Triumphant and Defeated: Four Voices of the Sugar Loaf Affair

 The Civil War looms large in the American collective memory. Like many Americans, I wondered if my ancestors participated in the war. I stumbled on a Civil War account written by my third great grandfather, William L. Fenex, about the 1865 ambush of the bushwhacker, Alfred Cook, and his band. Fenex was captain of the Seventy-third Infantry Enrolled Missouri Militia in Taney County, Missouri, a part-time Union force meant to protect civilians and assist the army during the Civil War. Informal primary and secondary accounts from the opposing side corroborated Fenex’s 1865 report. What follows is the story of the Sugar Loaf affair, as told by four different narrators.

Our narrators are Captain William L. Fenex, Silas Claiborne Turnbo, John E. Cook, and John Ellison. William L. Fenex wrote his official report to his commanding officer, John B. Sanborn, on January 17, 1865, approximately eight days after the event. Fenex described the ambush as Lieutenant Kissel reported it to him. Silas Claiborne Turnbo, a former Confederate soldier, gathered stories from the White River Valley people at the end of the 19^th-century and referenced the Sugar Loaf Affair twice in his manuscripts.[1] Turnbo explored the Sugar Loaf cave and interviewed John E. Cook, the son of Alfred Cook, about his father in 1894. Turnbo also interviewed John Ellison, who was with Alfred Cook and barely escaped with his life that day. Fenex relates his triumphant story with confidence while Turnbo, Cook, and Ellison describe the event in terms of defeat, fear, suffering, and grief.[2]

On a cold January day in 1865, Captain William L. Fenex dispatched Lieutenant Kissel and twenty-five men to capture or exterminate Alfred Cook and his band. Fenex justified his orders to his superiors by stating that Cook’s band “had so long been a terror to the loyal people of Taney, Christian, and Stone Counties.” [3] The Union militiamen traveled by horseback thirty miles south from Forsyth, Missouri, to Arkansas, Confederate territory. Once the men crossed the border, they traveled stealthily through the Sugar Loaf Mountains, carefully avoiding Confederate guerrilla fighters, called bushwhackers.[4] Alfred Cook and his band of men were bushwhackers and based their operation in Arkansas, crossing the border to raid their former Missouri neighbors’ farms or attack Union military forces.[5]

Cook and his men were hiding in a cave in the Sugar Loaf Mountains. The opening of the cavern was large, with an overhanging cliff of rock. Someone added wooden breastworks to the cave to make it more defensible.[6] Inside the cave, Cook and his men debated what to do. John May, an old friend of Cook’s, warned, “that a small force of the enemy could lay siege to it and guard the mouth of it and starve out any armed force that would attempt to defend themselves in the cavern and would be forced to surrender and shot down like dogs.”[7] Cook scorned the advice of his friend and determined to stay put. Unwilling to die, John May, John Ellison, and Joe Webb saddled their horses and left the cave. They led their horses through several inches of heavy snow down the mountainside. When they had traveled about three-quarters of a mile away from the cave, they heard shots near the cave and knew they had escaped just in time.[8]

 Meanwhile, Lieutenant Kissel cunningly learned that Cook and his band were holed up in the cave. Somehow he caught one of Cook’s sons and forced him to reveal the location. The boy reluctantly led Kissel and his men to the cave. Cook and his band were well and truly caught. Surrounding the cave with twenty-five armed men, Kissel issued an ultimatum, his voice carrying across the cold air into the cave. “You have four hours to surrender unconditionally. We will carry you to Springfield, where you will be turned over to the authorities to be dealt with according to the law.”[9]

The four hours ticked by slowly as the tension increased. Finally, nine men raised their arms in surrender when the four hours expired and walked out of the cave. Alfred Cook, Ed Brown, Hiram Russell, and two other men stayed in the cave, refusing to surrender. Cook and his men looked at each other in the cave, trying to figure out how to extricate themselves. Ed Brown attempted to “run the gauntlet of armed men at the mouth of the cavern and succeeded in getting one-quarter of a mile from the cave before he was finally slain.”[10] Kissel and his men held their siege at the cave until the following day. They killed Alfred Cook and Ed Brown at the mouth of the cave—giving “Cook and his party their southern rights.”[11]

Lieutenant Kissel and his men rode their prisoners to Springfield, Missouri, where they were turned over to federal military authorities. John E. Cook, the sixteen-year-old son of Alfred Cook, and the families of the dead bushwhackers carried the bloody, shot-up bodies of their men down the mountainside to a wagon. They drove the wagon four miles to Abe Kelling’s place, where they dug a grave and buried Alfred Cook, Hiram Russell, and Ed Brown together.[12] 

William L. Fenex’s account is brisk, confident, and triumphant. According to Fenex, his cause was just,  Kissel acted honorably, and Cook got his “southern rights.”In contrast, Silas Turnbo, John Ellison, and John Cook describe the event from a place of defeat. Together these four narrators provide a complete but terrible picture of the Sugar Loaf Affair. Where Fenex offers justification for his actions, Turnbo, Ellison, and Cook offer none. Neither do they present an explanation for why Cook and his men were in the cave that cold January day. Either Turnbo, Cook, and Ellison expect their audience to understand they were bushwhackers, or it is a deliberate omission. These three narrators of the Sugar Loaf affair highlight the destruction, suffering, and pain they experienced in the Civil War and offer no resolution to their experiences.

