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The Guerrilla War 1862

Rebel Raiders Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan led Confederate raids in Kentucky and across the Ohio. In the afternoon of August 22nd, 1862, two of the most renowned Confederate raiders, General Nathan Bedford Forrest and Colonel John Hunt Morgan, come together near Hartsville, Tennessee.

Virginia

Initially there was no place for guerrillas in official Southern military strategy. Thus late in 1861 Secretary of War Judah P. Benjamin stated that "Guerrilla companies are not recognized as part of the military organization of the Confederate States," and early in 1862 General Joseph Johnston ordered from his camps men who were distributing handbills urging soldiers to join up for "local service." But the pleas of Southern adherents in areas dominated or threatened by Yankees produced a change of policy. In March 1862 Governor John Letcher of Virginia issued a proclamation calling on the people in occupied sections to "form guerrilla companies, and strike when least expected." And soon afterward the Confederate Congress passed the Partisan Ranger Act of April 21, 1862, which authorized the organization of independent units for the waging of irregular warfare under the supervision of departmental commanders.

Quickly dozens of partisan ranger outfits sprang into being in Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, and Mississippi (in the last-named state they were headed by Colonel John Falkner, grandfather of the novelist, a "u" being subsequently added to the name). Potential recruits were numerous and eager, for partisan service enabled a man to fight for the cause while remaining near his home, it promised adventure and had an aura of romance, and it offered an escape from the discipline and drudgery of regular army life. Furthermore, under this Partisan Ranger Act, partisans were to receive "the full value of money of all arms and munitions captured from the enemy" - an application of the rules of privateering to land war designed to attract those whose patriotism needed bolstering by the prospect of profit!

In Virginia Colonel John D. Imboden recruited a partisan ranger regiment for "very active service" in the Union-occupied western mountains. "It is only men I want," he proclaimed, "... men who will pull a trigger on a Yankee with as much alacrity as they would on a mad dog; men whose consciences won't be disturbed by the sight of a vandal carcass." At the same time Harry Gilmor, a dashing Baltimorean, and "Lige" White, another native of Maryland, organized companies for operations along the Potomac, although technically they remained part of Brigadier General Turner Ashby's cavalry serving in the Shenandoah Valley under Jackson.

Late that summer Lee's invasion of Maryland drove the Federals out of northern Virginia and caused them to reduce their forces in the western part of the state. As a consequence Imboden's partisans, Confederate cavalry raiders, and local bushwhackers went on a rampage in those areas. But the failure of Lee's campaign at Antietam ended any Confederate chance of completely regaining control of the Old Dominion. In November the Federals reoccupied northern Virginia, including Harpers Ferry, and in January they restored the Baltimore & Ohio to service along its entire length despite repeated efforts by the guerrillas to cut the line.

At the end of 1862 - just as McCabe's play glorifying them was being shown in Richmond - the Confederate high command decided that partisans were of little military value. Hence the companies of White and Gilmor (the latter had been captured raiding in Maryland but was soon exchanged) were ordered back to their regiments and Imboden's men were incorporated into the regular cavalry. The only exception made in the latter instance was Captain John "Hanse" McNeill, who was allowed to continue his independent operations in western Virginia.

Kentucky

When in May 1862 Major General John C. Breckinridge, leader of Kentucky Secessionists, asked Adam Johnson and Bob Martin, two young Kentuckians serving as scouts with Forrest's cavalry in Mississippi, to go into the Bluegrass State and gather recruits, they readily agreed. As reward he promised them the command of all the troops they raised.

Disguised as "peaceable civilians" they made their way into western Kentucky. To their disappointment they found the Southern sympathizers reluctant to enlist: They wanted a leader of proved ability. Consequently the 28-year-old Johnson, who had been an Army scout in Texas before the war, decided to give them such a leader - himself.

First, aided only by Martin and another man, he ambushed the Union provost guard on the main street of his hometown of Henderson, killing ten. The Federals reported that 300 guerrillas made the attack! Next, having attracted some recruits, he surprised a Union detachment near Madisonville and drove it from its camp. Convinced that they faced overwhelming forces, the Federals evacuated Henderson, which Johnson promptly occupied, hoisting the Confederate flag from the courthouse. Now dozens of men began to join up.

To arm his recruits, on July 18 he crossed the Ohio River with a small force and seized an arsenal at Newburgh, Indiana, bluffing the local home guards into non-resistance by threatening to bombard the town with two "cannons" which he had constructed out of a log and a stovepipe and placed in a prominent position on the opposite shore! This exploit threw lower Indiana and Ohio into a panic and caused the Federals to mass troops in the principal Ohio River towns and along the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. Moreover, it brought "Stovepipe" Johnson, as he henceforth was called, enough additional recruits to form a 300-man battalion, which he named "The Breckinridge Guards."

During the rest of the summer Johnson's irregulars scoured west Kentucky, skirmishing with Union militia, burning bridges, destroying enemy supplies, attacking Federal garrisons, and even seizing a couple of steamboats! In so doing they took hundreds of prisoners and tied down large numbers of Northern troops, thereby aiding the Confederate invasion of Kentucky under General Braxton Bragg.

In October, following the failure of Bragg's campaign, Johnson returned to Confederate lines. Having now enough men to form a regiment, he went to Richmond and obtained a commission as colonel of the 10th Kentucky Partisan Rangers. Then, evading an attempt by Bragg to incorporate his regiment into the regular army as infantry, he joined Brigadier General John Hunt Morgan's cavalry.

Civil War Times

Missouri

On March 7, 1862 forty Missouri bushwhackers made an unusually brutal raid on the village of Aubry, Kansas. Not only did they steal and burn - they gunned down five helpless civilians. Their leader had a strange, sinister name: Quantrill.

