A Boy at the Battle of Lone Jack
Arthur M. Porter was a boy of eight when the Battle of Lone Jack was fought and lived on the very site of the battle field. Porter was a son of Dr. Elijah Porter, well known in the early days of Jackson County. Doctor Porter’s home stood in what is now known as the Old Town of Lone Jack, in distinction from a newer settlement which has grown up on a hill behind it. The Porter house was a solidly built log structure, the logs covered with clapboards. That was largely for appearance’s sake, but though the house looked from the outside like any other frame house, it had the great advantage of being bullet proof. Nothing less than a cannon ball could have made much impression on the sturdy old Porter mansion.
Doctor Porter died in the first year of the war, but his widow continued to live in the clapboarded log house and was making her home there, when the morning of August 16, 1862, eight year old Arthur Porter awoke to the sound of bugles and rifle fire. This is a transcript of his speech at the 1912 Lone Jack Picnic which was published in the Kansas City Star on August 18, 1912.
“I awoke to the sound of bugles and rifle fire. I climbed into my shirt and hickory pants and hurried down stairs to find out what was going on. The house was full of neighbor women, some crying, and all of ‘em talking and mother told me the Northern and Southern soldiers were fighting in the road outside our house. On one side were the Confederates and on the other the Union men, and our house between. I looked out the window and there in the road running east and west past our house the bullets were falling and I remember how they kicked up dust, as hailstones do after a long dry spell. They were thick as hailstones too.
And mother said to me: ‘Arthur, don’t you dare move outside this house. You go on back to bed.’ Just imagine any boy going back to bed when all that was going on right outside his door—a sure enough battle! You can believe I didn’t do that and I was only waiting for a chance to get outside where I could see better what was going on.
The Federals had three cannons that they had dragged up a hill about three quarters of a mile east of town—where the monument stands now. They were doing a lot with those cannons, too, and the fight centered around them. Now the Confederates would charge up the hill and when they did I’d yell, for I was a Reb at heart even if my folks had come from New York. And then the Federals would surge back and capture the guns again.
After a while one of the women in our house—they had all run there because it was bullet proof on account of the thick walls—one of the women hollered out: “Oh, ladies! What if a cannon ball was to strike the house? Why, we’d all be killed!” And then they all talked at once and they agreed that she was right, and the only safe place to go was the vegetable cellar in the back yard, that was pretty near all underground. So they opened the door and they all ran in a bunch, with bullets whizzing around them, to the vegetable cellar, and I tell you, they just about filled it up. And they had hardly settled in there when another woman spoke up, and she says: “Oh, ladies, if a cannon ball would strike this cellar we’d all be killed, sure.” And all the ladies agreed she was right and if a cannon ball would hit the vegetable cellar it would be all day with them, and those that weren’t killed by the cannon ball would be buried by the cellar’s caving in.
So up they scrambled and ran back to the house, every one of them, and they hadn’t more than gotten inside the door, when sure enough, a cannon ball did graze the vegetable cellar and tore the door off, and ricocheted along and went through the wall of a house beyond.
Well, sir, all this time the fight was going on thicker than ever; it began at sun up, and it never let up till 11 o’clock that morning. The Union soldiers took Bart Cave’s hotel and made a fort of it, the sharpshooters in the upstairs windows were picking off the Confederates right and left. Finally they charged the hotel, the Southerners did, and took it and set fire to it.
But at last, along 11 o’clock there was a shout, “Quantrill’s men are coming!” and then the Union men gave up the fight and retreated. They thought at first they were fighting Quantrill’s men, but they found out soon enough that it was regular soldiers, not bushwackers, they were up against. Before they left, though, the Northerners spiked a couple of cannon and threw them into the ravine.
Well, sir, the firing had hardly stopped before I managed to get out of the house, I and another boy about my age, and we got us a tin can each, and I went out into the road to pick up bullets. You know how kids are, always picking up useless things like that. We found plenty of them, too, and I remember mighty well we went up the hill where the Union men had fought I found a bugle, one of the bugles that had sounded the call to arms that morning. It had a dent in the side of it, I recollect, but that didn’t make any difference to me; It looked like the finest trophy I had ever laid hands on. So I came down the hill, blowing the bugle, and practicing to see if I couldn’t make the call the soldiers did. But before I ever got that bugle home, a big fellow named Bill Easley took it away from me and toted it home himself. And I remember how I cried over losing that bugle, and how I hated Bill Easley for taking it.
I reckon I gathered up that day three gallons of minnie balls and cannon balls, to no end. For ten years afterward you couldn’t walk around in the long grass without stumbling over a cannon ball I’d lugged home.
That was the most real war I saw, that Battle of Lone Jack, but we got plenty of echoes of it. Many and many’s the time my mother has gotten dinner for twenty or thirty officers and soldiers. It made no difference which side they were on, she had to feed them; they’d ride right up and order dinner like it was a hotel, only, of course, they didn’t pay for their meals. But that’s war.
We kids used to all the time be playing at war, too, and we had or regiments of Yankees and Rebs. I was always a Reb myself, though mother didn’t just approve of that, being from New York State herself, though a finer woman never lived. Well, sir, I recollect one day I came a-poking into my own front yard, a-straddle of my wooden horse, and with a feather in my hat and all my war trappings on, not paying much attention to where I was going or who was in my way. All of a sudden a deep voice said:
“Hello, little man, and what kind of soldier are you?”
I looked up and there was a bunch of Union soldiers and a big blue-clad captain looking down at me. I was pretty much scared, but I spoke up and I said:
“I’m a bushwacker, that’s who I am?”
Then the big man laughed and he said: “Catch him, men!” and I took out through the brush like a rabbit that the dogs are after. They didn’t catch me, either, but I was mighty shy of that big man in blue the rest of his stay at our house, and he’d roll his eyes at me so I could see he was likely to eat young bushwackers of my size broiled for supper. That big man in blue was Captain Briggs of Austin, MO, and he afterwards came to be one of the best friends my mother and I ever had.
You’ll find quite a few folks yet that remember the Battle of Lone Jack. But I reckon if I’m not the oldest survivor, maybe I’m the youngest. And to this day I’ve never quite gotten over feeling bad about that bugle. It was a dandy, even if it did have a dent in it.