---

[1] Much of the action takes place in the White River Valley, a river that encompasses part of northern Arkansas and Southern Missouri. Because Missouri was a border state during the war, counties at the border experienced a lot of conflict. Southern Missouri shares the border with Arkansas and

[2] Associate Professor of History, Matthew C. Hulbert, asserts that some bushwhackers attempted to create a mythology of the bushwhacker as hero after the war, in his 2013 article. Despite those efforts, the accounts of these bushwhackers show how the mythology was false.

Matthew C. Hulbert, “How to Remember “This Damnable Guerrilla Warfare”: Four Vignettes from Civil War Missouri,” Civil War History 59, no. 2, (June 2013), 146.

[3] Wm. L. Fenex, “Affair Near Sugar Loaf Prairie, Arkansas,” War of the Rebellion, Serial 101, Chapter LX, p. 37, website, EHistory, Department of History: Ohio State University (https://ehistory.osu.edu/books/official-records/101/0037 : accessed 1 August 2020). John B. Sanborn, Brigadier-General of Southwest Missouri, characterized Alfred Cook and his two lieutenants as the most brutal and bloody men. The transcribed account names Lieutenant Kissel, however, I think the name is actually Kissee, for Willis Kissee. Looking at the original would clarify the name, but that is not possible. Willis Kissee married Elmira Fenex, who was most likely a relative of William L. Fenex. Fenex sold property to Kissee in September 1863.

[4] Bushwhackers were Confederate guerrilla forces that attacked Union outposts and sympathizers. Unsanctioned by the Confederate government, they engaged in a small scale war to defend their homesteads and retaliate against the Union. Their womenfolk outfitted them with clothing, including a distinctive ruffled shirt. Two of the most well-known Missouri bushwhackers were Bill Anderson and William Quantrill, who led a raid against the Unionist town, Lawrence, Kansas in 1863. Quantrill’s Raiders killed about 150 men and boys. LeeAnn Whites, “Forty Shirts and a Wagonload of Wheat: Women, the Domestic Supply Line, and the Civil War on the Western Border,” The Journal of the Civil War Era 1, no. 1 (March 2011), 56-78. Joseph M. Beilein Jr., Bushwhackers: Guerilla Warfre, Manhood, and the Household in Civil War Missouri, (Kent, OH: Kent State University, 2016), 34.

[5] Bushwhackers and Confederates referred to Union militia/military/sympathizers as federals. In turn, Union sympathizers referred to themselves as loyal. In his 2016 book, Bushwhackers: Guerrilla Warfare, Manhood, and the Household in Civil War Missouri, Joseph Beilein Jr. argues that when the Union army started arresting and penalizing households for supporting bushwhackers (Confederate guerrilla fighters), they felt they had no choice but to amp up the destruction and actively fight against their neighbors and the military to defend their households. 

[6] Silas Claiborne Turnbo, “The Alph Cook Cave,” June 22, 1894, The Turnbo Manuscripts; digital collection, Springfield-Greene County Library https://thelibrary.org/lochist/turnbo/V1/ST002.html : accessed 23 September 2020.

[7] Silas Claiborne Turnbo, “A Cold Swim Across White River,” The Turnbo Manuscripts; digital collection, Springfield-Greene County Library https://thelibrary.org/lochist/turnbo/V2/ST046.html : accessed 23 September 2020. Turnbo interviewed John Ellison about the Sugar Loaf Affair. Ellison was in the cave the day it was ambushed and made the smart decision to exit sooner rather than later. The implication is that Ellison was part of Alfred Cook’s band of bushwhackers.

[8] The three men, John May, Joe Webb, and John Ellison, had a harrowing escape. John Ellison recounted to Silas Turnbo that they crossed the White River (in January) at Dubuque by holding onto their horses tails as the horses crossed the river. They nearly froze to death and found a temporary shelter in a deep gulch where they lit a fire to dry off and warm up. They hid out for over twenty-four hours before going to Batesville, Arkansas where they surrendered to federal authorities.

[9] Wm. L. Fenex, “Affair Near Sugar Loaf Prairie, Arkansas,” War of the Rebellion, Serial 101, Chapter LX, p. 37, website, EHistory, Department of History: Ohio State University (https://ehistory.osu.edu/books/official-records/101/0037 : accessed 1 August 2020).

[10] Silas Claiborne Turnbo, “The Alph Cook Cave.”

[11] Wm. L. Fenex, “Affair Near Sugar Loaf Prairie, Arkansas.”

[12] Silas Claiborne Turnbo, “The Alph Cook Cave.”