Bushwhacker

For the tool resembling a long-handled billhook and alsoreferred to as a sling blade, see Kaiser blade. For otheruses, see Bushwhackers (disambiguation).Bushwhackingwas a form of guerrilla warfare common

Confederate bushwhacker Bloody Bill Anderson

during the American Revolutionary War, American CivilWar and other conflicts in which there were large areas ofcontested land and few governmental resources to con-trol these tracts. This was particularly prevalent in ruralareas during the Civil War where there were sharp divi-sions between those favoring the Union and Confederacyin the conflict. The perpetrators of the attacks were calledbushwhackers.Bushwhackers were generally part of the irregular mili-tary forces on both sides. While bushwhackers conducteda few well-organized raids in which they burned cities,most of the attacks involved ambushes of individuals orfamilies in rural areas. In areas affected by bushwhackingthe actions were particularly insidious since it amountedto a fight of neighbor against neighbor. Since the attackswere non-uniformed, the government response was com-plicated by trying to decide whether they were legitimatemilitary attacks or criminal actions.

1 Union and Confederate bush-whackers

The term “bushwhacker” came into wide use during theAmerican Civil War (1861-1865): it became particularlyassociated with the Confederate guerrillas of Missouri,where such warfare was most intense. Guerrilla warfarealso wracked Kentucky, Tennessee, northern Georgia,Arkansas, and northern Virginia, among other locations.Two bands operated in California in 1864.Pro-Union guerilla fighters in Kansas were called"Jayhawkers". They used tactics similar to the Confeder-ate bushwhackers but only against the most insidiousMis-souri rebels. A typical Jayhawker action involved a cross-border raid into Missouri following a killing or killings inKansas by Missouri raiders.In some areas, particularly the Appalachian regions ofTennessee and North Carolina, the term bushwhackerswas used for Union partisans who attacked Confederateforces. Residents of southern Alabama used the name inthe same manner.[1]

2 Partisan rangers

In most areas, irregular warfare operated as an adjunct toconventional military operations. The most famous such“partisan ranger” (to use the title adopted by the Confed-erate government in formally authorizing such insurgents)was Col. John Singleton Mosby, who carried out raids onUnion forces in the Shenandoah Valley and northern Vir-ginia. Partisan rangers were also authorized in Arkansas.In Missouri, however, secessionist bushwhackers oper-ated outside of the Confederate chain of command. Onoccasion, a prominent bushwhacker chieftain might re-ceive formal Confederate rank (notably William ClarkeQuantrill), or receive written orders from a Confeder-ate general (as “Bloody Bill” Anderson did in October1864 during a large-scale Confederate incursion intoMis-souri, or as when Joseph C. Porter was authorized byGen.Sterling Price to recruit in northeast Missouri). Mis-souri guerrillas frequently assisted Confederate recruitersin Union-held territory. For the most part, however, Mis-souri’s bushwhacker squads were self-organized groupsof young men, predominantly from the slave-holdingcounties along the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, whotook it upon themselves to attack Federal forces and theirUnionist neighbors, both in Kansas and Missouri, the lat-

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2 6 POPULAR CULTURE

ter in response to what they considered a Federal invasionof their home state.

3 Jesse James

The guerrilla conflict in Missouri was, in many respects,a civil war within the Civil War. One of the most fa-mous men who fought as a bushwhacker was Jesse James,who began to fight in 1864. During months of often in-tense combat, he only battled fellow Missourians, rang-ing from Missouri regiments of U.S. Volunteer troopsto state militia to unarmed Unionist civilians. The sin-gle confirmed instance of his exchanging fire with Fed-eral troops from another state occurred a month afterthe 1865 surrender of Confederate General Robert E.Lee, during a near-fatal encounter with Wisconsin cav-alrymen. In the course of the war, his mother and sisterwere arrested, his stepfather tortured, and his family ban-ished temporarily fromMissouri by statemilitiamen—allUnionist Missourians.[2]

4 Atrocities

The conflict with Confederate bushwhackers everywhererapidly escalated into a succession of atrocities commit-ted by both sides. Union troops often executed or tor-tured suspects without trial and burned the homes of sus-pected guerrillas and those suspected of aiding or harbor-ing them. Where credentials were suspect, the accusedbushwhacker was often executed, as in the case of Lt.Col. Frisby McCullough after the Battle of Kirksville.Bushwhackers frequently went house to house, executingUnionist farmers.One of the most vicious actions during the Civil War bythe bushwhackers was the Lawrence Massacre. WilliamQuantrill led a raid in August 1863 on Lawrence, Kansas,burning the town and murdering some 150 men and boysin Lawrence. The raiders justified the raid in retaliationfor the Sacking of Osceola, Missouri two years earlier(in which the town was set aflame and at least nine menkilled) and for the deaths of five female relatives of bush-whackers killed in the collapse of a Kansas City, Mis-souri jail. Following the Lawrence raid, the Union dis-trict commander, Thomas Ewing, Jr., ordered the totaldepopulation (both Unionists and Southern sympathizersand everyone else) of three and a half Missouri coun-ties along the Kansas border from Kansas City, Missourisouth, under his General Order No. 11. (The Missouri-Kansas border conflict was in many ways a continuationof Bleeding Kansas violence.) In other areas, individualfamilies (including that of Jesse and Frank James and thegrandparents and mother of future President Harry Tru-man) were banished from Missouri.Next to the attack on Lawrence, the most notorious

atrocity by Confederate bushwhackers was the murderof 22 unarmed Union soldiers pulled from a train in theCentralia Massacre in retaliation for the earlier executionof a number of Anderson’s own men. In an ambush ofpursuing Union forces shortly thereafter, the bushwhack-ers killed well over 100 Federal troops. In October 1864,“Bloody Bill” Anderson was tricked into an ambush andkilled by state militiamen under the command of Col.Samuel P. Cox. Anderson’s body was displayed and hishead was severed.

