Book Description

The bushwhackers of the Confederate Army were some of the most controversial troops of the American Civil War. The names John S. Mosby, William Clarke Quantrill and William "Bloody Bill" Anderson struck terror in the hearts of their northern opponents. But why were they so feared and how did they revolutionize warfare through the course of this ferocious war? This edition aims to answer these questions through the use of primary source materials to get to the core of who guerilla soldiers were and why they fought in the way they did. The first book in the collection is by a soldier, John McCorkle, who fought alongside William Clarke Quantrill for three years. It provides a perfect introduction in the vicious world of the Confederate bushwhacker along the Missouri-Kansas borderland. Quantrill's most controversial moment occurred in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1863. Rather than simply providing the reader with McCorkle's account of this event we have decided also to include the eyewitness account of the massacre from the perspective of a citizen of Lawrence, Judge L. D. Bailey, which is the second book in the collection. Samuel Hildebrand's personal memoir is the third book in the collection. Confederate sympathizers styled him as a Rob Roy of the south whilst Union supporters thought he was little more than a ruthless murderer. Unlike many of the other bushwhackers within this collection Hildebrand operated as more a lone-wolf striking at will deep in enemy territory. William Anderson, as his epithet "Bloody Bill" indicates, was a ruthless operator. After killing a large body of Union troops at Centralia he allowed Sergeant Thomas Goodman to live and continue with his guerilla troops for ten further days. Goodman's account of his time in captivity provides brilliant insight into the terror that these Confederate irregular soldiers could cause. The fifth book in the collection is by one of the most famous confederate soldiers of the American Civil War, John S. Mosby. Unlike the previous guerilla fighters Mosby fought on the eastern front, largely in northern central Virginia. His partisan rangers were feared and respected by their union opponents in equal measure. What would it have been like to have had these guerillas as your opponents? Frederick Mitchell's short account of fighting bushwhackers on the Lafourche in Louisiana captures such a moment in vivid detail. Thomas Berry fought within two of the most formidable partisan brigades that wreaked havoc through 1862 and 1863. His accounts of life under the leadership of John Hunt Morgan and Nathan Bedford Forrest provide gripping reading of the lighting raids that destroyed railroad bridges, logistical hubs and other strategic targets. The last two books in the collection provide a view into the end of the road for these Confederate guerrillas. The first, by Jefferson Duffey, discusses the last charge of John Hanson McNeill who died with his uniform still on, just like so many other partisan raiders. The last book, covering the activities of the Younger brothers, provides insight into the soldiers who survived the war but refused to put down their weapons after it had finished and shifted from bushwhackers to outlaws, continuing to use the techniques that they had perfected through the course of the war.