Obedience Trosper 1905 Reminiscence

The following is a reminiscence about violence toward Southern sympathizers in Nodaway County, Missouri during the Civil War, from The Maryville Tribune, March 9, 1905 (p. 7). Obedience Trosper (1823-1913) is my paternal great-great-great-grandmother, mother of my ancestor Nathan John Freeman (1844-1923) who is mentioned as a soldier.

WAR'S IRON HAND

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Nodaway County People Felt the Stern Spirit of the Great Conflict

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TROUBLE FOR THE DISLOYAL

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Mrs. Obedience Jackson Tells of Men Who Sympathized With the South and Paid Grim Penalty

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"It wasn't always safe then for a man to say too much of what he thought, for he never could tell what might happen to him a little later on.

"Folks up this way are used to thinking that everything went smooth enough during the war, but I remember a few cases where there'd a been trouble if it wasn't that dead men don't tell any tales."

Grandma Jackson's Story.

"Grandma" Jackson, eight-two years old and for the past sixty years a resident of Nodaway county looked out of the window and across the snow-covered fields -- looked, too, beyond the span of years that separated her from the past and saw again the stirring scenes of her young womanhood.

One of "Grandma" Jackson's sons was a soldier in the civil war, so she doubtless feels herself competent and privileged to speak of those days with that freedom which of itself is the prerogative of old age.

"There were many doings then that didn't get talked about much after the war was over and people begun to cool down a little," she continued. "I reckon it don't do any good to tell of 'em now, either -- but you say you want to put all those old happenings in your paper.

Men Killed in County.

"Perhaps you don't know that there were men killed right here in this country because they wanted the south to win -- and their neighbors found it out. There wasn't any battle, of course, but some man would be missing, or would turn up dead, and it didn't seem just right to ask too many questions about it.

"I remember one man, but can't recollect his name now, who was a southern sympathizer. He kept pretty close at home usually, but one morning he and his little boy came up town -- I was living at Xenia then -- to get something to eat.

"He got along all right until he started back home. As he and the boy were passing a house along the road somebody fired a shot and the man fell dead. His son always claimed afterward that he shot was fired from the house, but nobody knew.

Buried Him Under a Log.

"Another man named Yokum over that way who was glad when the south would win soon got the people down on him. Xenia was a tough place then, and lots of fellows took advantage of those bad years to do things they wouldn't have dared do at any other time.

"Well, they went one day and arrested this copperhead and said they were going to take him before the provost marshal. A regular road led to the town where the officer was stationed, but the men decided to take the prisoner by another way -- a path which led through the timber.

"They disappeared in the woods with Yokum, but when they came out the man wasn't with them. And nobody ever saw him again after that day. When the war was over, though, it was whispered around what had happened.

"It seemed that one of the men arrested with Yokum was a southern sympathizer, himself, but he didn't dare let on to the rest. But he was the one who told about it afterward.

"He said they took Yokum into the woods until they came to a place where a fallen tree lay across the path. Then suddenly somebody shot the prisoner. They all went away then except this southern sympathizer and another fellow.

"These two men rolled the tree over, hollowed out the ground where it had lain, put the body in the shallow grave and then rolled the tree back in its old place again.

"I suppose he never had any other grave -- but of course there were lots of soldiers who were killed on the battle field and didn't get even that much attention.

"How terrible it all seems, though, to think of it now?"