5 Postwar banditry

After the end of the war, the survivors of Anderson’sband (including the James brothers) remained togetherunder the leadership of Archie Clement, one of Ander-son’s lieutenants, and began a series of armed robberiesin February 1866. This group became known as theJames-Younger Gang, after the death or capture of theolder outlaws (including Clement) and the addition of for-mer bushwhacker Cole Younger and his brothers. In De-cember 1869, Jesse James became the most famous ofthis group when he emerged as the prime suspect in therobbery of the Daviess County Savings Association inGallatin, Missouri, and the murder of the cashier, JohnW. Sheets. During Jesse’s flight from the scene, he de-clared that he had killed Samuel P. Cox and had takenrevenge for Anderson’s death. (Cox lived in Gallatin, andthe killer apparently mistook Sheets for the former mili-tia officer.) Throughout Jesse James’ criminal career, heoften wrote to the newspapers with pride of his role asa bushwhacker, rallying the support of former Confeder-ates and other Missourians who were harmed by Federalauthorities during the Civil War and Reconstruction.After the end of the war in 1865, the Mason Henry Gangcontinued as outlaws in Southern California with a priceon their heads for the November 1864 “CopperheadMur-ders” of three men they believed to be Republicans, in theSan Joaquin Valley. Tom McCauley, known as James orJimHenry, was killed in a shootout with a posse from SanBernardino on September 14 of that year, in San JacintoCanyon, in what was then San Diego County. John Ma-son was killed by a fellow gang member for the reward inApril 1866 near Fort Tejon in Kern County.In 1867, near Nevada, Missouri, a band of bushwhack-ers shot and killed Sheriff Joseph Bailey, a formerUnion brigadier general, who was attempting to arrestthem. Among those suspected of his killing was WilliamMcWaters, who once rode with Anderson and Quantrill.

6 Popular culture

• The bushwhackers are a major focus of Wild-wood Boys (William Morrow, New York; 2000),

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a biographical novel of “Bloody Bill” Anderson byJames Carlos Blake.

• The films The Outlaw Josey Wales and Ride with theDevil are both about bushwhackers.

• Bushwhackers appear in the side-stories of the HBOseries Deadwood, set in South Dakota

• The Bushwhackers were a professional wrestling tagteam that wrestled in the World Wrestling Federa-tion.

7 See also• Ambush• Border Ruffian• Jayhawker• Knights of the Golden Circle• Asymmetric warfare• Irregular warfare• Copperheads (politics)• Francs-tireurs• Partisan (military)• Hajduk• William Quantrill• William T. Anderson• Bald Knobber

8 References[1] See, for instance, Battle of Newton (Alabama).

[2] Fellman, Michael (1990). InsideWar: The Guerrilla Con-flict in Missouri onto the American Civil War. OxfordUniversity Press. pp. 61–143. ISBN 0-19-506471-2.

• T.J. Stiles: Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War,New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002

• Robert R. Mackey, “The UnCivil War: IrregularWarfare in the Upper South, 1861-1865” Norman,Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004

• Geiger, Mark W. Financial Fraud and Guerrilla Vi-olence inMissouri’s CivilWar, 1861-1865, Yale Uni-versity Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-300-15151-0

9 External links• Centralia Massacre and Battle Reenactment

4 10 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

10 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

10.1 Text• Bushwhacker Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushwhacker?oldid=656568202 Contributors: GABaker, Joy, Stevietheman,Zeimusu, Antandrus, Kbh3rd, Swid, Iranian86Footballer, Linmhall, Danthemankhan, Tabletop, Stefanomione, Imersion, Scott Mingus,RussBot, BusterD, Kgwo1972, Bluezy, SmackBot, Burroughsks88, Grazon, Flux.books, Hmains, Rncooper, Moonlight Mile, Ggroschen,Sadads, Krocker316, The Chef, Paul E Ester, EVula, Bobjuch, Will Beback, Kozeltsov, BranStark, DavidOaks, Civil Engineer III, JFor-get, Sketch051, Americasroof, CmdrObot, ShelfSkewed, Scromett, Gogo Dodo, DBaba, Asiaticus, Thijs!bot, A Sniper, LactoseTI, NickNumber, RobotG, North Shoreman, Magioladitis, VoABot II, Nyq, Father Goose, Rivertorch, Twisted86, Shannon.Seath, Mecc6132,Otterfan, Chelt, R'n'B, 8th Ohio Volunteers, Red Harvest, DidacticRogue, S2grand, Ericnandrea, BaronGrackle, Temporaluser, Maeng-pong, Deconstructhis, LeadSongDog, Khvalamde, Dawgsb1, Tegrenath, Ecjmartin, ClueBot, Kendo70133, TheOldJacobite, Klenod, Pix-elBot, WooteleF, Whiterussian1974, Addbot, 5 albert square, AnomieBOT, Materialscientist, Half Sarah, Jfbarlow, Winterst, Pinethicket,Mwgf79, ZéroBot, Donner60, ChuispastonBot, Whoop whoop pull up, ClueBot NG, Jack Greenmaven, Civilwarman97, Captain Bathrobe,Widr, Zejrus, Chillllls, Helpful Pixie Bot, Williamdeloria, Siricruz, Texterri, Biblioworm, Jackm80, Obrute, TimmBUTTguy and Anony-mous: 70

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