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After the surrender of the Confederate army of the Trans-Missouri by General Edmund Kirby Smith, General Shelby, refusing to ccapitulate, moved to Eagle Pass, Texas. At this time, he purportedly asked Coffee to join his force as a mercenary and fight under the flag of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico.(84) Coffee declined and instead surrendered himself in Austin, Texas, to General George A. Custer. The ex-Missouri Confederate signed a formal oath of alligence to the United States on July 26, 1865.(85)

The displaced parolee made a final move from Waco to Georgetown, Texas, the county seat of Williamson County. Within three months, he married his fourth wife, Eunice Amelia Allen Vontress. The native Texan, a twenty-seven -year- old widow and mother of a small daughter, had been the wife of Edward Hughs Vontress, a prominent Georgetown judge and Confederate wartime major. Vontress had died sixteen months earlier near Alexandria, Louisianna, when a bolt of lightning struck him. Coffee and his seven children moved into his bride's home. When three of the girls reached "counting age," two rooms were built on to the front of the house. His fourth wife bore him six more children.

The ex-Confederate operated a goat ranch nine miles west of Georgetown. For a third time, he qualified to practice law in a new state. The State's Rights Democrat also resumed participation in politics. During the 1870's , Coffee supported the Georgetown College and the Georgetown Railroad. Although he never returned to Missouri, Coffee unsucessfully attempted to regain cleat title to his Dade County property, which was finally sold for delinquent taxes, in February 1879.

Coffee and his family maintained an active membership in the Georgetown Methodist Episcopal Church South. In 1882, the veterans of the Civil War, who lived in Williamson County, organized and elected Coffee as the first president. Eight years later, he died at Brownsville, Texas, on May 23.(86)

Probably most rembered for his wartime service to the Confederacy, Coffee should not be cast as a Confederate guerrilla in the mold of William C. Quantrill. But Coffee's mission, if not his tactics, appeared the same as all guerrilla leaders: to keep a maximum number of Union troops off balance and commited to protect loyal Union citizens. For instance, when Union General Benjiman F. Loan wrote President Abraham Lincoln in October 1863. that he needed more troops , Loan named Coffee as the archtype guerrilla leader. Due to lack of Union protection, Coffee's forays, according to Loan, forced Missouri's pro-Union citizens to go into exile or unite in armed defence of thier homes.(87) According to one historian of the Civil War, Confederate military activity in Missouri "kept the Union military forces of the border, who overwhelmingly outnumbered them, mobilized, harrased, and not available for utilization in other theatres where they were badly needed."(88) Coffee's leadership of Confederate forces, his ability to recruit effectively and the military tactics he employed greatly assisted in maintaining the tremendous imbalance in numbers.

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END NOTES:

  1. Greenfield Dade County Advocate, September 18, 1980.

  2. Joshua M. Coffee Bible, in possession of Mrs. C.F. Coffee, Corona Del Mar, California: "Coffee Family History," in State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia.

  3. Ibid

  4. Ibid

  5. Jonathan Fairbanks and Clyde E. Tuck, Past and Present of Greene County Missouri (Indianapolis 1915), I, 457.

  6. History of Hickory, Polk, Cedar, Dade and Barton Counties, Missouri (Chicago 1889), 296-297.

  7. Fairbanks and Tuck, Past and Present of Greene Co., I, 457.

  8. Mrs. Howard W. Woodruff, comp., Marriage Records Polk County Missouri Book "A" 1836-1859 (n.p., n.d.), 13; Elizabeth Prather Ellsberry, comp., 1850 Federal Census for Polk County, Missouri (n.p., n.d.) 23.

  9. Woodruff, comp., Marriage Records Polk Co., 16

  10. A.J. Young, ed., History of Dade County and Her People (Greenfield, Mo., 1917), I, 66

  11. Greenfield Dade County Advocate, September 18, 1890; John T. Coffee to Abiel Leonard, February 7, 1856, Abiel Leonard Collection, Joint Collection, University of Missouri Western Historical Manuscript Collection-State Historical Society of Missouri Manuscripts-Columbia; Columbia Weekly Missouri Statesman, July 6, 1849.

  12. Liberty Weekly Tribune, October 20, 1854.

  13. Journal of the Senate, Mo. 18th General Assembly (Jefferson City, 1855), 27, 28.

  14. Ibid., 48, 75.

  15. Ibid., 82, 118, 137, 161, 222, 299.

  16. Columbia Weekly Missouri Statesman, May 4, August 24, 1855.

  17. Springfield Mirror, September 4, 1856.

  18. History of Greene County, Missouri (St. Louis, 1883) , 242.

  19. Minnie Organ, "History of the County Press of Missouri," Missouri Historical Review, IV (July, 1910) , 265; Columbia Weekly Missouri Statesman, June 26, 1857; Jefferson City Weekly Jefferson Inquirer, June 12, 1858.

  20. Liberty Weekly Tribune, May 28, 1858.

  21. Jefferson City Weekly Jefferson Inquirer, January 1, 1859.

  22. Journal of the House, Mo. 20th General Assembly (Jefferson City, 1859), 85, 182, 188, 347, 405; idib, Adjourned Session (Jefferson City, 1860), 89, 177, 188, 348.

