Bushwhacker
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Bushwhacking was a form of
Bushwhackers were generally part of the irregular military forces on both sides. While bushwhackers conducted well-organized raids against the military, the most dire of the attacks involved ambushes of individuals and house raids in rural areas. In the countryside, the actions were particularly inflammatory since they frequently amounted to fighting between neighbors, often to settle personal accounts.
Union Jayhawkers and Confederate bushwhackers
The term "bushwhacker" came into wide use during the American Civil War (1861–1865).[2] It became particularly associated with the pro-Confederate secessionist guerrillas of Missouri, where such warfare was most intense. Guerrilla warfare also wracked Kentucky, Tennessee, northern Georgia, Arkansas, and western Virginia (including the new state of West Virginia), among other locations.[3][4][5]
In some areas, particularly the Appalachian regions of Tennessee and North Carolina, the term bushwhackers was used for Confederate partisans who attacked Union forces.[6][7] Residents of southern Alabama used the name in the same manner.[8] Several bushwhacker bands operated in California in 1864.[9]
Pro-Union guerrilla fighters in
Partisan rangers
In most areas,
In Missouri, however, secessionist bushwhackers operated outside of the Confederate chain of command. On occasion, a prominent bushwhacker commander might receive formal Confederate rank, as in the case of
Atrocities
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The conflict with Confederate bushwhackers rapidly escalated into a succession of atrocities committed in Missouri. Hostage-taking and banishment were employed by local District and Union commanders to punish secessionist sympathizers.
Union troops often executed or tortured suspects without trial and burned the homes of guerrillas and those suspected of aiding or harboring them. If official credentials were doubted, the suspects were often executed, as in the case of Lt. Col. Frisby McCullough after the Battle of Kirksville. Bushwhackers retaliated by ambushing federal soldiers and frequently going house to house and executing Unionist sympathizers.[18]
One of the most vicious actions during the Civil War by the bushwhackers was the Lawrence Massacre. William Quantrill led a raid in August 1863 on Lawrence, Kansas, burning the town and murdering some 150 men in Lawrence.[19][20] Bushwhackers justified the raid as retaliation for the Sacking of Osceola, Missouri two years earlier, in which the town was set aflame and at least nine men killed, and for the deaths of five female relatives of bushwhackers killed in the collapse of a Kansas City, Missouri jail.[21][22]
To end guerrilla raids into Kansas, the Union commander of the District of the Border, which comprised counties along the Missouri-Kansas state line,
The Missouri–Arkansas border had been desolated as well. The Little Rock Arkansas Gazette wrote in August 1866:
Wasted farms, deserted cabins, lone chimneys marking the sites where dwellings have been destroyed by fire, and yards, gardens and fields overgrown with weeds and bushes are everywhere within view. The traveler soon ceases to wonder when he sees the charred remains of burnt buildings, and wonders rather when he beholds a house yet standing that it also did not disappear in the general conflagration. Such was the terrible intensity of the recent civil war ...[29]
In other areas of Missouri, properties were also pillaged and destroyed by both warring sides since atrocities during the Civil War were in many ways a continuation of Bleeding Kansas violence.[30]
Centralia Massacre
Besides the attack on Lawrence, the most notorious atrocity by Confederate bushwhackers was the murder of 24 unarmed Union soldiers pulled from a train in the Centralia Massacre in retaliation for the earlier execution of a number of Anderson's own men. In an ambush of pursuing Union forces shortly thereafter, the bushwhackers killed well over 100 Federal troops.[31] In October 1864, "Bloody Bill" Anderson was lured into an ambush and killed in the ensuing battle by soldiers of the Missouri State Militia under the command of Col. Samuel P. Cox. Anderson's body was displayed following his death.[32]
Jesse James
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The guerrilla conflict in Missouri was, in many respects, a civil war within the Civil War.[33] Jesse James began to fight as an insurgent in 1864. During months of often intense combat, he battled only fellow Missourians, ranging from Missouri regiments of U.S. Volunteer troops, to state militia, to unarmed Unionist civilians. The single confirmed instance of his exchanging fire with Federal troops from another state occurred a month after the 1865 surrender of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, during a near-fatal encounter with Wisconsin cavalrymen. In the course of the war, James' mother and sister were arrested, his stepfather tortured, and his family banished temporarily from Missouri by state militiamen— all Unionist Missourians.[34][35]
Postwar banditry
After the end of the war, the survivors of Anderson's band (including the James brothers) remained together under the leadership of
After the end of the war in 1865, the
In 1867, near Nevada, Missouri, a band of bushwhackers shot and killed Sheriff Joseph Bailey, a former Union brigadier general, who was attempting to arrest them. Among those suspected of his killing was William McWaters, who once rode with Anderson and Quantrill.[38]
In popular culture
- In the 1968 Western film Arizona Bushwhackers.
- Bushwhackers are the primary focus of the 1999 film Ride with the Devil.
- The bushwhackers are a major focus of Wildwood Boys (2000), a biographical novel of "Bloody Bill" Anderson by James Carlos Blake.
- The 1976 film The Outlaw Josey Wales depicts the activities of bushwhackers during and after the American Civil War.
- Bushwhackers appear in the side-stories of the 2004 HBO TV series Deadwood, set in South Dakota.
- The 2018 video game Red Dead Redemption 2 features a gang known as the Lemoyne Raiders, who operate as neo-Confederate bushwhackers.
- The Bushwhackers, a wrestling tag team from New Zealand, were part of the World Wrestling Federation from 1988 to 1996.
