Dr. Bailey Rust Glasscock: Murdered During Civil War in MO...s/o Uriel Glascock
Description: *SOUTHERN HISTORICAL SOCIETY PAPERS
Vol. I. Richmond, Va., March, 1876.
No.4. April -Pages 226- 243
And here again our work of compilation is rendered difficult only by the mass of material at hand. We have enough to make several large volumes - we can only cull here and there a statement.
Mr. Henry Clay Dean, of Iowa, who says in his introduction, "I am a Democrat; a devoted friend of the Constitution of the United States; a sincere lover of the Government and the Union of the States" -published in 1868 a book of 512 pages, entitled "Crimes of the Civil War," which we respectfully commend to the perusal of those who believe that the Federal Government conducted the war on the principles of "modern civilization and the precepts of Christianity."
We will extract only one chapter (pp. 120-141), and will simply preface it with the remark, that though some of the language used is severer than our taste would approve, the narrative bears the impress of truth on its face, and can be abundantly substantiated by other testimony:
NARRATIVE OF HENRY CLAY DEAN.
In the town of Palmyra, Missouri, John McNeil had his headquarters as colonel of a Missouri regiment and commander of the post.
An officious person who had acted as a spy and common informer, named Andrew Allsman, who was engaged in the detestable business of having his neighbors arrested upon charges of disloyalty, and securing the scoutings and ravages from every house that was not summarily burned to the earth. Thus had so long been his vocation that he was universally loathed by people of every shade of opinion, and soon brought upon himself the fate common to all such persons in ever country, where the spirit of self-defence is an element of human nature. In his search for victims for the prison which was kept at Palmyra, this man was missed; nobody knew when, or where, or how; whether drowned in the river, absconding from the army, or killed by Federal soldiers or concealed Confederates.
His failure to return was made the pretext for a series of the most horrible
crimes ever recorded in any country, civilized or barbarous.
John McNeil is a Nova Scotian by birth, the descendant of the expelled tories of the American Revolution, who took sides against the colonists in the rebellion against Great Britain. He is by trade a hatter, who made some money in the Mexican war. He had lived in Saint Louis for many years, simply distinguished for his activity in grog-shop politics. He was soon in the market on the outbreak of war, and received a colonel's commission. Without courage, military know - ledge, or experience, he entered the army for the purpose of murder and robbery.
As the tool of McNeil, W. H. Strachan acted in the capacity of provost marshal general, whose enormities exceed anything in the wicked annals of human depravity.
At the instigation of McNeil, the provost marshal went to the prison, filled with quiet, inoffensive farmers, and selected ten men of age and respectability; among the rest an old Judge of Knox county, all of whom had helpless families at home, in destitution and unprotected.
These names, which should be remembered as among the victims of the reign of the Monster of the Christian era, were as follows:
William Baker, Thomas Huston, Morgan Bixler, John Y. McPheeters of Lewis, Herbert Hudson, John M. Wade, Marion Lavi of Ralls, Captain Thomas A. Snyder of Monroe, Eleazer Lake of Scotland, and Hiram Smith of Knox county, were sentenced to be shot without trial or any of the forms of military law, by a military commander whose grade could not have given ratification to a court-martial, had one been held; had the parties been charged with crime, which they were not.
Mr. Humphreys, also in prison, was to have been shot instead of one of those named above, but which one the author has not the means of knowing. She first went to see McNeil, who frowned, stormed, and let loose a volley of such horrible oaths at her for daring to plead for her husband's life that she fled away trough fear, and when she closed the door, the unnameable fiend cursed her with blasphemous assurances that her husband should be dispatched to heel at one o'clock. The poor affrighted woman, with bleeding heart, hastened to the provost marshal's office, and quite fainted away as she besought him to intercede with McNeil for the preservation of her husband's life. With a savage, taunting grin, Strachan said "that may be done, madam, by getting me three hundred dollars." This she did through the kindness of two gentlemen, who advanced the money at once.
She returned with the money and paid it to Strachan. Mrs. Humphreys had her little daughter by her side, when she sank into her seat with exhaustion. Scarcely had she taken her place, until Strachan told her that she had still to do something else to secure her husband's release. At this moment he thrust the little girl out of the door and threatened the fainting woman with the execution of her husband. She fell as a lifeless corpse to the floor. After he had filled his pockets with money and satiated his lust, the provost marshal released poor Humphreys. Another innocent victim was taken in his place to cover up the hideous crime. The newspapers were commanded to publish the falsehood that some one had volunteered to die in his stead. The additional murdered man was a sacrifice to the venality, murder young man, caught up and dragged off as a wild beast to the slaughter, without any further notice than was necessary to prepare to walk from the jail to the scene of murder.
