“ The Copperheads of Davis County and the Knights of the Golden Circle met with the group of soldiers and planned where to go , where to stop and who to kill .
”
The route taken by Lt . Bill Jackson and his pro-Confederate guerillas during the Davis County Raid on Oct . 12 , 1864 . Photo by Donald Promnitz / The Ottumwa Courier
The Aftermath
The Davis County militia patrolled roads at the Missouri state line day and night , looking for these or other raiders . Other Confederates were arrested , but most of them were trying to flee Missouri .
The men who raided Davis County were not found , except for Jackson .
When the war ended , Jackson surrendered to Union forces in Missouri and , like most other Confederate soldiers , was given a general amnesty , his wartime sins forgiven by the U . S . government . He was free to live his life .
But Jackson had made a lot of enemies during the war .
Hulbert , in The Civil War Monitor , described Jackson as a notorious and ruthless Confederate commander , a true believer in the Confederate cause and a white supremecist who hated freed slaves and the white people who hired them . He ’ d terrorized Unionists in the state ’ s northern and western sectors .
“ As a bushwhacker , he ’ d bet all of his chips on a successful irregular insurgency in Missouri ,” Hulbert wrote . “ Put another way , Jackson had waged war without regard for the consequences that would accompany a losing effort . He ’ d harassed neighbors and former acquaintances , he ’ d terrorized entire communities and he had not done these things as an anonymous soldier or one of thousands marching through a particular locale . He thrived on an intimate brand of warfare in which his targets often knew who was coming to kill them or in which Jackson left calling cards after-the-fact .”
Perhaps knowing he had worn out his welcome in Missouri , Jackson and another man were on their way to Illinois in June 1865 , when they were overtaken by a group of men . Whether that group were farmers or militia is lost to history . But one of those men accused Jackson of wartime thievery and murder — crimes for which he was convicted by the mob .
“ The amnesty papers in his pocket did him no good ,” reads the monument . “ He and a man named Farley were shot . The people of Santa Fe , Missouri would not allow them to be buried in the cemetery , so they dug one grave outside the fence , putting both Jackson and Farley in the single grave .”
14 | Now & Then