186 CONFEDERATE MILITARY HISTORY.

Ford. The enemy attacked his advance just after it had crossed the stream, drove it back on the main body and charged and nearly captured his battery, which he had hastily got in position. Though beaten back the enemy formed and charged again, but Marmaduke had got another regiment over and repulsed them. Again they formed and for the third time charged the battery, but by that time Marmaduke had got all Clark's brigade over and repulsed them decisively. Shelby, who was behind Marmaduke, crossed the stream higher up and attempted to cut the enemy off, but failed on account of their rapid withdrawal. He fell in their rear and took up the pursuit, carrying on a rapid, running fight with them. In one of the sharp brushes, Capt. George Todd, one of Quantrell's captains, and a noted guerrilla fighter, who was up with the advance guard, was shot through the neck and died in a few minutes.

The guerrilla warfare in Missouri was more bitter and merciless than in any other State; but as far as Southern men who took part in it were concerned it was strictly a war of retaliation. In September, 1861, Jim Lane with a body of Kansas jayhawkers took and wantonly burned the town of Osceola in St. Clair county. Later in the fall of that year the butcher, McNeil, had ten prisoners, many of them non-combatants, shot because one Andrew Allsman, of whom they knew nothing, had disappeared from his home and could not be found. In November, 1861, Col. C. B. Jennison, of the First Kansas cavalry, issued a proclamation to the people of the border counties of Missouri, in which he said: '' All who shall disregard these propositions (to surrender their arms and sign deeds of forfeiture of their property) shall be treated as traitors and slain wherever found. Their property shall be confiscated and their houses burned; and in no case will any one be spared, either in person or property, who refuses to accept these propositions.'' Indeed, the Federals boasted of their barbarity.   On December 27th,