Shelby's lengthy "Report of Price's Missouri Expedition," written by Edwards in December 1864, did not mention Coffee. Nor was Coffee mentioned in any of the reports after the Battle of Pilot Knob, on September 27, until the war's end. Two Union officers, however, believed that Coffee may have been foraging for wheat in the Arkansas Fourche LeFave bottoms south of Dardanelle, early in 1865.(82)
After the Battle of Westport, in late 1864 or early 1865, Coffee moved his family overland to Waco, Texas. A family history suggests that Coffee went to Waco at the invitation of friends of his brother, Franklin Brown Coffee, who had been a member of the Texas Rangers.(83) While the reason for his trip may never be known, his staying in Missouri could have been disasterous.
Sometime after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, Coffee, per sona non grata amoung Union sympathizers, might have been physically harmed if he went back to southwest Missouri. His derring-do throughout the war had made him one of the most feared of all Confederate officers operating in the war-ravaged area. The charred brick courthouse hulks at Greenfield and Stockton stood as mute testimony to his perfidy.
Passed over as senior colonel in Price's army, Coffee had lost the coveted brigadier's star. The Drake Constitution of 1865, adopted by the Missouri State Convention, debarred him from practicing law and holding political office in Missouri, both of which he had pursued as his peacetime livelihoods. Death had claimed his third wife in late 1863, leaving him to care for seven children, five of them under fifteen years of age. Discouraged, apprehensive, and worn out from four years of fierce warfare, Coffee, with his children, joined scores of Missouri Confederates who decided to start a life anew in Texas.
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