The other eleven were notified of their contemplated murder some eighteen hours before the appointed moment of the tragedy. Rev. James S. Green, of the city of Palmyra, remained with them through the night.
Between eleven and twelve o'clock the next, day three Government wagons drove to the jail with ten rough boxes, upon which the ten martyrs to brutal demonism were seated.
This appalling spectacle was made more frightful by the rough jeering of the mercenaries who guarded the victims to the place of butchery. The jolting wagons were driven through street after street, which was abandoned by every human being; women fainting at the awful spectacle, clasping their children more closely to their bosoms, as the murders, with blood pictured in their countenances, were screaming in hoarse tones the word of command.
The company of stranger adventures, mercenaries, and the vilest resident population, formed a circle at the scene, in imitation of the Roman slaughter in the time of Nero, Caligula and Commodus, to feast their sensual eyes on blood and amuse themselves with the piteous shrieks of the dying men. This infernal saturnalia commenced with music. Everything was done which might harrow the feelings and torture the soul. The rough coffins were placed before them in such manner as to excite horror; the grave opened its yawning mouth to terrify them; but they stood unmoved amid the frenzied, murderous mob. Captain Snyder was dressed in beautiful black, with white vest; magnificent head covered with rich wavy locks that fell around his broad shoulders like the mane of a lion. When the mercenaries were preparing to consummate this horrible crime, they at last seemed conscious of the character and the magnitude of this awful work, grew pale and trembled: even the brutal Strachan seemed alarmed at his own nameless and compounded crimes of lust, avarice and murder. Rev. Mr. Rhodes, a meek and unobtrusive minister of the Baptist Church, prayed with the dying men, and Strachan reached out his bloody hands to bid them adieu. They generously forgave their murderers.
To lengthen out the cruel tragedy, the guns were fired at different times that death might be dealt out in broken periods. Two of the men were killed outright. Captain Snyder sprang to his feet, faced the soldiers, pierced their cowardly faces with his unbandaged eagle eye, and fell forward to rise no more.
The other seven were wounded, mangled and butchered in detail, with pistols; whilst the ear was rent with their piteous groans, praying to find refuge in death. The whole butchery occupied some fifteen minutes.
The country was appalled at the recital of these crimes and incredulous of the facts.
The newspapers were suppressed to prevent their publication, and the exposure of the perpetrators. The punishment of the criminals was demanded by public justice and expected by everybody except the criminals, who well understood the cruelty and corruption of the Executive Department.
To cover up these crimes by a judicial farce, nearly two years afterwards charges were preferred against Strachan; he was convicted upon the foregoing state of facts, and sentence passed upon him. The sentence was remitted and Strachan promoted.
For this crime McNeil was promoted by Lincoln to Brigadier-General and kept in office. In all of the history of European wars, Asiatic butcheries, Indian cruelties, and negro atrocities, there can be found no parallel instance in which the murder of men without any of the forms of trial, was accompanied with the rape of the wives of those designated by the lottery of death as the price of the husband's liberty. There was nothing left undone to make the whole scene cruel, loathsome, and revolting.
This outrage unpunished, gave license for crime, cruelty, outrage and disorder everywhere. It would require the pen of every writer, the paper of every manufacturer, for a year, to recount them; the human imagination sickens in contemplation of them.
In the next year after the McNeil butchery, in the neighboring city of Hannibal, occurred a similar crime, equally monstrous in its details.
J. T. K. Heyward commanded a body of enrolled brigands in Marion county, known as the railroad brigade, who foraged upon the people and plundered the country.
Hugh B. Bloom, a drunken soldier of the Federal army, returning to his regiment, muttered some offensive words in the presence of Heyward's men. Bloom was immediately dragged from the steamboat upon which he was traveling and carried before Heyward.
Heyward improvised a military court, tried the drunken man, and condemned him to immediate death.
Whilst the poor wretch was unconscious of his condition, disqualified for self-defence, and unable to understand the fearful nature of his peril, he was hurried off to the most public place on the river side; the people of the town, trembling with fear, were compelled to witness the horrid scene.
The worst was yet to come. Old and respectable citizens, because known for their quiet demeanor and hatred of violence, were dragged down to witness the horrid spectacle. Twelve of these gentlemen were presented with muskets, and commanded to fire at the trembling inebriate sitting upon his coffin.
To enforce this fiendish order to make private gentlemen commit public murder, Heyward's brigands were placed immediately begins the squad of private citizens and commanded to fire upon the first who hesitated to fire at Bloom. As the shuddering man sank down beneath the terrible volley of musketry, Heyward turned upon the people and warned them of their impeding fate in the murder of this man.
