James R. O'Neill

Club members dressed up in phony military uniforms, banged on pots and pans, and hauled out a fake cannon to fire mock salutes.

[2] In late 1860 or early 1861, O'Neill moved to Leavenworth in the fast-growing new state of Kansas, and attempted to become a full-time painter and artist.

Kansas had very few art painters at that time and O'Neill was offered commissions ranging from stage scenery to a devout depiction of the Assumption of the Virgin.

[2] James O'Neill's new ties with Frank Leslie's made it possible for him to travel with Union units that were willing to have a newsman embedded with them.

As an artist with experience in the stylized depiction of landscape scenery, O'Neill was able to draw detailed portraits of the battle scenes he could see.

Their sketches thus serve as valid American Civil War data, especially for humble objects and items of battlefield or fatigue wear that do not usually show up in the stiff, formal photographs of the time.

His headquarters column, moving southward, had reached Baxter Springs, Kansas, when they were intercepted and ambushed on October 6, 1863, by Quantrill's Raiders.

This somewhat irregular unit of Southern rangers, commanded by guerrilla warrior William Quantrill, did not make a practice of taking prisoners.