Cumberland Blood: Champ Ferguson's Civil War

Conclusion

146 ) Conclusion FOLLOWING FERGUSON’S EXECUTION, HIS WIFE AND daughter returned to White County with his body. Ferguson was buried at the France family cemetery along the Calfkiller River, at his wartime home. For several years after the war Martha and Ann tried to survive near Sparta. In 1867 Ann married George T. Metcalf. The 1870 census listed Martha as living with Ann and George. Two years later George moved his wife and mother-in-law west, perhaps to leave the bloody legacy of Champ Ferguson behind once and for all. They moved first to Missouri but later settled near Independence , Kansas, where they spent the remainder of their lives.1 Like other famous outlaws, Champ Ferguson’s legend refuses to die. For years after the deaths of Jesse James and John Wilkes Booth people appeared, claiming either to be the outlaws themselves or to have seen them. Years after the Civil War, stories circulated that the Yankees had staged Ferguson’s execution. According to one version, the Federal authorities at the prison had sympathized with Ferguson’s plight and had refused to kill him; the officials faked 147 Conclusion the hanging and let him escape with his wife and daughter to the Indian Territory, later Oklahoma. Letters occasionally appeared in newspapers, in which people professed to have met Ferguson and his family in hiding. While entertaining, such tales are denied by his family, and there is no credible evidence to support them.2 Yet the mythology surrounding Ferguson’s bloody career is understandable. The stories might have helped people come to terms with the killings. Anyone could sympathize with the plight of a man whose wife and daughter had been raped by a brutal gang of bushwhackers. Without any civil or military authorities to turn to for justice, it would be perfectly understandable for him to track down the offenders and avenge his family’s honor. Such a man would be considered a heroic avenger, not a murderer. If Ferguson had not repeatedly denied the tale, it might have appeared plausible. In any event, it remains a popular story. The style of guerrilla war practiced along the Kentucky and Tennessee border was not unique in the Civil War. Although the feuding in Kansas and Missouri was done on a larger scale and predated the war, the fighting was quite similar to the border war in Kentucky and Tennessee. While the deeds of Confederate guerrillas William Clarke Quantrill and William “Bloody Bill” Anderson have received much attention, Champ Ferguson’s name needs to be added to this bloody pantheon of America’s outlaws. When conflict came to the isolated communities in Kansas and Missouri, residents thought in terms of frontier defense rather than relying on civil and military authorities to keep order. Quantrill’s guerrillas were just as familiar with their former neighbors, who they were now fighting, as Ferguson and his men were with theirs. Their enemies were similar as well. James H. Lane’s Kansas Jayhawkers were certainly just as brutal as Tinker Dave Beaty and his bushwhackers. Even some of the folklore surrounding the killers has a common thread. Bloody Bill Anderson’s war-time career had been nondescript until one of his sisters was killed and another crippled while in Federal custody. The women were being held in a jail for Confederate sympathizers in Kansas City when the building collapsed, killing five women and injuring others. Without any credible evidence , Anderson and the guerrillas believed the building had been 148 Conclusion purposely weakened by Federal authorities to kill the Southern women. From that point on, Anderson become one of the most heartless killers of the war. Quantrill and Anderson then used the event as an excuse for the subsequent bloody attack on Lawrence, Kansas. Quantrill led the attack and gave orders to “Kill every man big enough to carry a gun.” In two hours the guerrillas had sacked the town and killed around 150 unarmed men and boys. The attack on Lawrence and the Saltville Massacre rate as two of the most heinous crimes of the Civil War. However, neither Anderson nor Quantrill survived the conflict, and therefore never faced charges. Many other guerrilla leaders on both sides of the Mississippi were permitted to go free at the end of the war, leaving Ferguson one of the few to be prosecuted. Ferguson’s killings were in fact random attacks of opportunity...