William Clarke Quantrill was born, curiously enough for a Southern guerrilla chieftain, in the Northern state of Ohio in 1837. The son of a school principal, he secured a good education by the standard of the day and while still in his teens taught school in Illinois, Indiana, and his hometown of Canal Dover. At the age of 20 he migrated to Kansas where he made a halfhearted attempt at farming and got into trouble with his neighbors for stealing. Next he accompanied an army expedition to Utah as a teamster, prospected for gold in Colorado, and returned to Kansas for another stint of school teaching. In 1860, under the alias of Charley Hart, he joined a gang of Jayhawkers at Lawrence. When the Kansans outlawed him he switched over to the Missourians, gaining their confidence by betraying three Jayhawker associates into a deadly trap.

Following the outbreak of the war he served with Price's army, then when it retreated to Arkansas he left it and went to the Blue Springs area of Jackson County, east of Kansas City. Late in 1861 he joined a small local band, which had been formed to guard against Jayhawkers. He soon became its leader. A good shot and skilled rider, he was also crafty, courageous, and cool in moments of crisis. Physically he was somewhat above medium height, slender, and had a rather mild looking face. Only his cold blue eyes, half-covered by drooping lids, bespoke the killer.

During the early months of 1862 Quantrill's gang was increasingly active in Jackson County, ambushing Union scouts, waylaying mail carriers, holding up stagecoaches, driving Unionists from their homes, and skirmishing with Federal militia. All the while his band grew steadily in size and reputation, adding to its ranks among others a stalwart 18-year-old farmer named Coleman Younger.

After the Aubry raid and another on Liberty, Missouri, the Federals made an all-out effort to destroy "the notorious Quantrill." Three times within one month they managed to corner his band, but each time it fought its way free. These narrow escapes caused the bushwhackers to become more wary and clever. As a rule of they operated in small groups, coming together for a major enterprise, then scattering into the countryside, which they knew intimately and where friends and relatives provided shelter, food, fresh horses, and timely warning in case of pursuit.

They also developed highly effective "hit and run" tactics based on the horse and revolver. Lying in ambush beside a road along which a Union patrol approached, they would gallop suddenly out of the brush screaming and firing their Colt six-shooters, of which they carried anywhere from two to a dozen. The Federals, usually armed with single-shot muskets or carbines, simply were no match for them in such fighting.

At first Quantrill generally spared prisoners other than Jayhawkers. But when he learned of General Halleck's order outlawing guerrillas he adopted a "no quarter" policy. The majority of his followers were young farm boys who "took to the bush" out of Southern sympathies, a desire for vengeance against Missouri Unionists and Kansas raiders, and a yearning for adventure. But as time went by many of them, hunted like animals, degenerated into savage beasts driven by a lust for plunder and blood.

In the early summer of 1862 Major General Thomas C. Hindman, Confederate commander in Arkansas, sent into Missouri Joseph Porter, J. A. Poindexter, John T. Hughes, Gideon W. Thompson, and Upton Hayes. All bore commissions as colonels of partisan rangers, all were prominent Missourians, and all had missions to gather recruits, attack Federal posts and communication lines, and, if possible, foment a mass uprising which would prepare the way for Hindman to invade the state and reverse the tide of war in the West in favor of the South.

By July partisan activity so alarmed Brigadier General John M. Schofield, Union commander in Missouri, that he ordered every able-bodied man in the state to enlist in the militia "for the purpose of exterminating the guerrillas." The immediate effect of this policy was to strengthen the partisans, as hundreds of Pro-Southern Missourians joined them rather than fight them. However it achieved Schofield's main object of mobilizing Missouri's Unionists. Heavily reinforced militia combined with regular forces to disperse the large bodies of irregulars under Porter and Poindexter, killing the former and capturing the latter. By September they had re-established Federal control over north Missouri.

Meanwhile Hayes, Thompson, and Hughes, with about 400 men, moved into west Missouri where they linked up with Quantrill and captured the Union garrison at Independence on August 11. Four days later Thompson, acting on authority from Hindman, officially mustered Quantrill's band into the Confederate Army, at the same time commissioning Quantrill a captain of partisan rangers.

The next day, August 16, Hayes and Thompson, who had been joined by a thousand recruits under Colonels Vard Cockrell and John T. Coffee, defeated an 800 man Union force in a bitter battle at Lone Jack in which some of Quantrill's men participated. However, they suffered heavy losses and nearly exhausted their ammunition. Consequently they were unable to exploit their victories, and when a large Kansas army pressed them they retreated back to Arkansas. Thus Hyndman's campaign of large-scale partisan warfare shook but did not break the Union hold on Missouri, and in December his army was routed at the Battle of Prairie Grove, Arkansas.

Quantrill alone remained to challenge Yankee domination along the border. In September and October he thrice raided Kansas towns, but with the advent of cold weather, which stripped the bushes and trees of their concealing leaves, he assembled his men and headed south to Arkansas where they temporarily joined Colonel Jo Shelby's regiment, an outfit also made up of west Missouri boys.

Soon afterward Quantrill traveled to Richmond where he solicited a commission as colonel of partisan rangers. Probably he did not get it, although henceforth he claimed to be a colonel and many of his followers believed he was one. In any case he had risen fast and high during 1862 - and the climax, the bloody climax, was yet to come.

Albert Castel. The Guerrilla War 1861-1865. Civil War Times Illustrated. Gettysburg, PA. 1974.

Bloody Bill Anderson The Short, Savage Life of a Civil War Guerrilla. Castel & Goodrich. This is the first full-length account of Bloody Bill Anderson's gruesome career. Drawing extensively from heretofore unknown primary sources, this book tracks the rise and reign of Anderson's terror from 1861 to 1865, and explores the source of his blunt vengeance in his increasingly violent raids.

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