SCHOOL FOR SAVAGES

9/27/1864 - A battleground already before the American Civil War even starts, Confederate guerrilla leader, William T. "Bloody Bill" Anderson, reminds Northern soldiers on this day what they can expect if caught fighting in Missouri ... a lesson the residents and Union soldiers of Audrain and Boone counties learn in a day of blood letting now known as the Centralia Massacre.

Anderson - 1864

A killer with hatred his excuse, Anderson becomes a master of murder after his father is shot to death by a former Confederate sympathizer and family friend (romantically involved with Anderson's sister, Mary) turned Union Man, Judge A. I. Baker, in the courthouse where the judge practices law (in revenge, Anderson will lock Baker and Baker's brother-in-law in the basement of their Council Grove, Kansas store, and burn the structure down around his enemies ... and for good measure, he burns down Baker's house too while stealing two of the dead man's horses), and locked up for giving comfort to the southern guerrillas, has his 14-year-old sister Josephine die, his 16-year-old sister Molly suffer back and facial injuries, and his 10-year-old sister Martha become crippled for life when her legs are crushed in the collapse of the three-story Union jail in Kansas City.

Anderson

Memorial

Rider, to William Quantrill lieutenant, to guerrilla leader himself, Anderson leads the group of men in the sacking of Lawrence, Kansas that kills the most citizen's of the town, but cools on continuing to take orders from his boss after a series of arguments between the two takes place while the band is resting and refitting in Texas.  In charge of his own sociopaths with orders from General Sterling Price to disrupt Union operations in the state, when Anderson returns to Missouri in the summer of 1864, he is at the head of a pack of about 75 or so cutthroats that love to collect the scalps and ears of their victims, and includes a 5'1" maniac named Archie Clement that likes to leave notes on the men he turns into corpses, and killer outlaws in training, Frank and Jesse James. Operating with members of Quantrill's and George Todd's bushwakers, on 9/27, Anderson takes his command off to the town of Centralia to explore raiding opportunities in the area.

 

Quantrill & Todd

 

Clement & Jesse And Frank James

Finding the town lightly defended, Anderson and about 80 of his men (many dressed in looted Union uniforms) pounce, cutting off the North Missouri Railroad.  Looting stores, firing buildings, and drinking any booze they can find (unable to procure enough cups and glasses to go around, the guerrillas raid a shoe store and use new pairs of boots for whiskey mugs), most of the raiders are hammered before 10:00 in the morning ... then a train arrives in town and the murdering begins in earnest.  Realizing too late that the men milling about the railroad station in blue uniforms aren't Union soldiers, an entire train and its passengers are delivered into the hands of the bloodthirsty southerners (it is the first Union passenger train to be captured in the war).  Everyone moved off the train, the passengers are divided into two groups ... one consisting of 102 civilians, and the second, 23 Union soldiers returning to their homes on leave after fighting in the recently ended battle for Atlanta.

 

Bushwhackers John Jarrette & Henderson Duvall

Ordered to strip, the men disrobe on the railroad siding and when Anderson calls for a Union officer, thinking he will sacrifice himself for his men, Sgt. Thomas Goodman, steps forward (kept alive to exchange for a prisoner friend of Anderson's, Goodman escapes the next week when the bushwhackers are distracted preparing to cross a river) ... and becomes the only soldier to survive the morning.  "Muster them out, Archie," Anderson orders, and with a pistol in each hand, Clement begins gleefully shooting down prisoners, as the other guerrillas about the area then beginning firing into the helpless captives too (and further abuse comes after the soldiers become corpses ... ears and scalps are hacked off, heads decapitated, and bloody cleaved genitals are put in places where they don't belong). Their "work" completed in about three hours (brigand David Poole will count his victims by stepping on each man's body that he has killed), the drunken raiders then ride back to their camp for a rest.

Goodman

But there will be no rest for the guerrillas, due to the ire of Union Major A.V.E. Johnston, who arrives in Centralia at the head of 155 men of the newly formed 39th Missouri Infantry Regiment (Mounted) shortly after Anderson and his band have left the town in ruins. Revenge in mind, Johnston barks he will get Anderson or eat his supper in Hell as he leads his command after the raiders ... and finds them all too quickly in their camp with the killers of George Todd's guerrilla force, only three miles away from the town they have just raided.  Odds not in favor of Johnston's men ... over 300 experienced fighters with repeating weapons face 155 rookie soldiers with muzzle loading, one shot rifles ... and the Northern soldiers receive idiotic orders ... instead of charging into the guerrillas, Johnston has his men dismount and form a battle line and seals his command's fate.  Instantly up and in the saddle, Anderson and his men attack ... a volley from the northerners knocks a few raiders down, but then the southerners swarm their prey as their victims try to reload ... and just like that, Johnston and his men are no more (123 out of the 155 men don't make it to evening).

Johnston 

Site Of The Fight Between Johnston And Anderson

And in the thick of things, is 16-year-old Jesse James.  With nary a whisker on his face, James had already impressed his companions with his riding abilities and prowess with a pistol or rifle ... now his bravery with bullets flying about is noted.  Galloping forward with pistols in hand and reins in his teeth, James heads directly for the leader of the Union soldiers, Johnston, and shoots the man dead (in all, James will shoot six Union soldiers, killing three of them).  Back at camp that night, while silently cleaning a pistol, James will accidentally shoot off the tip of his middle finger, a wounding that causes the future outlaw to cry out in pain as he looks at the wound, "If that ain't the dingus-dangest thing," earning his first nickname, to his bushwhacker friends from then on, he isn't Jesse, he's Dingus!

