him by the Sons of Veterans [Union veterans] of Evansville, Ind. as a token of their appreciation of  "Dad"'s generous conduct in protecting unarmed Union soldiers, swimming for their lives. It is reported that he jumped in front of his victory-flushed comrades and kept them from shooting their swimming enemies.  'Dad' was the only Confederate out of a large family. Like most of his brave comrades, he is thoroughly reconstructed and is a loyal citizen of the United States. He will he seventy-two years  on March 2, 1911."
 
 

       W. P. Barlow, of  Guibor's Battery; Captain Henry Guibor, Colonel Christ P. Ellerbe, of Ferguson; R.S. Douglass, Tenth Missouri Brigade; George Penn, Second Missouri Cavalry;  G. W. Davis, First Misouri Infantry; S.N. Eddie, Second Missouri Cavalry; Colonel Gabriel Long, Guilbor's Battery; Tim T. Dwyer, Ninth Missouri;  Samuel Hawken, J. L. Burbridge, Thomas H. Chew, Twenty-second Mississippi Infantry; T. H. Snyder; A. J. Denny; J. W. McKnight; N. R. McKnight; and Moses Henderson (all of Central township), of the Fourth Mo. Cavalry; Judge Upton Young, Major J. S. Mellon, George Smith, C. E. Stuart, G. M. Fitzgerald, E. J. Pitts, M. J. Brennan, Joel R. Frazier, Andrew Bremner, Judge J. A. Henderson of Bridgeton, Charles R. Black, Trim Craig and P. H. Thomas, all of whom served in more or less exalted positions in Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas. Among the ladies of the county who took an active part in the entertainment were: Mesdames Cooper, Ms. Pfister, Mrs. T. H. Synder, Mrs. E. Coons, Mrs. Eugene Shieble, Mrs. C. Fitzwater, Mrs. E. Davis, Mrs. Reed Mcknight, Mrs. Dr. Charles Young, Mrs. Thomas Smith, Mrs. George Penn. Belle Chew, Beverly Johnson, and the Misses Ella Barron, Bessie and Nora McDonald, Eva Henderson, Bessie Lucas, Daisy Morton, Annie Heidorn, Ella Lackland, Helen Lackland, Helen Atwater, Ida Post, Mary Shackleford and Sallie Penn.  The picnic, it should be stated, was attended by men who had fought for the preservation of the Union and they were among the most generous
contributors to the fund that was to give comfort to their whilom enemies, of the "Lost Cause."