The Lost Cause has its heroes. Missourian Jo Shelby has come to personify all the “Confederados” who left the United States after Confederate defeat. He's still glorified today despite his traitorous behavior. “...the kind of chieftain that Dumas or Walter Scott would have delighted in, a figure of legendary derring-do.” “J.P.G” in the Kansas City Star in 1919.
The Star was at the heart of Shelby’s myth through
his lifetime and beyond.
Born in Kentucky to a prominent family of Gratzes, Shelbys and Blairs, J. O. Shelby moved to Waverly in Lafayette County, Missouri with half-brother Henry when they left Transylvania University. His Aunt Rebecca Gratz in Philadelphia was optimistic about his future: "So amiable affectionate & clever....he has gone to such a thriving place and where he has so many friends!"
Shelby brought dozens of slaves from Kentucky to work his Waverly Steam Rope company, a “Rope Walk,” where men wound hemp into rope in demand for baling cotton.
Twisting hemp on a rope walk was labor intensive work. In 1860 Lafayette County tallied more enslaved people than any other Missouri county. Shelby became committed to the extreme proslavery cause as Missourians defined it, alienating his brother who returned to Kentucky.
In 1857 27-year-old Jo Shelby married 15-year-old Elizabeth (Betty) Shelby, a distant cousin. When the Civil War began she had one boy to
raise as her husband enthusiastically joined Missouri’s Southern sympathizing
troops. Missouri did not secede but became the site for bitter guerilla mayhem.
Detail of an 1862 Thomas Nast illustration of guerrilla
warfare
Jo Shelby must have been a charismatic charmer. During
Missouri’s Civil War chaos his Union family continued to speak well of him and
help him out. Kentucky Gratzes traveled to Waverly to escort Jo's wife and
children (a boy was born in 1864) back to the safety of Lexington, Kentucky.
After Appomattox Shelby, following his habitual path of
reckless narcissism, refused to accept Confederate defeat. He took troops and family
on a wild goose chase that failed to live up to expectations, leading about
1,000 soldiers to Mexico, then in the midst of its own Civil War between
Benito Juarez's Mexican troops and those affiliated with the Emperor
Maximilian, installed by Napoleon III of France.
Fanciful idea of a meeting between Shelby and the Mexican imperial pair Maximilian and Carlotta drawn for the Kansas City Star by Frank Miller to publicize the 1939 release of the Bette Davis movie Juarez.
In reality Maximilian rejected Shelby’s offer of troops because he worried about a Union military response after the U.S. war.
Instead, the Emperor offered Shelby soldiers land grants in Mexico, proposing Confederate colonies in Cordoba and Tuxpan.
In Cordoba Shelby began business on a large hacienda, a coffee plantation, and Elizabeth gave birth to Benjamin Gratz Shelby born in July, 1866. Mexicans, whether Juarista rebels or not, were displeased with invading Yankees taking their land. Rebellion in the form of banditry, assaults and raids convinced most Americans to abandon the colonies in 1867.
The Block
Read More:
Daniel O'Flaherty, General Jo Shelby: Undefeated Rebel, 1954
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