The spectacle was revolting in itself. It was terrible in view of the fact, that these militia were unauthorized by law for any such purpose; that the execution was without the shadow of law, that the victim was a Union soldier, who had committed no offence; that the men who were forced to do this horrid work were unwilling to commit the crime, and protested against being made the instruments of such bloody horror. But how ineffably shocking that the perpetrator, Heyward, should be a member of a Christian church, and assume the office of Sabbath-school teacher; that little children should look upon the horrible visage of the murderous wretch as their instructor.
This Heyward, secluded from the inquiring world, overawing and corrupting the press of his own neighborhood, was the most satanic of all the local tyrants of Missouri.
At one time he gathered all of the old and respectable citizens of Hannibal, including such highly cultivated gentlemen of spotless escutcheon as Hon. A. W. Lamb, into a dilapidated, falling house, and placed powder under it to blow it to atoms, in case Hannibal should be visited by rebels.
In Monroe county, two farmers were arrested by the provost marshal's guard, taken a short distance from home, shot down and thrown into the field with the swine.
On the next day the recognized fragments of the bodies were gathered up by the neighbors and carried to their respective houses, and prepared for interment.
The citizens were so respectable, the murder so brutal, the outrage so revolting, that people gathered from a long distance around to bury in decency the remains of those who had been so shockingly destroyed.
When the funeral procession had been formed, the provost marshal sent his guard to disperse them; declaring that no person opposed to the war should have public burial.
The heart-broken families had to go unattended to the grave of their respective dead; each one dreading the danger that beset the highway upon their return home; and feeling even more in danger from marauders in the secret chambers of their own domicil.
During this drunken reign of horrors, innocent people were shot down upon their door sills, called into their gardens upon pretended business, butchered and left lying, that their families might not know their whereabouts until their bodies were decomposed. Women were ravished, houses burned, plantations laid waste.
Judge Richardson was shot whilst in the courthouse in which he presided, in Scotland county. Rev. Wm. Headlee, a minister of the gospel, was shot upon the highway; and all of these murderers, robbers and incendiaries, are yet a large.
Dr. Glasscock, a physician,(Dr. Bailey Rust Glasscock, son of Uriel Glasscock & Nancy Rust...grandson of John Glascock Sr. & Mary Hendren) was dragged from his own house by soldiers, under pretence of taking him to court as a witness, against the earnest prayers of his children and slaves, was shot, mangled, disfigured and mutilated, then brought to his own yard and thrown down like a dead animal.
To prevent punishment by law, there criminals repealed the laws against their crimes; and provided in the constitution that crime should go unpunished if committed by themselves.
To make themselves secure in their crime and to give immunity from punishment, they disfranchised the masses of the people; and in the city of Saint Louis the criminal vote elected the criminal McNeil as the sheriff of the county of Saint Louis - the tool of he weakest and most malignant tyrants.
http://www.csa-dixie.com/prisoners/t21.htmhttp://www.csa-dixie.com/prisoners/t21.htm
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Dr. Bailey Rust Glasscock:
Notes from Paul Stanley Glasscock FTM website...
Bailey Rust Glasscock:
The Towns & Villages of Clark County, Mo. records: "Dr. Glasscock, who was a native of Clarke County, Virginia and first settled here in 1827, lived about 5 miles southeast of Fairmont. On May 26, 1863, the Union Army executed 2 men in Fairmont, who
were found guilty of bushwaking. On June 16th, the Union soldiers came to the Glasscock place and they finally persuaded Glasscock to go with them, by telling him they needed him to witness some trials. Glasscock believing they planned to kill him
refused to go. The solidiers assured him they would have him returned by morning. Dr. Glasscock finally left with them and not 200 yards from the house he was found with his skull busted in and his neck broken, and five musket balls in his body."
A biographical profile of Bailey is given in the History of Lewis, Clark, Knox, and Scotland Counties, Mo., 1887: "B.R. Glasscock, a pioneer settler of Clark County, was a native of Clarke County, Virginia, and was a fair representative of the good
old English type. His ancestors immigrated to Virginia when that state was a colony. In 1827, he moved to Clark County, Missouri by land, and settled upon wild land, the inherited property of his wife. He camped for some time, but as he was a fair
carpenter and a somewhat natural genius, he built a house, and as soon as matters could be arranged he returned to his native state, and brought back his family to the home in the wilderness. Here he lived, making farming his principal occupation, and
verged into a happy old gentleman; but, sad to relate here, during the war he met his death at the hands of those whom he had never mistreated, but on the other hand, whom he had befriended in time of need. He was a Democrat in politics, and his widow
is a member of the Baptist Church."
