A Much Maligned Man: Sidney Washington Creek
Born: 13 January 1832 in Liberty, Clay County, Missouri
Died: 12 September 1892 in Liberty, Clay County, Missouri
Chapter 3 in the Life of the Much Maligned Man
The last chapter covering the life and times of Sidney
Washington Creek hinted at the most tumultuous period in his life – the
events leading up to, including, and following the Civil War. In order
to fully understand the man and his actions we must attempt to immerse
ourselves into the atmosphere attendant upon his life.
The impetus for much of the violence that would
ultimately erupt was presaged by the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act
of 1854 that called for the issue of slavery to be decided by the
settlers of the recently opened land. The settlers had to determine
whether Kansas would enter the Union as a slave state or a free state.
This option incited open confrontations between the non-slaveholders who
envisioned their property rights and future earnings would be seriously
degraded by the more powerful, wealthier slaveholders whose properties
would be worked by cheap slave labor. It was not viewed by many as a
question of morality but of optional competition for land, farm goods,
and market!
From Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas:
“
Immigrants supporting both sides of the question arrived in Kansas to
establish residency and gain the right to vote. However, Kansas
Territory officials were appointed (1854) by the pro-slavery
administration of President Franklin Pierce (in office 1853–1857), and
thousands of non-resident pro-slavery Missourians entered Kansas with
the goal of winning elections. They captured territorial elections,
sometimes by fraud and intimidation. In response, Northern abolitionist
elements flooded Kansas with "free-soilers." Anti-slavery Kansas
residents wrote the first Kansas Constitution (1855) and elected the
Free State legislature in Topeka; this stood in opposition to the
pro-slavery government in Lecompton. The two Territorial governments
increased as well as symbolized the strife of Bleeding Kansas.”
Out of this turbulence among the next-door Kansans,
arose the formation of a group called the Red Legs. Made infamous by
Clint Eastwood’s movie, ‘The Outlaw Josey Wales,’ the actuality of
their heinous behavior has been obscured by most historians in the
interest of subverting the cause of the South in the Civil War and
illuminating the morality and heroism of the Union.
Treated by many researchers, authors, and historians as
‘just another name for the Kansas Jayhawkers,’ it is critical to our
comprehension of the actions undertaken by family members and neighbors
of Sidney Creek to recognize this group as an actual unique entity – a
gang, if you will, with leadership, a credo, and loyal members. Donald
Gilmore has an excellent treatise on this era and, specifically,
discusses the Red Legs as a band of desperados.
“In 1862, brigade
commander, General James Lane and his regimental commanders Cols.
Charles Jennison and James Montgomery led a violent spree up the western
border of Missouri. Lane invaded Osceola Missouri, burned it to the
ground, robbed its bank, killed a number of its citizens, and looted the
town and adjoining farms of everything valuable and transportable,
including a large number of slaves. Following the destruction of
Osceola, Lane’s regiments pushed north and destroyed Dayton, Columbus,
Papinville, Morristown, Clinton, West Point, Harrisonville, and Butler,
Missouri.” The Kansas Red Legs in Missouri
It should be noted that Tony O’Bryan (University of
Missouri, Kansas City) dated this outrage as having occurred in
September of 1861. He went on to describe the group as follows:
“The Red Legs were a
somewhat secretive organization of about 50 to 100 ardent abolitionists
who were hand selected for harsh duties along the border. Membership in
the group was fluid and some of the men went on to serve in the 7th
Kansas Cavalry or other regular army commands and state militias. They
are associated with a lesser-known group that called themselves the
“buckskin scouts,” and they served as an auxiliary arm to regular
troops, such as the 6th Kansas Cavalry on punitive expeditions into
Missouri. The legendary James “Wild Bill” Hickok, then still just a
teenager, William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, and fellow Pony Express rider
William S. Tough are among the few individuals known to have served with
the Red Legs. Buffalo Bill Cody admitted that as a member of the Red
Legs, “We were the biggest thieves on record.” SOURCE: http://www.civilwaronthewesternborder.org/encyclopedia/red-legs
Donald Gilmore pulled no punches. His description paints a picture of vicious outlaws whose violence knew no bounds:
“We need to know when the
Red Legs operated, why they operated, where they operated, and what
crimes they committed. But first, we need to know precisely who these
desperadoes were. Because they WERE a specific group of armed, named,
now-known killers, who swarmed over the western border counties of
Missouri and the eastern counties of Kansas, stealing the money of
Missourians, robbing their farms of equipment, livestock, furniture,
crockery, gold, and jewelry. And they often killed the older men folk
who tried to stop them, often hanging them by their necks upon a tree,
torturing them to learn where their money and valuables were hidden or
just killing them outright.”
