• General Notes

  [316552.ftw]
  
  The Three Sisters have searched in vain for a death record
  or other record to indicate the fate of John Powell in the
  Civil War.  The last record we have that we know is our
  John Powell is with his father Henry Powell who both appear
  on the muster roll of Co. B of Clark's Regiment
  (Confederate) in Little Rock in March and April 1863. If
  you can help solve this mystery, please contact
  powell@@cswnet.com.
  
  The Rebels
  
       Our Powell family on the northern edge of Missouri had
  lived in a area surrounded by strife about the slavery
  question for many years prior to the outbreak of the Civil
  War.  The state of Missouri played a central part in this
  national question.  Antislavery forces demanded Congress
  keep slavery out of the new territories of the United
  States.  In 1818, when Missouri first applied for admission
  to the Union as a state, there were exactly thirteen slave
  states and thirteen free states.  Missouri was denied
  statehood because it's admission as a slave state would
  upset the balance of power.  During the next session of
  Congress, Maine applied for admission to the Union and the
  Missouri Compromise was worked out. This Compromise
  admitted Maine as a free state and authorized Missouri to
  form a state constitution.  The compromise also banned
  slavery from the Louisiana Purchase north of the southern
  boundary of Missouri, except for Missouri.  In 1821
  Missouri became a state.  Although most newcomers to the
  state did not own slaves, Missouri settlers were largely
  Southern and favored making their own decisions about
  slavery and other questions.
       In 1854 Congress repealed the Missouri Compromise with
  passage of the Kansas- Nebraska act.  This bill created the
  territories of Kansas and Nebraska with a provision for
  "popular sovereignty."  This provision stated that all
  questions of slavery in the new territories were to be
  decided by the settlers.  Many Missouri slave owners,
  including Colonel Joseph Shelby, led groups of Missourians
  into Kansas to vote in elections trying to preserve slavery
  in that state.  Violence along the Kansas-Missouri border
  over the slave question was a prelude to the great
  destruction and violence of the Civil War.
       In 1859 David Powell and his brother James Walton
  Powell sold their land in Schuyler County and set out for
  Texas.  I do not know if they were just seeking a new
  unsettled frontier or searching for a territory more
  sympathetic to their southern beliefs.  In December, 1859,
  Henry Powell deeded his farmland to his two sons, Jacob and
  Andrew Jackson.  It is possible he also was planning to
  leave Missouri.
       In February, 1861, John and Sarah Powell sold their
  land in Schuyler County to George W. D. Wade.  We have
  always felt John was selling his land to prepare to join
  the War but we do not have a dated record of his service
  until the next year. His wife's father, Richard Kiff, had
  already left the area and it is possible John planned to
  follow Kiff south to avoid the war.
        By April, 1861, when the first shots of War were
  fired, six southern states had seceded from the Union.
  When, on April 13, President Lincoln called for troops from
  all states to enforce the nation's laws, four more states
  left the Union.  Missouri did not secede but became a
  hotbed of controversy.  Although they may not have favored
  slavery, many Missourians did support states rights and
  strongly opposed Lincoln's efforts to force the Confederate
  states back into the Union.
       At this time Brigadier General Daniel M. Frost, a
  strong supporter of the south and  commander of the
  Missouri State Militia in St. Louis, was encamped on the
  outskirts of that city with a small Militia force. Another
  southern sympathizer, Claiborne F. Jackson, was Governor.
  On May 10, 1861, Captain Nathaniel Lyon, commander of the
  Federal Troops in St. Louis, entered Camp Jackson where
  General Frost and his men were camped and took the entire
  force captive.  This act was seen by many loyal Missourians
  as the US Army revolting against their own state, for their
  Legislature had only two months prior to this voted to
  remain in the Union.
       The Missouri Legislature in Jefferson City immediately
  passed a bill calling for full mobilization of the State
  Militia.  Governor Jackson appointed Sterling Price to be
  Major General of this force.  A conference was arranged
  between the two factions at St. Louis; Governor Jackson and
  General Price representing Missouri and Nathaniel Lyon
  representing the federal government.  When Governor Jackson
  refused to provide troops to participate in the War on the
  Union side, Lyon closed the conference with the words,
  "This means war."  Jackson returned to Jefferson City and
  called for fifty thousand militia to repel Lyon's attack.
  Abandoning the Capitol to advancing Union forces, Jackson
  made his stand at Booneville, fifty miles up the Missouri
  River from Jefferson City.  There, on Sunday, June 16,
  Jackson's State Militia engaged Lyon's troops and the war
  in Missouri had actually begun.
