Frisby McCullough

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Frisby McCullough (March 8, 1828 – August 8, 1862) was a Confederate States Army soldier in the American Civil War, executed on the orders of Union General John McNeil after the Battle of Kirksville. The act helped spark the Palmyra Massacre.

Born in New Castle County, Delaware, to James and Delia Pennington McCullough, he was taken to Marion County, Missouri in 1840. McCullough went to California for five years from 1849. On November 26, 1856, he married Eloise Randolph in Marion County, and had three children, including a namesake son who went on to practice law in Edina, Missouri. At the outbreak of war, he joined the Confederate forces under General Thomas Green, and fought at the Battle of Lexington before being sent back by General Sterling Price to recruit in Northeast Missouri with Joseph C. Porter in the spring of 1862.

During the guerilla campaign in Northeast Missouri during the summer of 1862, McCullough unsuccessfully sought to persuade his commanding officer, Joseph Porter, to restrict himself to recruiting, rather than engaging Union forces. According to Mudd (see references), this was because McCullough feared the retaliation that Federal forces would visit upon civilian Southern sympathizers. The observation may accurately reflect McCullough’s character, which is universally praised, but is colored by the author’s Confederate perspective. In the runup to the fateful engagement at Kirksville, McCullough again urged Porter to decline battle in favor of their main strategic objective, to ferry the raw recruits south to Arkansas for training and equipping behind Confederate lines. When that suggestion was rejected, McCullough proposed that Porter wait for McNeil in the cornfields outside of town, rather than digging into the village itself; this advice was again declined.

After the catastrophic loss at Kirksville, McCullough became ill, and declining Porter’s offer of escort, rode alone towards Edina to recover and continue recruiting. He was cornered by Federals in a thicket and surrendered. He requested to be sent to Palmyra, rather than to Kirksville, perhaps because he had already heard of the executions of parolees there, but the request was denied. Although he had been treated well in Edina, according to eyewitnesses he was paraded up and down the streets of Kirksville to jeering crowds. He was accused of lacking a commission, of fighting on his own authority—that is, of being a bushwhacker—and of persuading parolees to return to Confederate service. A drumhead court-martial was convened on Friday, August 8, by Lt. Col. W.F. Schaffer of Merrill’s Horse, and McCullough was found guilty and sentenced to be shot. McCullough admitted that he had merely been elected second in command of a regiment in which Cyrus Franklin was colonel, and that he had previously held the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Missouri State Guard, but that the commission had long since expired.

The officer who read the sentence did so with tears. McCullough was given fifteen minutes to write a letter to his wife. He did so while leaning against a fence. He requested, and was granted, permission to give the order to fire. His final statement was “What I have done, I have done as a principle of right. Aim at the heart. Fire!” However, the first volley was insufficient. At his request, his executioners straightened out his leg, which was pinned beneath him. It is variously said that a second volley or a coup de grace with a pistol was necessary. Before he was dispatched, he said either “I forgive you this barbarous act” or “May God forgive you this barbarous murder.”

General McNeil wrote: “Col. McCullough was tried […] under order No. 2 of General Halleck and Nos. 8 and 18, of General Schofield. He had no commission except a printed paper authorizing ‘the bearer’ to recruit for the Confederate Army. He was found guilty of bushwhacking, or of being a guerilla. He was a brave fellow, and a splendid specimen of manhood. I would have gladly spared him had my duty permitted. As it was, he suffered the fate that would have fallen to you or to me if we had been found recruiting inside the Confederate lines. He met a soldier’s death, as became a soldier.”

The intensely anti-Confederate Palmyra Courier was restrained in its criticism of McCullough: “We have known him personally since he was a boy. He was ever, as a citizen, a high-toned gentleman – really a noble specimen of a man. Brave as a lion, no danger could intimidate him. We doubt whether the rebel ranks contain a more honorable man than he was. Yet his judgment led him to commit the fatal error of taking up arms against his country. He has been one of the most active and vigilant rebels in the Northeast Missouri [sic]. Honorable as he was, however, as a gentleman, he justly merited the fate he received, as a rebel, in unlawful and barbarous warfare against the authorities of the land. Had he engaged in the service of his country with the zeal he evinced against it, he would doubtless have risen to a high position of honor and renown.”

While there is question as to the regularity of McCullough’s commission, he was wearing a regular Confederate uniform when captured. Reaction to the shooting was generally negative; it was viewed by many as neither just nor necessary, and may have done more to galvanize Southern sympathies than to discourage activities of the type McCullough was charged with.

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text from the public domain Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography.
• Harper’s Weekly, January 1864
• Mudd, Joseph A., With Porter in Northeast Missouri (1909)