George Caleb Bingham, the famous Missouri artist and a Union
officer, in his famous painting, “Order No. 11,” shows a Red Leg in
Union tunic, wearing Red Leggings, intimidating an old gentleman after
murdering his evidently unarmed son. Two other men wearing plumed hats, a
Red Leg practice, are evident in the same scene. A fourth Red Leg,
wearing scarlet leggings, loads loot on a wagon behind the
third-mentioned Red Leg. A fifth Red Leg, more casually dressed, with
his white shirt open loosely at the neck, appears at the left of the
painting, riding a blooded horse and carrying on his lap the plantation
owner’s wife’s traditional basket of valuables, where she hid her keys
and jewelry. This Red Leg thief is also wearing red leggings but no
black plume in his hat. It’s George Hoyt, field leader of the Red Legs.
Brig. Gen. Thomas Ewing is shown on horseback at the middle left of
Bingham’s painting, fully demonstrating his connection to the Red Legs.
Bingham’s painting portrays a violent, thieving, Red Leg Hey-day
Sidney Washington Creek, if you read Chapter 1 of his
story, was the third son, fourth child born to Jacob Haudenscheldt
(Howdyshell) Creek and his wife Virginia Lee Younger Creek. The Younger
family was headed by its patriarch Charles Lee Younger, one of the
wealthiest men in Missouri at that time, holding large plantations in
several locations throughout the state farmed by slaves. He also owned
some of the best horseflesh in the state and was an aficionado of
horseracing. He came to Missouri with his close friend, Daniel Boone,
after the death of his first wife, Nancy Toney, but ultimately returned
to Kentucky for a few years because the “Indians were too bad.” He would
later return and establish a very successful ferrying operation,
providing transport to the many pioneers flooding into the rich Missouri
farmlands.
Virginia’s older brother was Henry Washington Younger
who served in the House of Missouri under Gov. Reeder, Pawnee
Territorial capitol and in 1859 served as Mayor of Harrisonville. Henry
and wife, Bursheba Fristoe Younger were among the wealthiest of
Missourians at the start of the Civil War, having amassed a fortune of
about $100,000 at that time. (Assuming a steady inflation rate of 1.77%
from 1865 to 2017, that would be equal to $1,438,291.87.) Henry owned
plantations, racehorses, and a mercantile. He was a pacifist and
attempted to quell strife - a significant fact that feeds the current of
this story. For, in his role as mayor, leader of the local townsfolk,
Henry attempted to avert open hostilities in his area. He and his wife
hosted a number of gala parties, always keen to include the officers of
the ever-present Union Army. At one of these parties a young married
officer, a Captain Wiley, made unwanted and lascivious passes at the
young daughter of Henry Younger. Cole, the elder brother, upheld her
honor by taking the Captain outside whereupon he dealt justice via
fisticuffs. This event would, ultimately, breed its own vicious and
unexpected aftermath. For, the young daughter became the target of
retaliation. Shortly after this event, she was violently raped by one of
the Union soldiers, believed to have been Wiley himself although this
fact was never firmly established by anyone other than Cole Younger.