       The 1860 census of Schuyler County reports 6658 White
  people, 39 Colored people, and 46 Salves.  There were 7
  frame and 27 log school houses counted.  Seven hundred men
  from Schuyler County served in the Confederacy.  Col.
  Joseph C. Porter spent the summer of 1862 recruiting for
  his Northeast Missouri Cavalry all across northern Missouri.
       On July 25 (no year given but the unit was not formed
  until 1862), Henry and John Powell, of Schuyler County,
  enlisted in the Northeast Missouri Cavalry, Confederate
  States of  America, Captain James Leeper's Company (Company
  H) for the period of one year.  On August 25, 1862, Henry
  and John Powell, of Schuyler County, both enlisted in
  Clark's Regiment Missouri Infantry, Company B, for one
  year.  John Powell's record states see also Clarksons
  Battalion Confederate Cavalry Independent Rangers, but I
  have not located this record.  It may be that John joined
  Clarkson's Cavalry soon after he sold his land in 1861, but
  we would need to find this record with dates included to
  know that for sure.  James N. Leeper of Schuyler County
  enlisted as a First Lt. in Company B of Clark's Regiment on
  July 17, 1862.
       The book History of Schuyler County has an account of
  an attack on Union troops of the Enrolled Missouri Militia
  in the Schuyler County Courthouse by Schuyler County
  Confederate forces consisting of infantry led by Capt.
  William Searcy and Cavalry led by Capt. Leeper on Sunday,
  September 6, 1862.  On nearing the square the Confederate
  force shot and wounded Henry Hilton, a young man who was
  not a member of any military force.  Henry Hilton was a son
  of John Hilton and probably Henry Powell's nephew.  Finding
  they could not oust the Federals in the courthouse, the
  Confederates retreated.  Capt. Searcy was wounded in the
  skirmish and left for dead along the road out of town.  He
  was captured and later executed by the Federals.
       Capt. Leeper's involvement in this skirmish indicates
  it is likely Henry and John Powell participated in this
  attack on the County Courthouse.  After this incident the
  men involved were branded guerillas by the Federal
  government.
       Clark's Regiment was commanded by Col. John B. Clark,
  Jr. (later promoted to Brig. General).  Company B was
  commanded by Capt. W. T. Bond.  J. A. McCulley and W. M.
  Montgomery were two others from Schuyler County in Company
  B.
       The records for James Jones in Co. H, Clark's Regiment
  show he was captured November 17, 1862 at Camden, Missouri.
  He said on November 10 his unit swam their horses across
  the Missouri between Booneville and Rocheport.  He fought
  in the battles of Drywood and Lexington.  Columbus Palmer
  of the Northeast Missouri Cavalry was captured in Saline
  County on October 8.  He states they were "going south
  under Col. Clark in Clarkson's Co."  He said 40 men started
  South but only 30 got across the Missouri River in a skiff.
  The oars broke and they forded the river. Most of the
  Company turned back but three went on and were captured.
       These and other records indicate that Clark and the
  Northeast Missouri Cavalry started south in October 1862,
  to join forces with Confederate troops in Arkansas.  They
  were harassed all across Missouri by Federal forces,
  engaged in several skirmishes, and several members were
  captured at various locations.
       By late November they were in Arkansas and had joined
  the forces of General T. C. Hindman near Van Buren.  The
  army was only partly armed, poorly equipped, and still in
  the process of organization.  General Marmaduke commanded
  Hindman's cavalry, with Colonel Joseph Shelby in charge of
  one force he called his "Iron Brigade."  The infamous
  Quantrill's Raiders with the James and Younger brothers
  also rode with Marmaduke.  At the end of the War Cyrus
  Powell stated he fought under Colonel Shelby, so he could
  have been riding with Shelby at this time while his brother
  and father were marching with Hindman.
       On November 28, General Blunt and five thousand Union
  soldiers attacked Marmaduke at Cane Hill, just south of
  Fayetteville.  Marmaduke, heavily out numbered, decided to
  entrap Blunt's forces in the Boston Mountains.  He selected
  a road into the mountains hemmed by brushy hills and
  gulches.  As the last rebel horseman passed out of sight,
  Blunt followed down the narrow lane.  Marmaduke dismounted
  his men and arranged his forces so they could fire in
  volleys against the Federals and then retreat through their
  own lines, leaving Blunt to face a fresh line of loaded
  muskets.  Shelby, with his trade mark plumed black hat and
  sorrel horse, rode always behind the firing line to hold it
  firm.
       Fifteen miles down the road, having fought every foot
  of the way, Marmaduke sent back a flag of truce to gather
  the dead and wounded. During the night both sides withdrew.
  Blunt settled down at Cane Hill, and Shelby and Marmaduke
  sank deep into the gloom of the Boston Mountains.
       Hindman decided to attack Blunt at Cane Hill.
  Hindman's army was concentrated at Mazzard Prairie between
