St. Paul daily globe., 1892-01-04
Indications That They We're
More Numerous as Spies
Than We're the Men,
And Were Considerably More
Shrewd, More Jealous and
More Unscrupulous.
Some Of Their Wonderful EX-
plOits in Prison and With
Guerrillas.
Women Of the Border Who
Lived Amid Scenes of MUIR
der and Rapine.

There were more rebel women spies
than men during the war, says CORE
spondent of the st. Louis Globe-Demo-
crat, and they were the Shrewdest, the
most Jealous and the most unscrupu-
lous. Some of these underwent all sorts
OF experiences in their efforts to help
the Southern cause. Some of them
risked not only their lives, but their
honor-aye, and lost it, too, tossing it
gladly into the scale. believing that the
end would justify the means. Some
times the deed of shame was done to
save life, sometimes to destroy one,
and sometimes TO get piece of news or
hundred gun caps and bag of buck
shot.
The women of the border, where few
indeed were the neighborhoods over
which murder and raplne did not hold
sway, were perhaps the most deniOral-
lied. There was Anna Fickel, of La
fayette. a fair young rebel girl. who
made Quantrell's black silk flag from
the skirt OF her dress, and supplied the
guerrillas with so much powder, shot
and caps that Quantrell ought to have
made her his chief of ordnance. 1t was
Anna and woman old enough to be
her grandmother who cOmpassed the
murder of two Union soldiers in order
to effect the release of Andy Blunt,
guerrilla prisoner, who was permitted
to visit the grandmother'S house. Blunt
escaped for the time, but few days
later the Saline county militia came
upon him and beat out his brains with
tobacco sticks. Miss Fickel was sent
to Alton prison. In 1854 nearly every
uToIo,oI HF5Nx<o
in the state had Confederate women in
mates. They had been arrested for feed
ing gucrrillas, giving them information
troops, writing letters, smuggling am
munition and even arms, and for
other kinds of mischief which
certain rebel ladies delighted to
perpetrate. Some Of these were
girls of sixteen and eighteen years,
other were women Of forty and fifty
years. The majority of these ladies
were released after short imprison-
imentS. but many were held to the close
of the war or banished from the state.
Mrs. Samuels, the mother of the James
boys, was sent to Nebraska.
In the latter part of the war so bad
had things become that at least four
score little girls and women in Western
and Southwestern Missouri became
guerrillas purely and simply. and they
were not so very pure or so very simple
either. There was Puss Michaels. a
Cass county girl, who was mortaily
wounded in a fight between squad Of
Missouri guerrlllaS and some Kansas
men on the Marais des Cygnes in the
fall of 1868, after the Lawrence raid
svolvers, was dressed partly in male at
tire and died with her boots on. There
were twenty or more girls and women
with Quantrell and Bill An
derson at the slaughter of Gen.
,Blunt's escort (slXty-five men.
at Baxter Springs, the week after
Puss Michaels was killed. 1 have it
from an ex-guerrilla, who was present.
that lMlf dozen of these bushwhacker
bellies took part in the chase and mas
sacre of Blunt's men-fred their pistols
as rapidly and deadly. rode as swiftly
and cheered as wildly as their masculine
comrades. The most of these amazons
were from Jackson, 5Cass and Bates.
Their homes had been destroyed In the
execution of Gen. Ewing's "Order No.
H." and they were accompanying the
guerrillas to their winter rendezvous in
Texas. Then there were the
Rebel Girls of Vernon.
At the close of the war there were
not a hundred habitable houses in that
county. Nevada City, the county seat,
had been burned by the Cedar militia
in the spring of 1868, and there were
left on the site not more than three or
four little huts not bigger than pig
pens. Monteyallo had been burned
and not one stone left Oh another.
More than half of the able-bodied men
had been killed and the rest were in
one army or the other. The woman
and children were refugees on the face
of the earth.
In 1854 fully score of the rebel girls
of Vernon were riding with the guer-
rillaS and bushwhackers. The most
noted OF these were the Mayfield sisters.
Their mother was widow, and they
were young widows. Their husbands
and two OF their brothers, Brice and
''Crack" Mayfield, desperate BUSH
whackers, had been killed. The Globe
Democrat some years ago narrated the
escape of two OF these girls from Gas
tie Mcclure" the old female military
prison at st. Louis, and detailed some
of their adventures. Sally Mayfield. as
she was best known, though her real
name was Mccoy, was pretty woman of
twenty-three years in the spring of 1864.
She is now a respected matrOn, a good
Christian woman, and not long since
iifCQ uCdl HCi OlO EOutflCdSC6Tu
Vermont. In 1887, at her own peaceful
home, her children and her present hus-
band about her, she gave me her ''War
record" She joined the guerrillas in
the spring of 1864, becoming the wife of
Dave Majors, the leader of a small band
that operated in Southwestern Missouri
and Northwestern Arkansas. She rode
with her husband for hundreds of miles,
shared all his perils, hardships and pri-
yations, and was by his side when he
got his death-wOund. She had many
narrow escape from death. Her dress
was often
Pierced by Bullets
and she knows what it is to ride hard,
to fight hard, to be hungry and tired
and cold, to bivouac on the wet ground
and to undergo all the vicissitudes of
guerrilla life. On one occasion she and
her husband and his band were going
into camp for the night on Cynthia
creek, in the southern part of Vernon
county. The horses had been unsad-
died; Sally was spreading the blankets
for her and her husbands bed; the
other members of the band were dress
ing foraged pig and preparing supper.
Suddenly company OF Kansas cavalry
dashed Npon the camp, shouting and
firing. Taken unawares, the guerrillas
fed, every man for himself. The Kan
sans pursued them. hardly stopping to
loot the camp. Sally was back in
the brush and was not seen. In
a few minutes all was quiet In the camp.
The horses were all gone, the men all
gone. Faint shouts came from the dis
tance, and sundry pistol shots not loud
er than the tapping of a woodpecker.
When darkness came good and black,
Sally stole out Of her covert, taking with
her her blankets and her husbands