Dingus

A marked man after Centralia, Anderson shares Johnston's fate less than a month later.  Assigned by Union leaders to eliminate Anderson, Lt. Colonel Samuel P. Cox does just that on 10/26/1864, outside of Glasgow, Missouri.  Attacking a final time, Anderson is hit by a bullet behind his ear, and dies instantly.  No pieces cut off like he use to do to his own victims, the indignity the guerrilla suffers in death is to have his corpse become a picture postcard ... that makes quite a lot of money for Northern businessmen.

Cox

Dead Anderson

Unbounded butchery on the plains of Missouri ... 9/27/1864 ... the Centralia Massacre.

THE GREAT NEW ENGLAND HURRICANE OF 1938

9/21/1938 - Lost for the most part from the collective memory of the nation as the many horrors of WWII accumulate to weigh on the lives of all Americans, Mother Nature once more shows she is more than a match for any dictator or weapon of mass destruction when it comes to mayhem and tragedy, unleashing one of the worst natural disasters in the country's history on the northeastern portion of the Atlantic coastline, an event now know as the Great New England Hurricane of 1938.

Track Of The Storm

Headlines

Born south of the Cape Verde Islands off the western coast of Africa on September 9, the storm grows for two weeks into a monster as it gains strength by being funneled between two high pressure areas northward into the New England coast.  It is a Category 3 Hurricane when it makes landfall at roughly 2:00 in the afternoon, its winds blowing at a sustained rate of 120 miles-per-hour (150 winds will be measured during the event), creating a storm surge 25-35 feet above the normal high tide sea level ... and most of the inhabitants of the area are unaware it is coming until too late (a time before the Internet, television, smart phones, and satellite radar tracking of weather, most people don't know the storm is coming, and those that do hear the weather reports, are told that gale winds are coming, but nothing about a tropical storm or hurricane).

Arrival

Havoc measured in numbers, the storm causes $308 million in damages (by modern day adjustments, $4.5 billion in 2011 dollars), there are 682 known deaths (with an additional 708 people injured enough to require medical treatment), 4,500 residences are reported as destroyed, 63,000 people are made homeless, 26,000 automobiles become junk, 20,000 electric poles are toppled, 35% of New England's forests are effected, with 2.7 billion board feet of wood fallen (1.6 billion will be salvaged), and ten new inlets are created on eastern Long Island.  The region's fishing industry is destroyed, and half of the area's apple crop is lost.

 

 

Some Of The Devastation

Devastation everywhere, the surge destroys most of the Atlantic City boardwalk, the Mitchel Field army airbase has water over its entire surface that is knee deep, an entire movie theater, its 20 matinee patrons and movie projectionist in Westhampton, Long Island are swept two miles out to sea and drown, another movie theater is blown down in the town of Greenport, for a time, low lying Block Island ceases to exist, Napatree Point in Rhode Island, a small cape containing 40 families is completely swept away, the Whale Rock Lighthouse on Conanicut Island is toppled (killing its keeper, Walter Eberle), on Prudence Island the lighthouse survives, but the keeper's house is washed out to sea (killing 4 of the 5 people that had sought shelter within the structure), the waterfront business area of New London catches fire and burns out of control for 10 hours, a permanently anchored, 240-ton lightship at the mouth of New London Harbor, is washed on to a sand bar two miles away, in Massachusetts, the Chicopee Falls Bridge is washed away, two-thirds of the boats in New Bedford Harbor are sunk, a peak gust blowing at 186 miles-per-hour is recorded by the Blue Hill Observatory (still the strongest gust of hurricane wind ever recorded in the United States), over 2,000 miles of public roads in Vermont are damaged, a train is derailed near the town of Castleton, and ten bridges are destroyed in the town of Peterborough, New Hampshire. 
 

 

More Of The After Mess

One story typical of many, and showing the storm plays no favorites whatsoever, involves the near death of a Hollywood legend ... actress Katharine Hepburn.  Declared box office poison by the Independent Theatre Owners of America (despite owning the Best Actress Oscar for 1932) after a string of flops, Hepburn retreats to her family's summer beach home in the Fenwick borough of Old Saybrook, Connecticut to recharge her batteries ... enjoying time with her family, rounds of golf on the nearby course, and swimming in the Atlantic Ocean.  On the morning of 9/21, she goes through her normal morning routines ... swimming in the ocean (and noticing the usually turbulent waters are as flat as a pond), playing a round of golf, and then returning home for lunch ... with Hepburn are her mother Kit, her brother Dick, and the family maid.  Branches of trees soon filling the yard as the shoreline begins moving towards the home, Hepburn's mother insists everyone will be safe inside the house, but relents to her daughter's demands that they leave when water reaches the front door and the shingles on the roof starting blowing away.  Just in time, everyone escapes through a dining room window into the standing water now surrounding the house with only the clothes on their backs, and make their way to a bit of high ground just in time to see the home of 25 years swept away (it will come to rest about 1/3rd of a mile away, where the storm turns it to rubble).  The next day, the family returns to the site and searches the rubble for any possessions that might be salvageable, rescuing Kit's entire tea service and 85 pieces of silver flatware, but little else ... movie star Hepburn loses 95% of her personal belongings, including the Oscar she won for Morning Glory (it will later be found intact and returned to its owner).  Coming from the steel spine stock of New Englanders that originally colonized the area, Hepburn, like so many others, will quickly rebuild, a new, bigger home on the waterfront, which she will live in until her death at the age of 96 in 2003.

The Original House - Two Months Before The Storm

A Break From Digging

The Next Day Among The Ruins

Rebuilt Mansion

Why today mattered?  It mattered because of the devastation that took place along the eastern seaboard of the Unites States on 9/21/1938!