Ed,

The main reference I list for Joel Dennis' story about what happened is in the book Ivan N. McKee, "Lost Family-Lost Cause," Freeman, South Dakota, Pine Hill Press, 1978, on pages 62-9, and page 94. The McKee book is very rare, as the Pine Hill Press just printed so many copies for Ivan McKee, his family members, and a few friends, and it was never reprinted, as far as I can tell. I am rather sure the State Historical Society of Missouri in the lower level of the Missouri University library in Columbia, MO has a copy.

I should add that Mr. McKee also referred to the "Official Records" vol. 48, part 2, as you did, but he referred to another report on page 209 that referred to a Union report on 26 April 1865 referring to ten guerrillas passing through Wayne County in an unrelated manner one month earlier than the murders. What McKee referred to with the ten guerrillas passing through referred to one of the notorious Sam Hildebrand passing through Wayne County on one more revenge raid to settle his personal scores back in St. Francois and perhaps Jefferson Counties before the war ended. There were several events of "last minute" revenge taking in different parts of Missouri by men of both sides during April, May and June 1865 who wanted to settle old scores before civil law was re-instituted.

The 7th Kansas Cavalry regiment was a notorious outfit, even though the regiment underwent some changes after some atrocities in November 1864 in southwest Missouri after their pursuit of Confederate Major General Sterling Price's retreat from Missouri.

To be fair, there was lots of Union anxiety during April and May 1865 due to traveling groups of 30 or 50 or even larger returning Confederate regulars with some returning Missouri guerrillas mixed in who were riding back fully armed to their homes in different parts of Missouri. One of two of these groups engaged in vengeance taking along the way. I wonder if Union troops in various parts of Missouri heard about these vengeance killings and wanted some vengeance of their own.

The point I make with all these Rebel traveling groups traveling northbound to northeast MO or west-central MO is that the Union forces in Missouri were low in numbers because of transfers of troops out West to fight Indians and their horses were worn down by patrols throughout winter 64/65 hunting down small groups of southern guerrillas in several parts of Missouri. Reading Union reports written in MO this spring, I detect anxiety among the Union leadership in Missouri that they were unsure if they had enough men and horses to hold back large numbers of Missouri guerrillas returning to fight them this spring. I wonder if this anxiety translated to the troops that perhaps they should resort to atrocities to eliminate their enemies. Sad to say some of the Kansas and Missouri units already showed a tendency to disregard rules of warfare. This doesn't excuse anything, but it could have been a motivator to take desperate means.

Regarding the masonic hand signal of distress, I ran across two other such incidents where men used this to save themselves in Missouri during the last months of the war, mostly in county histories. I wonder if the people who contributed to writing county histories liked to include such tales as a form of human interest story. I can already sense from reading lots of Missouri county histories that writers were unwilling to dredge up too much brutality of the war afraid of stirring up old war hatreds. That could explain the popularity of such "unexpected humanity in the midst of war's brutality" type of stories, and why such war mercy stories had such an appeal.

Bruce Nichols