Free Download Confederate Bushwhackers: The History and Legacy of the Civil War's Most Notorious Guerrillas by Charles River Editors
English | September 29, 2025 | ISBN: N/A | ASIN: B0FT6SJJNL | 207 pages | EPUB | 14 Mb
The Civil War is best remembered for the big battles and the legendary generals who fought on both sides, like Robert E. Lee facing off against Ulysses S. Grant in 1864. In kind, the Eastern Theater has always drawn more interest and attention than the West. However, while massive armies marched around the country fighting each other, there were other small guerrilla groups that engaged in irregular warfare on the margins, and perhaps the most famous of them was led by Colonel John Mosby.
While the South would come to idolize "Southern gentlemen" as epitomized by Robert E. Lee, Mosby operated under a far different nature. Though he enlisted with the Confederate army in Virginia after Fort Sumter, he ultimately left the infantry to join J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry, and he later became infamous as an irregular scout leading a group of rangers around Virginia. Of course, the successful feats of daring that Mosby would accomplish during the war, which included capturing a Union general and riding around behind enemy lines to raid and destroy supplies, were supported by the people of Virginia, thus legitimizing his unconventional move to leave army life. Mosby not only earned the nickname "Gray Ghost" by being elusive, he was so successful that part of Virginia was known as "Mosby's Confederacy" during the war, despite the presence of massive Union armies nearby.
Quantrill's Raiders operated along the border between Missouri and Kansas, which had been the scene of partisan fighting over a decade earlier during the debate over whether Kansas and Nebraska would enter the Union as free states or slave states. In "Bloody Kansas", zealous pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces fought each other, most notably John Brown, and the region became a breeding ground for individuals like Quantrill who shifted right back into similar fighting once the Civil War started. Rather than target military infrastructure or enemy soldiers, the bushwhackers rode in smaller numbers and targeted civilians on the other side of the conflict, making men like Bloody Bill Anderson and John Mosby notorious.
However, none are remembered like Quantrill and his men, not only because of their deeds during the Civil War but because of the actions of some of the former Raiders after it. Quantrill is best known for raiding Lawrence, Kansas in August 1863 and slaughtering nearly 200 boys and men between the ages of 14 and 90 under the pretext that they were capable of holding a gun and thus helping the Union cause. After that massacre, Union forces in the area retaliated in similar fashion, forcing Southern sympathizers out of several counties in the area and burning property. Union forces also detained those accused of assisting Quantrill's Raiders, including their relatives.
Frank and Jesse James have become American legends for their daring robberies and narrow escapes from the law, and many people, especially in the South, see them as folk heroes, unreconstructed rebels fighting for the Lost Cause against rich Northern bankers and capitalists. While that last bit is a matter for debate, the James brothers did indeed consider themselves Southern rebels at heart.
The Wild West has made legends out of many men after their deaths, but like Wild Bill Hickok, Jesse James was a celebrity during his life. However, while Hickok was (mostly) a lawman, Jesse James was and remains the most famous outlaw of the Wild West, with both his life of crime and his death remaining pop culture fixtures. James and his notorious older brother Frank were Confederate bushwhackers in the lawless region of Missouri during the Civil War. Despite being a teenager, Jesse James was severely wounded twice during the war, including being shot in the chest, but that would hardly slow him down after the war ended.
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