Christopher Grasso - Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy: The Civil Wars of John R. Kelso

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Grasso, Christopher, author.

Title: Teacher, preacher, soldier, spy : the civil wars of John R. Kelso / Christopher Grasso.

Description: New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press, 2021. |

Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021010043 (print) | LCCN 2021010044 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780197547328 (hardback ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9780197547342 (epub) |

ISBN 9780197547359 (updf)

Subjects: LCSH: Kelso, John R. (John Russell), 18311891. | SoldiersMissouriBiography. |

LegislatorsUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC E467.1.K295 G73 2021 (print) | LCC E467.1.K295 (ebook) |

DDC 328.73/092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010043

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010044

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197547328.001.0001

For

Erwin (Joe) Dieu

Martin Dieu and Holly Elwood

Angela Goldin

Kris Stoever

Trudie Sheffield

John and Rhiannon Kelso

I am large, I contain multitudes.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855

the small notice appeared in the May 8, 1872, edition of the Sacramento Daily Union. At 7:30 on Friday evening, May 10, at Hamilton Hall, Colonel John R. Kelso, the great guerrilla fighter of Missouri, will lecture... on the

Newspaper readers in Sacramento might have heard of Kelso from the publicity he received immediately after his Civil War exploits in Missouri. Elected to Congress for the term beginning in 1865, Kelso became known in widely circulated press accounts as the guerrilla fighter who during the war had vowed that he would not cut his hair and beard until he had killed twenty-five bushwhackers with his own hand. He recently passed through St. Louis for Washington, close-cropped, and boasts that his vow is fulfilled.

Perhaps Kelso told about the time in the fall of 1862 when he was the hero of a raid on a large band of rebel thieves and cut-throats led by two Medlock brothers, one called Captain and the other Lieutenant. He had not intended to charge one of the Medlocks hideouts alone, but his men had fallen behind, and Kelso, running on a hog path through dense hazel bushes, suddenly burst out right into the yard in front of Captain Medlocks house.

Kelso rushed right up toward the campfire and the house and, quick as a flash, decided to yell, Close in, boys, well get every one of them! Imagining that Kelsos troops were right behind him in the hazel bushes, the man in the doorway darted out and fled in the opposite direction, running with his pants in his hands. Other semi-dressed men bolted out of the doorway and followed him. In the yard, men bounded up from their blankets. Some of them tried to grab their boots or their pants or their guns as they scattered. Most just ran. I had never before seen such a fluttering of shirt-tails in the morning twilight, Kelso said, delighted. Captain Medlock, too, a large, heavy man, started to run. But as he reached the end of the house, he stopped and glanced around. No other soldiers had emerged from the woods. Still only a single man, running toward him. Medlock turned back toward the doorway and rushed to get his gun. Kelso was right behind him. Several coarse-looking women appeared in the doorway and began to scream: Run, hell get you! Medlock pushed past the women and lunged for his gun at the far side of the room. Just as his hand touched the gun, Kelso stuck his revolver into Medlocks back and fired. He fell like an ox, his fall shaking the whole house.

Kelso whirled around, dashed back outside, and saw the other men fleeing across an open field. The closest one was already 60 yards away, running with his rifle in one hand and boots in another. Kelso yelled after him: You infernal son of a bitch, come back! The man quickly stopped, turned, threw his rifle to his shoulder, and fired. The bullet grazed the left side of Kelsos neck. Kelso, taking as careful aim as he could, fired back. The man didnt fall, and resumed running, so Kelso thought he had missed. Later the mans body would be found in the woods.

Kelso rejoined his men. They had won a hard fight at another of the Medlocks houses, though several had been badly wounded. The bodies of a half dozen dead rebels were laid out in the yard. Kelsos men marveled, though, at the successful attack he had undertaken, by himself, on Captain Medlocks men. With a few soldiers, Kelso went inside the house to find Lieutenant Medlocks body laid out on a cooling board and covered in a white cloth. A lovely woman, apparently the lieutenants wife, stood by. This

Kelso ordered the other soldiers to leave the house, mount their horses, and rejoin the rest of the men. He would join them shortly, he said. When they were gone, he bent down and spoke into the lieutenants ear: You are not dead, and you know it, and you know that I know it. And now let me give you a little good advice. If you recover from your present wounds, quit this robbing business, and go south and fight like a man for your cause. And when you are gone, remember that it was Kelso that saved you.

What kind of a man would charge into a den of thieves and shoot down one Medlock brother, only to spare the life of the other?

In Sacramento in 1872, three days after the announcement of the lecture about the personal adventures of the great guerrilla fighter of Missouri, another notice appeared in the Daily Union. For twenty-five cents, townspeople could hear another lecture by John R. Kelso, with more to come. God Is Gone!What Has Become of Him? Prof. John R. Kelso, the crazy School Teacher, will tell you all about it.... This Lecture will be followed by others of equal interest. Although the advertisement did not list future topics, if atheism were not enough to shock the lecture-going population of Sacramento, Kelso could also deliver his talk on Marriage, which likened matrimony to slavery and prostitution.

Readers of the Sacramento Daily Union, however, might have associated Kelsos name with a different sort of personal trauma. A year and a half before the newspaper had printed the lecture announcements, it had carried on its front page a story from the Missouri press about the suicide of his fourteen-year-old son. Yesterday about two oclock P.M., the eldest son of John R. Kelso, living about three and a half miles southeast of town, was found dead in a ravine near his fathers house. The article drew details from the coroners report: death was produced by the discharge of a pistol which was found in the clenched hand of the deceased. The muzzle of the pistol had been placed on or near the forehead while the deceased lay upon his back, the thumb of his right hand pressing the trigger. The ball penetrated to the brain, producing almost instant death. The deceased... was about 14 years old, a boy