Quantrill and His Civil War Guerrillas

Quantrill and His Civil War Guerrillas
Author: Carl W. Breihan
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2019-01-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 178912297X

Originally published in 1959, Carl W. Breihan’s Quantrill and His Civil War Guerrillas is a concise, well-researched biography of one of the famous Civil War figures, William Clarke Quantrill (1837-1865). The action takes place mostly around the Kansas-Missouri border, dating from before the Civil War to just afterward. William Clarke Quantrill was a Confederate guerrilla leader during the American Civil War. Having had a knockabout youth resulting in becoming a school teacher, Quantrill joined a group of bandits who roamed the Missouri and Kansas countryside apprehending escaped slaves. Later on this group became Confederate soldiers, who were referred to as “Quantrill’s Raiders”. This group was a pro-Confederate partisan ranger outfit best known for their often brutal guerrilla tactics, which made use of effective Native American field skills. Quantrill’s group included the young Jesse James (1847-1882) and his older brother Frank James (1843-1915), and portraits of both infamous outlaws are included in this engaging biography.

Rebel Guerrillas

Rebel Guerrillas
Author: Paul Williams
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2018-11-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1476675732

From the hills and valleys of the eastern Confederate states to the sun-drenched plains of Missouri and "Bleeding Kansas," a vicious, clandestine war was fought behind the big-battle clashes of the American Civil War. In the east, John Singleton Mosby became renowned for the daring hit-and-run tactics of his rebel horsemen. Here a relatively civilized war was fought; women and children usually left with a roof over their heads. But along the Kansas-Missouri border it was a far more brutal clash; no quarter given. William Clarke Quantrill and William "Bloody Bill" Anderson became notorious for their savagery.

Quantrill of Missouri

Quantrill of Missouri
Author: Paul R. Petersen
Publisher: Cumberland House Publishing
Total Pages: 548
Release: 2003
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781581823592

One will not find the name of William Clarke Quantrill in the pantheon of noble Civil War personalities but rather listed near the top of the list of its notorious scoundrels. He has been demonized as the devil incarnate, and most historical accounts portray him as a sadistic, pitiless, bloodthirsty killer. That image, however, did not ring true to Paul R. Petersen when he weighed it against the man's wartime accomplishments. When he began researching Quantrill of Missouri, he found that much of the lore that has been accepted as fact had been recorded by those who fought against Quantrill. In short, the victors wrote the history. Petersen asks, "How could this so-called fiend have been a respected schoolteacher? How could he have organized and led up to four hundred men in the most noted band of guerrilla fighters known to history? How could he be so hated by his own men and still lead them in the most renowned battles through Missouri, winning victories over superior Union forces? Others entrusted their sons to him. Others served him as spies. Women willingly tended his wounded, and his followers even guarded him in battle. Most of his people were God-fearing farmers...God-fearing, righteous people would not have followed a depraved, degenerate, psychotic killer."

The Ghosts of Guerrilla Memory

The Ghosts of Guerrilla Memory
Author: Matthew Christopher Hulbert
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2016-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0820350001

The Civil War tends to be remembered as a vast sequence of battles, with a turning point at Gettysburg and a culmination at Appomattox. But in the guerrilla theater, the conflict was a vast sequence of home invasions, local traumas, and social degeneration that did not necessarily end in 1865. This book chronicles the history of “guerrilla memory,” the collision of the Civil War memory “industry” with the somber realities of irregular warfare in the borderlands of Missouri and Kansas. In the first accounting of its kind, Matthew Christopher Hulbert’s book analyzes the cultural politics behind how Americans have remembered, misremembered, and re-remembered guerrilla warfare in political rhetoric, historical scholarship, literature, and film and at reunions and on the stage. By probing how memories of the guerrilla war were intentionally designed, created, silenced, updated, and even destroyed, Hulbert ultimately reveals a continent-wide story in which Confederate bushwhackers—pariahs of the eastern struggle over slavery—were transformed into the vanguards of American imperialism in the West.

