The Occupation

The Battle of Kirksville,

E.M. Violette’s History of Adair County.¹

As the covert Federal occupational forces of Jade Helm descend on “hostile” Texas, there is trepidation, and justifiably so. This is not a unique Federal incursion nor will it be the last:

Cumberland Academy with its towering steeple once stood within the confines of Memorial Park. In earlier days, other than the court house, it was the city’s only place of worship. Here, the godly Joseph Baldwin first conducted his Normal School, and the less than godly Union Colonel John McNeil situated his artillery on that commandeered mount, savaging a largely untrained and unarmed contingent of the Confederacy during the so called Battle of Kirksville.

One of my father’s early memories was of an honor guard firing a volley in remembrance of Twenty-Six Confederate soldiers killed in battle. And of he and his brother, oblivious to the significance gleefully running to pick up shell casings around the mass grave and its monument. Pearl Harbor and Buna all too soon altered that innocence.

In recent years, a second monument appeared revealing a truth long latent in that trench. The day after the battle, by order of Colonel John McNeil, fifteen captives were tried, convicted, and shot where the old Wabash Depot once stood. And on the third day, Colonel Frisby McCullough was court-martialed on contrived charges, found guilty, sentenced to be shot, and with the apparent consent of McNeil, “paraded up and down the streets of Kirksville amid the jeers and shouts of joy of the Federals.” However, at his request as an officer, he was given one concession, to conduct his own execution: “What I have done, I have done as a principle of right. Aim at the heart. Fire!” However, his executioners failed to comply. And as a second volley was being prepared, he continued from the ground: “May God forgive you this barbarous murder.”

"And all that sat in the council, looking stedfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel.... But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord, And cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man's feet, whose name was Saul. And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep" (Act 6:15-7:60).