In the Old Settlers Special Edition printed 1983 we find: "Dr. Glasscock arrived in Clark County, Missouri in 1827. He camped for sometime, then returned to Virginia and brought his family to the home in the wilderness, located about 5 miles
southeast of Fairmont. He was a slaveholder and became a prosperous farmer. He was the father of 14 children, 11 of whom lived to be grown. On May 26, 1863, the Union Army executed two men at Fairmont, found guilty of bushwacking. On June 16, five
Union soldiers arrived at Dr. Glasscock's home saying they needed him as a witness on some cases being tried. Convinced that the soldiers intended to murder him, Dr. Glasscock told them to kill him now and get it over with. The soldiers assured him
and his three daughters, other family members not home, that he could return home in the morning. Obe, of the Glasscock black men, followed until the soldiers drove him back. The report of five muskets were soon afterwards heard. The next day Dr.
Glasscock's body was found about 200 yards from the road. His neck and skull were broken and the body pierced with five balls. The parties guilty of murdering this "rebel sympathizer" were never discovered or brought to justice."
Another account of Bailey's death is found in the History of Lewis, Clark, Knox, and Scotland Counties, Mo., and contains a letter by his daughters. "On Sunday, May 10, 1863, a detachment of Capt. Hahn's company of enrolled militia (Company K, 69th
Regiment under Lt. Thomas S. Staples) was fired upon by bushwackers, near Fairmont, and the Lieutenant and Private Mussetter were killed. Liuet. Staples was an excellant man, and well liked by all who knew him. On being notified, Capt. Thacker's
company (M, of the same regiment), and some militia from La Grange, in Lewis County, galloped over to Fairmont, scoured the country, and took some prisoners. Maj. C.W. Marsh (afterward Gen. Schofield's adjutant-general, and of Troy, Lincoln Co., Mo)
was sent to Fairmont to investigate the matter of the killing of Staples and the private soldier. He caused the arrest of Samuel Dale and Aquilla Standiford, who lived in the neighborhood, and tried them by a court-martial of militia officers. They
were found guility of being with the party that bushwacked Staples, and were executed on Tuesday, May 26, 1863, at Fairmont. On the night of June 16, 1863 (soon after Dale and Standiford were shot), Dr. B.R. Glasscock, who lived on the main road from
Memphis to Canton, about five miles southeast of Fairmont, and who seems to have been guilty of no other crime than that of being a rebel sympathizer, was taken out by five men and shot. The following statement of the particulars of this matter was
made by Dr. Glasscock's daughters and published in the Canton Press about July 1. Dear Sir...about ten o'clock at night June 16, five men came to our house and said they were Capt. Hahn's men, from Fairmont, and had come after father for a witness on
some case that was being tried there. He begged them to let him stay till morning, but they would not. He then bade his three children farewell (his wife being absent), and said they must do the best they could. He seemed fully convinced that they
intended to murder him, and told them if that was their intention, to perform the deed at his house, and not take him away. They said that was not their intention, and promised the children that he should come back next morning. By his request one of
his black men followed him about a mile, until they drove him back, not withstanding the entreaties of his master to come on. The report of five guns was soon afterward heard, and next morning search was made for him, but to no effect, and believing
at last that he had been taken to Fairmont, all the searchers returned to their business. About ten o'clock next day, as the soldiers came down from Fairmont on their way to Canton, they told one of our neighbors that they had found a dead man lying
about 200 yards from the road. This proved to be the body of our dear, dear father. His body was pierced by five balls, and his neck and skull broken. He had not been robbed, although he had some money with him. Major Marsh has taken the case in
hands, and is doing all he can to find the guilty. Yours very respectfully, The Daughters Of The Deceased. Clark County, Mo., June, 1863. It seems, however, that the guilty parties were never discovered and brought to justice. Other atrocities of a
similar nature were committed in the county during the war. At the outbreak of the war the people of Northeastern Missouri were strongly in favor of neutrality, but this could not be maintained by a people of such decided political differences." B.
Glasscock owned 120 acres, section 13, Clark County. He borrowed $2000 dollars from his father Uriel Glasscock May 1, 1839. On November 25, 1868, he sold sixty acres at $6 per acre. John Boord was Justice of the Peace presiding over the transaction.
The town of Fairmont is described in the Historical Atlas of Clark County, Mo., published in 1878, as follows: "Fairmont - 12 miles SW of Kahoka. Contains four stores, hotel, public school, post office, and church surrounded by an excellant farming
country. Among the early settlers in this vicinity were Micajah and Daniel Weber, Bailey Glasscock, Francis and Ralph Smith, and William Kerfoot. ". The total number of slaves in Clark County in 1860 was 405, and were valued for taxation at $171,300.
Slave holders numbered 129. The most owned by one individual was 16 by John N. Boulware. Micajah Weber father of his daughter-in-law owned 2 slaves, and Bailey Glasscock owned seven.