Fighting the Ghosts at Lone Jack
By LESLIE ANDERS*
Taking command of the District of Missouri in June 1862,
Major General John M. Schofield inherited a scene of rising turmoil.
Confederate agents surreptitiously enrolled recruits back in areas
of western Missouri they knew best. Such success as they enjoyed,
however, stirred up a public uproar that intensified Unionist military vigilance. Major General Thomas C. Hindman, commanding
troop elements of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department,
had made Brigadier General James S. Rains of the Missouri State
Guard supervisor of recruiting in his home state. Rains had deputed various officers to "go north." Directing the campaign in
the west-central counties was Colonel Jeremiah Vardeman Cockrell of Johnson County, whose brother Francis served beyond the
Mississippi as a Confederate brigadier. Under Cockrell rode several
deputies, notably DeWitt Clinton LIunter of Cedar County, John
T. Hughes and Upton Hays of Jackson, John Trousdale Coffee of
Dade, Joseph Shelby and Charles Tracy of Lafayette, and Sidney
D. Jackman of Howard.
"Vard" Cockrell, scion of a noted family coming from Virginia
♦Leslie Anders is professor of History at Central Missouri State University,
Warrensburg. He received an A.B. degree from the College of Emporia, Emporia,
Kansas, and the A.M. and Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Dr.
Anders is the author of The Eighteenth Missouri and The Twenty-First Missouri.
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