  23. Jefferson City Weekly Jefferson Inquirer, February 5, March 26, 1859.

  24. Liberty Weekly Tribune, February 17, 1860.

  25. John F. Snyder, "The Democratic State Convention in 1860," Missouri Historical Review, II (January, 1908), 122.

  26. U.S. Census, 8th Report, 1860 Products of Agriculture, "Dade County Missouri"; ibid., Slave Schedule, "Dade County Missouri."

  27. Young, ed., History of Dade County, I, 98.

  28. Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (New York, 1888), IV, 281-287.

  29. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, D.C., 1880-1902), Series I, Volume XIII, 61-63. Hereafter cited as O. R.

  30. Ibid., 91, 398.

  31. Ibid., 95.

  32. John C. Moore, "Missouri," Confederate Military History (Atlanta, 1899), IX, 97-98.

  33. O.R.., Ser. 1 Vol. XIII, 530.

  34. Ibid., 537.

  35. Ibid., 539.

  36. Fairbanks and Tuck, Past and Present of Greene Co., I, 339.

  37. Clayton Abbott, Historical Sketches of Cedar County Missouri (Greenfield, Mo., 1967), 83.

  38. Ibid., 84-85; O.R., Ser.1, Vol. XIII, 211.

  39. Ibid., 55.

  40. Ibid., 567.

  41. Ibid., 561.

  42. Ibid., 221.

  43. Ibid., 230.

  44. Ibid.,

  45. Philip C. Parker, "Lone Jack, Invasion Battle 1862, Jackson County, Missouri," typescript, State Historical Society of Missouri, 3.

  46. Ibid., 3; O.R., Ser. 1, Vol. XIII, 237.

  47. Parker, "Lone Jack, Invasion," 4-8; Richard S. Brownlee, Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy (Baton Rouge, La., 1958), 98.

  48. Parker, "Lone Jack, Invasion," 9.

  49. O.R.., Ser. 1 Vol. XIII, 237.

  50. Ibid., 579.

  51. Theodore Gardner, "The First Kansas Battery," Collections of the Kansas State Historical Society 1915-1918 (Topeka, 1918), 242.

  52. O.R.., Ser. 1 Vol. XIII, 252.

  53. Ibid., 15.

  54. Ibid., 48.

  55. Ibid., 598.

  56. Ibid., 601.

  57. Ibid., 855, 860; Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Gray (Baton Rouge, La., 1959), 141.

  58. Albert Castel, General Sterling Price and the Civil War in the West (Baton Rouge, La., 1968), 141.

  59. O.R.., Ser. 1 Vol. XIII, 824.

  60. George S. Grover, "The Shelby Raid, 1863," Missouri Historical Review, VI (April, 1912), 107; O.R., Ser. 1 Vol. XIII, 979.

  61. Ibid.; ibid., Ser. 1, Vol. XXII, Part 2, 145.

  62. Ibid., 849.

  63. Howard V. Canan, "Milton Burch Anti-Guerrilla Fighter," Missouri Historical Review, LIX (January, 1965), 233.

  64. Battles and Leaders, IV, 374. Jay Monaghan provides a good discussion of Shelby's raid and other Missouri military action in his Civil War on the Western Border 1854-1865 (Boston, 1955).

  65. O.R., Ser. 1, Vol. XXII, Pt. 1, 671-673.

  66. Missouri Historical Review, XLVI (July, 1952), 328; Floyd C. Shoemaker, Missouri Day by Day (Columbia, 1943), II, 424.

  67. Young, ed., History of Dade County and Her People, I 247; John K. Hulston, An Ozark Boy's Story 1915-1945 (Point Lookout, Mo., 1971), 47-78.

  68. O.R., Ser. 1, Vol. XXII, Pt. 1, 671-673.

  69. Ibid., 676.

  70. Ibid.

  71. Ibid., 677.

  72. Ibid., 649, 670.

  73. Ibid., 670.

  74. Ibid., 678.

  75. Floyd C. Shoemaker, Missouri and Missourians (Chicago, 1943), I, 858.

  76. John N. Edwards, Shelby and His Men (Kansas City, Mo., 1897), 170.

  77. Daniel O'Flaherty, General Jo Shelby Undefeated Rebel (Chapel Hill, 1954), 209.

  78. Young, ed., Hist. Dade Co. & Her People, 101.

  79. O.R., Ser. 1, Vol. XLI, Pt. 1, 642.

  80. Ibid., Vol. XXXIV, Pt.1, 928.

  81. Ibid., 925; ibid., Vol. LXI, Pt.1, 27.

  82. Richard S. Brownlee, "The Battle of Pilot Knob," Missouri Historical Review, LIX (October, 1964), 8; O.R., Ser. 1, Vol. XLVIII, Pt. 1, 139, 404.

  83. "Coffee Family History."

  84. Charles Franklin Coffee II to Don Ruth Merrill, January 28, 1963, in "Coffee Family History."

  85. Eugene A. Cordy, Descendants of Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri Pioneers (n.p., 1973), 311.

  86. Georgetown [Texas] Williamson County Sun, March 13, 1919; ibid., April 21, 1966; Waco [Texas] Tribune-Herald, December 4, 1966; "Coffee Family History."

  87. O.R., Ser. 1, Vol. LIII, 581.

  88. Brownlee, Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy, 5.

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