  present Fort Chaffee and Fort Smith.  On December 3, 1862,
  the Confederate army, with some 12,000 men and 22 guns,
  crossed the Arkansas at Van Buren and marched north.  The
  wagon train was left at Van Buren and ammunition for only
  one day's battle was taken along.  After dark on December 5
  Hindman's men emerged from the rough country below Cane
  Hill.  Footsoldiers, artillery, horses, and cavalry,
  including Shelby's Iron Brigade coiled snakelike in long
  lines from the woods.
       Blunt, receiving word of Hindman's intentions,
  telegraphed General Herron at Springfield to join him.  On
  December 6 Herron had reached Fayetteville and General
  Hindman was at Marrow's farm just eight miles south of
  Prairie Grove.  The Federals had new equipment and had
  marched down the wire road, one of the few good routes
  through the Ozarks.  The Confederates, on the other hand,
  had required five days to travel 50 painful miles.  They
  came through steep mountains and gullies, up a winding
  creek bed where the road in places crossed the creek
  twenty- five times in one mile.  Draft animals were so poor
  that the guns often had to be pushed by soldiers.  The
  Confederates suffered from insufficient rations, and at the
  last no rations, lack of shoes, socks and warm clothing.
       Hindman changed his tactics and decided to destroy
  Herron's forces before the two Federal armies could unite.
  A small cavalry brigade was to distract Blunt at Cane Hill.
  At 3 A. M. December 7, the Confederate infantry, with
  Clark's Regiment including Henry and John Powell, was
  ordered to advance toward Prairie Grove and Herron's
  forces.  Hindman stopped when he reached Prairie Grove
  Church, on  a ridge overlooking Illinois creek.  Hindman
  placed Frost's and Parsons's Missourians (with Clark's
  regiment under command of B. G. Roan placed behind Frost as
  reserves), Stand Watie's Indians, his Arkansaw and Texas
  troops, and Marmaduke's cavalry, eight thousand men in all,
  along a two-mile line on the ridge to await Herron's six
  thousand weary marchers.  Blunt, with at least eight
  thousand more Federals, was only eight miles away.  As
  Herron's artillery reached Illinois Creek, Hindman's first
  shell burst over them.  Herron correctly assumed Blunt
  would hear the bombardment and come running.  Private Eli
  Cooper, our Great-Great-Grandfather, rode with the Eighth
  Missouri Cavalry in Herron's Army.
       Now facing the united armies, Hindman was hopelessly
  out numbered and out gunned.  Blunt and Herron inflicted
  heavy damage with their superior artillery.  The battle
  raged fiercely  with many charges and retreats, but
  nightfall found the Confederates still in command of the
  ridge.  A few last shells blazed across the night sky
  catching several haystacks on fire.  Wounded men had crept
  into them for warmth, only to parish in the flames.
  Hindman reported, "There was no place of shelter upon the
  field...During five hours, shell, solid shot, grape and
  canister, and storms of bullets swept the entire ground."
       Under cover of darkness, a truce was arranged and,
  with blankets wrapped around his cannon wheels to muffle
  the sounds, Hindman retreated.  His hungry soldiers had not
  eaten for a whole day and were almost out of ammunition.
       Dawn found only a small burial detail of Confederates
  including Shelby's horsemen on the field while the main
  army was well down the road to Van Buren.  Some of Herron's
  men, exhausted from their long march, had died of exposure
  in the December cold, but the worst horror was the burnt
  bodies in the ashes of the haystacks.
       Hindman withdrew to Van Buren with his weary troops.
  Marmaduke's cavalry was sent one hundred miles east to
  Lewisburg, near the present site of Morrilton.  The
  starving, ragged and unpaid Confederate troops were
  deserting in great numbers.  The records of Clark's
  regiment show many who deserted or were captured, some
  seemly on purpose, during this time.
       On December 27, at three o'clock in the morning,
  General Herron and General Bunt marched on Van Buren.
  Three steam-boats of Confederate supplies were burned.
  Hindman's main army camped on the other side of the river
  at Fort Smith, without rations and ammunition, retreated
  down the Arkansas River.  Clark's unit lists man after man
  left wounded at the hospital in Fort Smith December 27.
  Rain soaked the roads and chilled the hungry men.  Ten days
  later the remnant of Hindman's army reached Little Rock.
  Henry and John Powell both survived severe hardships to
  appear on the muster roll of Co. B of Clark's Regiment in
  Little Rock in March and April 1863.
       But the war proved too much for Henry.  The record
  states:  I certify that I have carefully examined the said
  Henry Powell of Captain Bond's Co. and found him incapable
  of performing the duties of a soldier because of extreme
  old age and impaired vision.  The said soldier is now in
  his sixty-first (61st) year and is of no benefit to the
  service. Discharged this 25th day of March 1863 at Fort
  Pleasant Ark. Brig? Clark's Regt. Ark.  Signed, W. C. Boon
  (Surgeon)
