The Boonville Weekly Eagle, Booneville, Missouri
Vol. V, No. 2, pg 2
Saturday October, 9, 1869
Lone Jack
On the 16th of August, 1862, a solitary jack oak tree, situated upon a high
prairie ridge between the waters of the Osage and Missouri rivers, in
Jackson county, Missouri, was called upon to witness a battle between six
hundred Union soldiers and five thousand enemies. Says the Jefferson
City Times: “For five hours a fearful hand-to-hand conflict mantled the
scene in disheartening gloom from which the justified souls of forty patriots
ascended, leaving the bodies to be buried beneath this tree. Lone Jack
now died as of grief. Seeing a county so disloyal—a people so ungrateful
as to more numerously rally to the side of oppression and outlawry than to
the side of the loyal lovers of freedom, the tree refused longer to put forth
its leaves of refreshing green. Its very sap seemed to sympathize with the
still and mouldering patriotic forty hearts beneath the sod, as it withdrew
from the twigs, ran down through limbs, and retired by the way of the roots
to mother earth also. The trunk of Lone Jack is fast decaying, and soon will
be bowed down with the other noble dead. Having be a guide and a pilot in
its life, in its departure it dies as a testimonial to the living, not only that all
must dies, but that our patriotic dead should receive out sympathy.
Now dear reader, Lone Jack is no longer a pilot to the wanderer, spread
wing to the weary, or a monument to mark the spot where lie :our brave
boys in blue,” and Jackson county, at the last election, showed a sympathy
for the enemies of the slain forty; so let us encourage the late movement
initiated by the surviving loyalist of that section, to raise a tree of marble
over our forty friends who fell to sleep under the arms of a living—a lonely
friend.
Anniversaries of the battle of Lone Jack have been instituted. Let them be
continued, and, although at a bridge celebration in same county, we were
told to forget the past, let us sooner forget the time-serving living politician
than the fallen heroes whose mortal existence was sacrificed that we might
have a free and happy people and a country able to have bridges and other
magnificent improvements. Forget the past—never! Rather let us treasure
well the past, keep both eyes open on the present and thereby be always
prepared for the future.
Vol. V, No. 2, pg 2
Saturday October, 9, 1869
Lone Jack
On the 16th of August, 1862, a solitary jack oak tree, situated upon a high
prairie ridge between the waters of the Osage and Missouri rivers, in
Jackson county, Missouri, was called upon to witness a battle between six
hundred Union soldiers and five thousand enemies. Says the Jefferson
City Times: “For five hours a fearful hand-to-hand conflict mantled the
scene in disheartening gloom from which the justified souls of forty patriots
ascended, leaving the bodies to be buried beneath this tree. Lone Jack
now died as of grief. Seeing a county so disloyal—a people so ungrateful
as to more numerously rally to the side of oppression and outlawry than to
the side of the loyal lovers of freedom, the tree refused longer to put forth
its leaves of refreshing green. Its very sap seemed to sympathize with the
still and mouldering patriotic forty hearts beneath the sod, as it withdrew
from the twigs, ran down through limbs, and retired by the way of the roots
to mother earth also. The trunk of Lone Jack is fast decaying, and soon will
be bowed down with the other noble dead. Having be a guide and a pilot in
its life, in its departure it dies as a testimonial to the living, not only that all
must dies, but that our patriotic dead should receive out sympathy.
Now dear reader, Lone Jack is no longer a pilot to the wanderer, spread
wing to the weary, or a monument to mark the spot where lie :our brave
boys in blue,” and Jackson county, at the last election, showed a sympathy
for the enemies of the slain forty; so let us encourage the late movement
initiated by the surviving loyalist of that section, to raise a tree of marble
over our forty friends who fell to sleep under the arms of a living—a lonely
friend.
Anniversaries of the battle of Lone Jack have been instituted. Let them be
continued, and, although at a bridge celebration in same county, we were
told to forget the past, let us sooner forget the time-serving living politician
than the fallen heroes whose mortal existence was sacrificed that we might
have a free and happy people and a country able to have bridges and other
magnificent improvements. Forget the past—never! Rather let us treasure
well the past, keep both eyes open on the present and thereby be always
prepared for the future.
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