John R. Kelso’s Civil Wars:
A Graphic History - Episode 21
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Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy, 220-56. A press account friendly to Kelso’s political opponent caricatured Kelso as a political campaigner. Canvassing for the vote, he made a “ludicrous” sight, according to what the newspaper writer. “Bearing upon his shoulder a loaded shot-gun, with an antique powder-horn upon his breast, riding upon a braying ass whose altitude did not quite enable the rider’s feet to clear the ground, his long black hair streaming in the wind, his pantaloons eternally working their way up over the top of his boots and leaving a broad belt of genuine Aboriginal calf exposed, he traveled over the district.” Yet most of the voters were soldiers. They flocked to him and cheered when he “declared so earnestly and energetically his intention of shooting every rebel, thrashing every Copperhead, and voting against every Democrat in Congress.”
I have published an annotated version of Kelso’s only extant pre-election speech, his “Speech Delivered at Mt. Vernon, Missouri, Aril 23, 1864,” in Grasso, ed., Bloody Engagements: John R. Kelso’s Civil War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), 179-88. On his congressional career and unsuccessful 1868 campaign, see Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy, 257-303 and 308-19.
On Sterling Price’s 1864 invasion of Missouri, see especially: Mark A. Lause, Price’s Lost Campaign: The 1864 Invasion of Missouri (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2011); Kyle S. Sinisi, The Last Hurrah: Sterling Price’s Missouri Expedition of 1864 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015); and Mark A. Lause, The Collapse of Price’s Raid: The Beginning of the End in Civil War Missouri (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2016).
MAP CAPTION: Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy Figure 11.2: Sterling Price’s Missouri Expedition of 1864. Drawn by Rebecca Wrenn. Map source: Charles D. Collins, Jr., Battlefield Atlas of Price’s Missouri Expedition of 1864 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2016).
More on the Illustration
I went out to sketch a landscape to use for this scene. I walked from a parking lot to what was essentially a dirt road in a pasture, and amazingly I heard horses’ hooves. I went up to this woman on horseback and explained what I was doing. She agreed to gallop toward me and throw her arm back, as if tossing a hat. That photo became the model for this scene, though I later had to sketch a somewhat different posture for Kelso, posing my son on a chair.
The viewer is in the foreground, as if hiding in the weeds, taking in the whole scene. Kelso is escaping. Tossing away his hat. The hat hangs in the air, guiding the eye back toward where the rebels are killing and scalping Old Grisly.