Cole would later relate the manner in which he learned
of this outrage in a rare transcription of a private conversation he
held in his elder years with a friend, Harry Hoffman. Hoffman wrote up
the whole story and through the auspices of our family historians, your
author has been made a recipient of that tale. First, the unwanted
molestation. Then, Cole’s lesson to Capt. Wiley. Then, the burning of
family estates in Harrisonville and other areas of Missouri by the Red
Legs. Then, Cole frustrated by the local Confederate leader, joined up
with William Clarke Quantrill in his band of Raiders, along with his
brother-in-law John Jarrette and a number of cousins including Sidney
Washington Creek, Creth Creek, Abner Creek, and other kin. Shortly
afterward, Henry Washington Younger was waylaid by a group believed to
have been none other than Capt. Wiley and his band of no-goods. He was
robbed, beaten, slain, and left in the dirt as retaliation. Cole heard
of the outrage and visited home. There he found his young sister had
taken to her room, refusing to speak or otherwise involve herself in the
usual home activities. Cole’s tale:
“When I arrived home I
missed my sister, who was about eighteen years old. I asked where she
was and was told that she was not feeling well, and was lying down. I
went up to her room. She came forward to meet me. Her eyes were swollen
and I could see she had been crying. I asked her what was troubling her.
At first she avoided answering. I Insisted. She said, “Brother, I am
afraid to tell you.” But when I continued to press her for an answer,
she told me of the brutal treatment she had received at the hands of
that beast. You can imagine how I felt when she laid her head on my
shoulder and burst out crying. I said to her, ‘Sister, be as brave as
you can. I promise you now that captain will never bother you in the
future.’ I had decided that minute to make him pay, and after he paid he
would never be able to return to persecute my sister, or any other
virtuous girl again.”
Needless to say, Cole and his group located the Captain
and his company of fifteen Federal troops and exacted his revenge. All
were open prey to his companions, save and except the man who accosted
and raped his sister. He was saved for Cole who summarily executed him.
This same conversation with Harry Hoffman infuses our
understanding of the era by illustrating the role the Red Legs and their
atrocities played in the lives of Cole Younger and his Creek cousins,
Sid, Creth, Abner, and ultimately my own 2nd great grandfather Absalom.
Cole Younger’s words again, as his notoriety caused their preservation
and we believe he spoke not only for himself, but for our family –
including Sid:
“Jackson County, Missouri,
where I was born was the very seat of the border strife between Kansas
Free Staters, generally called Red Legs, and the southern sympathizers
of Missouri.”
“The Red Legs were
followers of Jim Lane of Lawrence and John Brown of Osawatomie, both in
Kansas. From early in the Eighteen-Fifties the national political
question of slavery had been boiling to the point of explosion, which
happened in 1861. I was born January 15, 1844. When I was around ten
years of age, my playmates and I didn’t play as many other boys
throughout the land did play. We formed squads of soldiers; one side
would be Red Legs; the other, as we called it, ‘South Side’. We nearly
always planned it so that the South Side won. We finally had to quit the
game for the reason none of the boys would take the part of Red Legs.”
“At night, when the family
sat around the fireplace, the conversation always drifted to the
acts of violence and destruction perpetrated by the Red Legs, and the
demagoguery of Jim Lane and John Brown. Neighbors would congregate
throughout that section to discuss the outrages perpetrated by these men
and their followers.”
“Early In 1862, I signed
up with Quantrill, thinking, as the others did at that time, that we
would eventually be taken into the Confederate Army, which never
happened.”
To lend balance we once again turn to the words of Donald Gilmore in his treatise ‘the Dark Underbelly”:
“The young Missouri
guerrillas led by Quantrill were the only defenders of Western
Missourians against the Red Legs, the Union Army, and the Union
Militias. The older men were back East fighting the Yankees.”
It was in this atmosphere that Sidney Washington Creek
left his little farm and young family and joined The Cause. The final
chapter in his life will be related in next month’s column.
Next month, the dramatic end to the story of Sidney Washington Creek. Stay tuned.
Researched and Compiled by Melinda Carroll Cohenour – Spring 2017.
Click on author's byline for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online.
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