Last Hours of a Noted Border Ruffian

DETAILS OF HIS ARREST AND DEATH.

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From the Leavenworth Conservative, 14th.

From Lieut. J. G. Harris, of the Kansas 6th, (Col. Judson) we learn the following facts in relation to the death of a man who has caused so much public commotion in this State during the last eight months.

Lieut. Walker, of the 6th, recently made the acquaintance of Cleveland for the purpose of securing his arrest.  He learned his plans, companions, and places of rendezvous.  Last Saturday, the 10th inst., while he was with Cleveland in Ossawatomie, he sent to his company for a detachment of men.

On Sunday morning Sergeant Morris reached Ossawatomie with ten men.  As soon as they had ascertained the whereabouts of Cleveland, they surrounded the house. – Morris knocked at the door, and asked if there was a man there by the name of Cleveland.  The redoubtable Jayhawker answered the summons in person.  He came to the door with a navy revolver in each hand, and one strapped about his body.

Morris – I have come here to arrest you.

Cleveland – That’s a thing that can’t be done by your or any other man.  You’re too short-waisted.  I have done a good many things in my life, but I fear no man nor set of men.

M. – I have come here to take your body, dead or alive, and I am going to do it.

C. – I have killed many a man, and will do it again if you attempt to drive me.

M. – Probably you’ve done a great many things more than I have, but you can’t scare me.  I am going to take you.

C. – How many men have you got?

M. – I have ten.

C. – I can raise more than that at a moment’s warning.

M. – You needn’t talk about raising men, for I am going to have you, dead or alive.

C. – I don’t like to go with soldiers.  Get a Lieutenant, and I’ll go with you.

Lieut. Walker was sent for and came down; he was unarmed.

C. – I will go with you, lieutenant, if you will go round by a friend of mine.

Lieut. Walker consented and mounted his horse.  Cleveland also mounted a horse, put spurs to him and broke away.  The soldiers were soon on their horses and in close pursuit of the flying fugitive.  Cleveland dismounted at the Pottawatomie, a branch of the Marie des Cygnes, and about a mile from town.  He turned, fired several shots out of a revolver, threw that and his watch into the stream and sprang down the steep bank.  As the soldiers began to close in on him, he fired shot after shot from the two remaining revolvers, but with such desperation and madness that none of them took effect.

As he was raising his hand the last time to fire, a private named Johnson pierced him with a Minie ball, which, entering his person under the left shoulder, tore through his heart and nearly perforated his body.  The arm dropped, the tall form fell almost instantly life was extinct.  The soldiers then carried the lifeless form to Ossawatomie and delivered it to the citizens, who have since given Cleveland a burial.

His band has never been large, and he often travelled alone.  His skill in disguising his appearance and voice was so great that even to those who knew him well he seemed each day a different man.  And this, too, although he was more than six feet in height, and had a form as straight as an arrow.  Some persons, blessed with more imagination than brains, believe he led a charmed life.  They called him the “Phantom Horseman of the Prairie,” and told strange stories of his prowess and good fortune.  How many men he had killed, how many horses he had stolen, how many houses he had plundered, no one can tell.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Tuesday Morning, May 20, 1862, p. 2