El Borak's Myopia

El Borak's Myopia

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Good Hater III - John Brown's Boys

Officially they were known as Company K of the Kansas Seventh Volunteer Cavalry, but to the other soldiers they were John Brown's Boys. Captained by John Brown, Jr., with assistance from Second Lieutenant George Hoyt, these young abolitionists from Ohio, idealists to a man, saw the war in terms of slavery and union, in that order. Upon their arrival in Kansas in the late autumn of 1861, they were assigned to the Seventh under Colonel Charles Jennison, the infamous “Jayhawker,” whom their captain knew well from his earlier residence in the state.

“Few Civil War regiments acquired so evil a reputation as did the Seventh Kansas,” and what they did not inherit from “Doc” Jennison they earned for themselves. By the spring of 1862, this regiment of Jayhawkers had caused so much outrage in western Missouri - with former slaves ferried to freedom by Company K and horses and cattle forcibly converted to abolitionism by everyone – that they were reassigned to Humboldt, Kansas, far enough from the Missouri border to keep them out of trouble. Jennison received orders to prepare for an expedition to New Mexico, but he had no intentions of leaving the state except to return to Missouri by torchlight. And Hoyt had no intentions of leaving Jennison, at least not for long.

On the tenth of April, after a rival officer received an appointment he coveted, Jennison huffily tendered his resignation as colonel of the Seventh. In a speech to his men three days later, he revealed and denounced a vast conspiracy of traitors and secessionists, ranging from his immediate superiors to the President; a conspiracy designed to lay Kansas open to border ruffians by removing the protection that could only be provided by the Seventh. In the speech, he all but begged his men to desert the regiment. As many as a hundred did, often on passes signed by Jennison himself , whose resignation would not be official for another two weeks.
Hoyt did what he could to defend, if not the indefensible speech, at least the colonel's reputation. Through a sham officers' committee, Hoyt submitted to the local newspapers a series of resolutions, written by himself but claiming to be from all of Jennison's direct reports, that endorsed his murderous military desires in regards to Missouri while simultaneously denying any “pillage, arson and brutality” on the part of the Seventh Kansas previously. The result was that, when Jennison was arrested for insubordination on the eighteenth of April, Hoyt preceded him in chains by two hours . Hoyt won his release and returned to Company K within a week – no charges were ever brought against him. The next month, when Captain Brown resigned because of failing health, George Hoyt assumed command of Company K, just in time for the entire regiment to join Grant's army in Tennessee.

Company K lost none of it evangelistic fervor when Hoyt replaced the son of Old Brown. “I hate the South,” he said, carrying on the haughty tradition of the gray-haired martyr of Harper's Ferry. “I hate her history, and I hate her traditions, for upon all [of it] I behold the unwashed stains of that unavenged blood extorted by the lash of the slave whip.”

Under Hoyt's leadership, Company K's abolitionist obsession quickly began to undermine a command structure that still needed to portray the war primarily in terms of union. On June 25, 1862, Hoyt was appointed Provost Marshall of Humboldt, Tennessee, and was approached by numerous slave owners demanding the return of their slaves, many of whom had been admitted to the Kansas Seventh's camp. Though standing orders required that all escaped slaves be expelled from Union camps, in essence turning them back to their owners, Hoyt posted a notice on the door of his headquarters:

Slave hunting at this post or within the jurisdiction of the undersigned is prohibited.

Persons from whom bondsmen have escaped are hereby notified that all men are regarded as “free and equal” at this office, and will therefore desist from invoking the military power in aid of their efforts at rendition.

Hoyt later told a committee creating a history of his home town's achievements in the war that while this “freedom proclamation” caused him to be immediately relieved of the post of Provost Marshall, the order was never revoked. Company K was implementing the Emancipation Proclamation without bothering about the mere formality of Lincoln writing it first.

The next month Company K advanced to Mississippi, where the South's brutal climate began to wear on Hoyt's health. He spent the greater part of the march in the sick squad with a lung infection, though even then the Captain was noted by his superiors for his bravery in the field and the care and discipline of his men.

On July 14, 1862, George Hoyt resigned his commission and immediately departed for Kansas. Though his assault on the hated South had so emaciated him that his 75-pound frame had to be carried ashore upon his arrival - by a black servant who likely hailed originally from Humboldt - Hoyt was already itching for a freer hand in dealing with the slave whip than could be openly sanctioned by the Union command structure.

Labels: history

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