Sometimes when tempers get “all fired up,” the fires become literal. This was the case in east Texas during the Civil War, and the result was the Kaiser Burnout.
Though enough Texans were angered by Federal strong-arming that they voted to seceed, the vote was not unanimous. Governor (and former Texas President) Sam Houston believed secession was a grave mistake, as did a number of Texans who lived in the Big Thicket forest region. These men, nicknamed Jayhawkers, opposed slavery and believed in individual liberty. They believed that the Civil War was a “rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight” because most Texans were not wealthy enough to own slaves, and more slaves meant fewer jobs for poor white workers. When the Confederate Army called for volunteers, the Jayhawkers refused. Neither would they allow themselves to be drafted and conscripted into service.
They just wanted to live and let live, so as the political situation heated up, they hid out in a densely wooded and swampy coastal area known as the Big Thicket. (If he’d lost at the Battle of San Jacinto, Sam Houston had planned to hide there, too.) The Big Thicket was their home, and the Jayhawkers knew it well. Fish and game were plentiful here, along with wild fruits and honey which they harvested and left at a designated spot for their families to pick up and sell in nearby Beaumont. Their families and other sympathizers would then purchase tobacco, coffee, and other necessary items to leave in exchange.
The Jayhawkers were able to survive in hiding for nearly three years.
As the war wore on, though, and Confederate casualties mounted, Texans who were “true to the cause” lost patience. Confederate Captain Charlie Bullock succeeded in capturing some of the Jayhawk refugees. He locked them in a wooden shack near Woodville and set guards to keep watch, but local sympathizers brought whiskey and fiddles to entertain the soldiers. Once their guards were distracted, one of the captive Jayhawks, Warren Collins, used a pocket knife he’d hidden away in his boot to pry up a board from the shack’s wooden floor. Joining in the merriment, Collins began to dance a jig to amuse the guards. As he danced, his fellow captives sneaked out through the loose floor board, one by one. Finally Warren Collins walked away and disappeared into the Thicket with the rest.
Frustrated, Confederate Captain James Kaiser had the idea to flush the Jayhawks out by setting fire to a canebrake region near where the Jayhawks exchanged their goods. Kaiser’s Burnout destroyed the canebrake and over 3000 acres of forest land, burning with a heat so intense that the land where the cane grew was permanently destroyed…but he still didn’t catch the Jayhawkers, who simply faded further into the woods to wait for peace.