Inside War

Inside War
Author: Michael Fellman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 1990-04-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0198021933

During the Civil War, the state of Missouri witnessed the most widespread, prolonged, and destructive guerrilla fighting in American history. With its horrific combination of robbery, arson, torture, murder, and swift and bloody raids on farms and settlements, the conflict approached total war, engulfing the whole populace and challenging any notion of civility. Michael Fellman's Inside War captures the conflict from "inside," drawing on a wealth of first-hand evidence, including letters, diaries, military reports, court-martial transcripts, depositions, and newspaper accounts. He gives us a clear picture of the ideological, social, and economic forces that divided the people and launched the conflict. Along with depicting how both Confederate and Union officials used the guerrilla fighters and their tactics to their own advantage, Fellman describes how ordinary civilian men and women struggled to survive amidst the random terror perpetuated by both sides; what drove the combatants themselves to commit atrocities and vicious acts of vengeance; and how the legend of Jesse James arose from this brutal episode in the American Civil War.

Guerrilla Hunters in Civil War Missouri

Guerrilla Hunters in Civil War Missouri
Author: James W. Erwin
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2013-03-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1614238995

The guerrillas who terrorized Missouri during the Civil War were colorful men whose daring and vicious deeds brought them a celebrity never enjoyed by the Federal soldiers who hunted them. Many books have been written about William Quantrill, "Bloody Bill" Anderson, George Todd, Tom Livingston and other noted guerrillas. You have probably not heard of George Wolz, Aaron Caton, John Durnell, Thomas Holston or Ludwick St. John. They served in Union cavalry regiments in Missouri, where neither side showed mercy to defeated foes. They are just five of the anonymous thousands who, in the end, defeated the guerrillas and have been forgotten with the passage of time. This is their story.

William Gregg's Civil War

William Gregg's Civil War
Author: William H. Gregg
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 138
Release: 2019
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0820355771

This book features the memoir of William H. Gregg. Gregg served as William Clarke Quantrill's de facto adjutant from December of 1861 until the spring of 1864, making him one of the closest people to the guerrilla chief. Whether it was the origins of Quantrill's band, the early warfare along the border, the planning and execution of the raid on Lawrence, Kansas, the Battle of Baxter Springs, or the dissolution of the company in early 1864, Gregg was there as a participant and observer. The book also includes correspondence between Gregg and William E. Connelley, a historian. Connelley, who was born and raised in Kentucky to a family of Unionists, was deeply affected by the war and was a staunch Unionist and Republican. Even as much of the country was focusing on reunification, Connelley refused to forgive the South and felt little if any empathy for his southern peers. Connelley's relationship with Gregg was complicated at best. At worst, it was exploitive. At times their bond appeared reciprocal, but taken as a whole, Connelley seems to have manipulated an old, weak, and naïve Gregg, offering to help Gregg publish his memoir in exchange for Gregg's assistance in feeding Connelley inside information for a biography of Quantrill.

Bloody Bill Anderson

Bloody Bill Anderson
Author: Thomas Goodrich
Publisher: Stackpole Books
Total Pages: 188
Release: 1998-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0811745384

The first-ever biography of the perpetrator of the Centralia and Baxter Springs Massacres, as well as innumerable atrocities during the Civil War in the West.

Quantrill at Lawrence

Quantrill at Lawrence
Author: Paul R. Petersen
Publisher: Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2011-04-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781589809093

The Lawrence raid of August 21, 1863, was considered one of the bloodiest events of the Civil War. The actions that brought on the raid are researched and explored in depth here for the very first time. What is discovered is a collusion in a "legacy of lies" that surrounded the stories of the raid.

A Savage Conflict

A Savage Conflict
Author: Daniel E. Sutherland
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 454
Release: 2009-07-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807888672

While the Civil War is famous for epic battles involving massive armies engaged in conventional warfare, A Savage Conflict is the first work to treat guerrilla warfare as critical to understanding the course and outcome of the Civil War. Daniel Sutherland argues that irregular warfare took a large toll on the Confederate war effort by weakening support for state and national governments and diminishing the trust citizens had in their officials to protect them.