See also
References
Notes
- ^ Oxford Dictionary
- ^ Ingenthron, Charles Elmo. "Civil War: Guerillas, Jayhawkers, Bushwackers*, White River Valley Historical Quarterly, Volume 2, Number 4, Summer 1965
- ^ "Life of a Guerilla in Missouri", The Missouri History Museum
- ^ "Missouri Bushwhackers – Attacks Upon Kansas", Legends of America
- ^ "Bushwhacking - a system of warfare and execution", The Fort Scott Tribune, June 21, 2008
- ^ Trotter, William R. Bushwhackers! The Civil War in North Carolina: Vol. II The Mountains. Greensboro, North Carolina: Signal Research, Inc., 1988.
- ^ Inscoe, John C. & Gordon B. McKinney. The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: Western North Carolina in the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
- ISBN 9781625850676
- ^ Reader, Phil. Copperheads, Secesh Men, and Confederate Guerillas: Pro-Confederate Activities in Santa Cruz County During the Civil War. Santa Cruz Public Libraries, 1991. Archived
- ^ O'Bryan, Tony. "Jayhawkers". Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1854–1865. Kansas City Public Library
- ^ Johnson, Adam Rankin, and William J. Davis. The Partisan Rangers of the Confederate States Army. Louisville, Ky.: G. G. Fetter Company, 1904.
- ^ Martin, James B. Third War. Irregular Warfare on the Western Border, 1862–1865. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Combat Studies Institute Press, 2012
- ^ Schultz, Duane. Quantrill's war: the life and times of William Clarke Quantrill, 1837-1865. St. Martin's Press, 1997.
- ^ Albert Castel and Tom Goodrich. Bloody Bill Anderson: The Short, Savage Life of a Civil War Guerrilla. Stackpole Books, 1998.
- ^ O’Bryan, Tony. "Bushwhackers". Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1854-1865. The Kansas City Public Library
- ^ "Gallery: Anti-Guerrilla Actions", NPS
- ISBN 9780195064711
- ^ Sutherland, Daniel E. American Civil War Guerillas: Changing the Rules of Warfare. Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, 2013.
- ^ Trow, Harrison, and Burch, John P. Charles W. Quantrell: a True History of His Guerrilla Warfare On the Missouri And Kansas Border During the Civil War of 1861-1865. Kansas, City, Missouri, 1923.
- ISBN 978-0-679-42455-0
- ^ Thomas Goodrich. Bloody Dawn: The Story of the Lawrence Massacre. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1991.
- ^ Joseph M. Beilein, Jr. "Of Eyes and Teeth: The Trial of George Maddox, the Raid on Lawrence, and the Bloodstained Verdict of the Guerrilla War", The Civil War Monitor
- ^ "Evacuation Day", The Kansas City Public Library
- ^ Jeremy Neely, "General Order No. 11", Missouri State University
- ^ Albert Castel. "Order No. 11 and the Civil War on the Border", Missouri Historical Review, Vol. 57, July 1963, pp. 357–368. Archived
- ^ Rafiner, Tom A. Cinders and Silence: A Chronicle of Missouri's Burnt District. Harrisonville, Missouri: Burnt District Press, 2013.
- ^ Rafiner, Tom A. Caught between three fires: Cass County, Mo., Chaos, & Order No. 11, 1860–1865. Harrisonville, Missouri: Burnt District Press, 2010.
- ^ Andy Ostmeyer. "Civil War: Order No. 11 reduced border to a wasteland". The Joplin Globe, September 24, 2011
- ^ Leo E. Huff. "Guerrillas, Jayhawkers and Bushwhackers in Northern Arkansas During the Civil War", Ozark Watch, Vol. IV, No. 4, Spring 1991 / Vol. V, No. 1, Summer 1991.
- ^ Albert Castel. Frontier State at War. Kansas, 1861–1865. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1958.
- ^ Centralia Massacre and Battle Reenactment, Boone County Historical Society
- ^ Goodrich, Thomas. Black Flag: Guerrilla Warfare on the Western Border, 1861–1865. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press
- ^ The Civil War in Missouri, 1861-1865: a war within the war, The Civil war centennial Commission in Missouri
- ^ Stiles, T. J. Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002.
- ISBN 0-19-506471-2.
- ^ "Frank and Jesse James Court Documents from Daviess County", Missouri State Archive
- ^ Yeatman, Ted P. Frank and Jesse James: The Story Behind the Legend. Cumberland House, 2001
- ^ Michael J. Goc. Hero of the Red River: The Life and Times of Joseph Bailey. Friendship, Wisconsin: New Past Press, 2007.
Further reading
- Edwards, John Newman. Noted guerrillas, or The warfare of the border. Being a history of the lives and adventures of Quantrell, Bill Anderson, George Todd, Dave Poole, Fletcher Taylor, Peyton Long, Oll Shepherd, Arch Clements, John Maupin, Tuck and Woot Hill, Wm. Gregg, Thomas Maupin, the James brothers, the Younger brothers, Arthur McCoy, and numerous other well known guerrillas of the West. St. Louis, H.W. Brand & Co., 1879.
- Hildebrand, Samuel S. Autobiography of the renowned Missouri "Bushwhacker", and unconquerable Rob Roy of America; being his complete confession recently made to the writers and carefully compiled ... with all the facts connected with his early history.. Jefferson City, Mo.: State Times Printing House, 1870.
- Geiger, Mark W. Financial Fraud and Guerrilla Violence in Missouri's Civil War, 1861-1865. Yale University Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-300-15151-0
- Mackey, Robert R. The UnCivil War: Irregular Warfare in the Upper South, 1861-1865. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004
External links
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- Cinders and Silence: A Chronicle of Missouri's Burnt District, 1854-1870, Missouri State Archives