The Bloody Battle that Almost Happened: William Clarke Quantrill and Peter Hardeman on the Western Border

THE BLOODY BATTLE THAT ALMOST HAPPENED: William Clarke Quantrill and Peter Hardeman on the Western Border Nicholas P. Hardeman It was perhaps appropriate that Peter Hardeman's Civil War activities took place entirely in the West. He was from a family of inveterate westerners, restless types who literally flowed with the frontier through most of its major phases from 1750 to 1900. Peter's grandfather Thomas Hardeman accompanied a small party of "long hunters" from southwestern Virginia to the French Lick (Nashville) area in 1768, fought at King's Mountain and in other western campaigns during the American Revolution, and led an immigrant aggregation in flatboats down the Holston and Tennesee rivers and up the Ohio and the Cumberland to Nashville in 1785 or 1786. After building a stockade, developing his plantation, and serving in a number of territorial and state offices, Thomas moved on to other frontiers in Tennessee and Missouri. A wayfaring myriad of his descendants fought in the War of 1812; migrated to Louisiana and Missouri Territory; engaged in the early trade to Santa Fe and Sonora; helped to fashion the Texas Republic both on paper and in the field; joined the fabled Texas Rangers against Comanche and Mexican adversaries on the frontiers of the Lone Star Republic; took part in a number of battles of the Mexican War; organized and led the Great Migration to Oregon in 1843; followed multiple pathways to the gold fields of California; assumed prominent political roles in the Far West; drove cattle over all the major western stock trails from Texas to Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska , Wyoming, and New Mexico; became involved in late-nineteenthcentury Indian campaigns in Arizona and Montana; and herded sheep across the Sierra Nevada Range of California.1 One of Thomas Hardeman's several westering sons, Dr. Blackstone Hardeman, moved from West Tennessee to Texas in 1835, along with about twenty-five other members of the family. Peter Hardeman, a son of Blackstone, was but four years of age when he 1 For a detailed account of the activities of Thomas Hardeman and his descendants on the frontier, see Nicholas P. Hardeman, Wilderness Calling: The Hardeman Family in the American Westward Movement, 1750-1900 (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1977). 251 252CIVIL WAR HISTORY arrived in the Mexican province with this entourage. Had he been old enough, no doubt he would have taken up arms in the Texas Revolt , Indian engagements, and Mexican War, as did an uncle and a number of his cousins. Two months after the outbreak of the Civil War, thirty-year-old Peter Hardeman was Captain of Company A in Colonel John R. Baylor's Second Regiment of Mounted Rifles. This force of Texans moved into southern New Mexico and menaced the Federal garrison at Fort Fillmore on the Rio Grande. Near that point, at Mesilla, on July 25, 1861, Peter Hardeman's 90-man company beat off an assault force sent out by fort commander Major Isaac Lynde and put the Union troops to flight.2 Two days later Hardeman's unit was in the vanguard during the rounding up and capturing of Lynde's 700 thirst crazed troops as they attempted a retreat to San Augustine Springs and Fort Stanton northeast of Fillmore. (It was reported that some of Lynde's men filled their canteens with whiskey before abandoning Fort Fillmore.) Concerning these skirmishes, Baylor wrote that "too much praise cannot be given to the officers and soldiers under my command, especially to Captain Hardeman and company, who were the only part of the command engaged with the enemy."3 There were other assignments in the arid Southwest for the commander (now a colonel) of Company A. He scouted and pursued Indians west to the Rio Mimbres in New Mexico,4 and on February· 25, 1862, Peter and his cousin William P. Hardeman, a former Texas Ranger and later Southern brigadier general, led their respective companies in the Confederate victory at Valverde near Fort Craig, also on the Rio Grande in New Mexico Territory. During late spring and early summer of the same year, Peter and William Hardeman took part in the disastrous retreat of Brigadier General Henry H. Sibley's...