CAPTURED GUNS AT LONE JACK
By John S. Kritser, Taylor, TX
I enlisted in Independence, Mo., in Capt. Upton Hays’s company, which at the time belonged to Capt. W. C. Quantrill’s command and was with him in the battle of Lone Jack, Mo. For the number engaged, that was as hard-fought a battle as any during the war. Colonel Cockrell, of Johnson County, MO., commanded the raw volunteers on the Confederate side, all untrained to the rattle of musketry and
the shriek of shells–all good farm boys, but Southern “until further orders” and stayers from start to finish.
Colonel Smart, I think, was in command of the Federals. We brought on the attack just as the first streaks of dawn showed in the calm eastern skies. This was on the 16th of August, 1862. The Federals had two pieces of artillery, and the first time we charged them we were driven back to a hedge fence of bois d’arc. We were armed with muzzle-loading shotguns and old brindle-stock squirrel rifles and scant ammunition at that. But those old shotguns, properly loaded with buckshot, about twenty blue whistlers in each barrel, were certainly angel maker; and when one of those old-time squirrel, deer, and turkey killers dropped on one knee as though about to offer up supplications to the throne of divine grace, threw his well-trained eye along the octagonal barrel of this trusty “Betsy,” eye well down in back and front sights on that old fowling piece, and put his index finger on that old and faithful hair trigger, there was sure to be meat in the pot–in other words, a dead Yankee near the cannon.
We charged the guns and took them again, but again had to fall back before the deadly fire of those improved guns and six-shooters. But we again loaded our old-timers and went at them like a biting sow, took the guns, and turned them on the former owners and began to kill their horses to keep those that were alive from making their everlasting escape. Only a part of them got away and went like the devil to Lexington, Mo., in Lafayette County. We buried the dead next day and started south. We named our captured guns the “Lone Jack” pieces, and General Shelby kept them in our old brigade almost all the time until the close of hosilities. Our gallant Hays was fated not to stay with us long, as he was killed at Newtonia the day after we elected him colonel. Our regiment lost four colonels during the war. When it was over, I went with General Shelby and others to Old Mexico.