       On his discharge, Henry drew pay from 23 August 1862
  to 26 March 1863 "being 7 months and 3 days at eleven
  dollars per month" ($78.10), for "traveling from Fort
  Pleasant Ark. the place of discharge to Scotland County,
  Mo. the place of enrolment, being six hundred and fifty
  miles at ten cents per mile" ($65.00), and "for clothing
  not drawn in kind" ($38.07).  He received $181.17 total,
  but this was likely Confederate Script that would have been
  worthless after he left Little Rock.
       Henry had to travel on foot through Federal lines
  subsisting off the land the 650 miles back to his family in
  Schuyler County.  Surely by this time he was sick of war.
  When he returned home we think he took his family to
  Nebraska until after the war ended.
       While Hindman camped at Little Rock, Marmaduke and
  Shelby lead a series of raids along the border zone into
  Missouri, but the Confederacy never again marshalled enough
  strength to wage a full scale attack on the Federals in
  Arkansas and Missouri.
       The April muster roll for Clark's Regiment is the last
  record we have for John Powell.  Many soldiers in Clark's
  unit are listed as deserters, captured, dying of disease
  including typhoid, cholera and camp fever, wounded and
  killed.  John Powell's record gives no indication of his
  fatenothing about desertion, disease, capture or death.
       On August 23, 1863, General D. M. Frost, commanding
  officer of Confederate forces defending Little Rock,
  Arkansas requested permission of General Sterling Price to
  move Clark's Brigade to a new location. When Little Rock
  fell to Federal forces on September 10 Clark and his men
  were guarding the road by Shoal Ford from Redoubt No. 1.
  Since there is no mention of the fate of John Powell in his
  record, I believe he was still with this unit at the fall
  of Little Rock.
       In the ensuing confusion of yet another Confederate
  retreat, the fate of John Powell is left to speculation.
  The one certainty is that he did not make it home like his
  father.  Sometime between April 1863 and the end of the war
  he perished, either as a result of disease or a casualty of
  war.  We have yet to find an official record of his death.
       The hardships and cruelties of war that Henry and John
  Powell endured together help explain the responsibility
  Henry showed toward Sarah Powell, John's widow after the
  war.
       In May, 1865, Cyrus Powell took the Amnesty Oath.  The
  record states he surrendered May 23, 1865 at Lexington,
  Missouri.  He says he was a Private in Shelby's Brigade and
  that his residence before the war was Schuyler County,
  Missouri.  There is no record of the date he enlisted, but
  it is likely he was with Shelby at Prairie Grove.  Cyrus
  survived to tell his children the thrilling tales of the
  life of a Rebel riding in Shelby's Iron Brigade on raid
  after raid against Union forces.
       When first looking for Civil War records of our Powell
  family, I expected to find them in the ranks of the Union
  Army because they lived so far north.  When I learned they
  fought for the Confederacy, I expected to find reluctant
  soldiers pulled into a fight against their will.
       The actual Confederate records of Henry, John and
  Cyrus Powell shattered all those illusions.  Henry was
  sixty years old with eye sight too poor to site a rifle
  when he and John volunteered.  Together they faced the
  rigors of cold, hunger, and long forced marches with
  insufficient clothing and shoes to fight a horrendous
  battle over six hundred miles from their home.  When Henry
  asked to be excused from service because of his old age,
  John fought on to the death.  Cyrus didn't give up until
  the bitter end, when there was no other choice.
       These are not the records of casual soldiers drawn
  into a fight against their will.  These are the records of
  Rebels to the core. However much we today may disagree with
  their ideas, these are the records of men fighting for a
  cause they believed ina cause they were ready to die for.
  The record speaksHenry, John, and Cyrus Powell, Rebels
  heart and soul.
  
  Army of the Confederate States Certificate of Disability
  for Discharge
  
  Henry Powell of Captain Bonds Company (B) of Clarks
  Regiment of Missouri Volunteers was enlisted by Lieut. Col.
  Blanton of Col. Proters Regiment of Confederate States
  troops in Scotland County Missouri on the 23rd day of
  August 1862 to serve one year.  He was born in Mercer
  County Kentucky, is Sixty years of age, five feet eight
  inches high, complexion dark, eyes dark, hair gray and by
  occupation when enlisted a farmer.  During the last two
  months said soldier has been unfit for duty. March 14, 63
  W. T. Bond Capt.  Co. (B)
  
  I certify that the winthin named Henry Powell ...is now
  entittled to discharge by reason of certificate of W. C.
  Boon Surgeon of Clarks Regt. Approved by W. C. Boon Surgeon
  of Clarks Brig. Approved by Lieut. Col. Buster Commander
  Clarks Regt. Approved by J. B. Clark Col. Com. Brig. Given
  in dupilicate at Fort Pleasant this 26th day of March 63
  W. T. Bond Com. Co.

Details of John L.'s family with Sarah Kiff