Frontier Partisans

The Adventurers, Rangers and Scouts Who Fought the Battles of Empire

Bushwhacker’s Manifesto

, by

Sometimes you can hear the echoes of Continuity & Persistence like the ringing of a gong smacked with a .44 caliber slug.

I am presently engaged in a deep plunge into Irregular Warfare in the American Civil War — an integral part of the revised version of The Ranger Project.

Anyways…

I was reading a letter that the fearsome Missouri guerrilla captain William Anderson, better known as “Bloody Bill” wrote to a newspaper in self-justification for his sanguinary deeds, and something jumped out at me. I’ve read this letter many times before, and never caught this particular turn of phrase. However, having recently read and re-read Robert G. Parkinson’s magnificent Heart of American Darkness: Bewilderment and Horror on the Early Frontier, I was primed.

Wrote Bloody Bill:

“I have chosen guerilla warfare to revenge myself for the wrong that I could not honorably avenge otherwise. I lived in Kansas when the war commenced. Because I would not fight the people of Missouri, my native State, the Yankees sought my life, but failed to get me. Revenged themselves by murdering my father, destroying all my property, murdered one of my sisters and have kept the other two in jail for 12 months. But I have fully glutted my vengeance. I have killed many, I am a guerilla. I have never belonged to the Confederate Army, nor do my men.”

Well now, that sounds familiar. Frontier Partisans will remember the terrible tale of the massacre of the kin of the Mingo Chief Logan at Yellow Creek in 1774. Logan went on a murderous vengeance spree, which he explained to trader John Gibson at the end of Dunmore’s War:

Col. Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not sparing even my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This has called on me for revenge. I have sought it: I have killed many: I have fully glutted my vengeance.

Parkinson emphasizes in Heart of American Darkness that Logan’s Lament was, for most of the 19th Century, perhaps the best-known piece of American oratory. Virtually every school child in the young United States would have been familiar with it. Probably, many of them memorized and repeated it.

Among them, surely, was young William Anderson. Whether he self-consciously or subconsciously channeled the themes, tone, and words of Logan, I find it fascinating that the words of two combatants in savage Frontier Partisan warfare, separated by 90 years, would resonate as if they were speaking in unison in the same tongue.

Both men came to violent ends. Logan was gunned down by his nephew, either in a family beef or in a political assassination at the behest of Iroquois leaders. Bloody Bill was shot in the head by Union soldiers in a firefight in the fall of 1864.

*

Plunging into the brush in pursuit of the warriors who waged guerrilla and partisan warfare in the American Civil War is exhilarating. The explicit and often self-conscious evocation of a frontier ethos among these men lands right in the x-ring of my enthusiasms.

This will be my primary area of focus for many months, as I roll out the revised version of The Ranger Project. I will make myself plain on this matter soon. I know I have said that several times, and I’ve pointed out several directions in which I thought I was headed. I’m not being coy; I’ve had a bit of a struggle in choosing a direction I believe will both be viable and compelling enough for me to sustain an effort that will place significant demands on me even as other responsibilities require my attention.

I’ve had to wend my way through some thickets in getting to where I want to go with this.

There were two elements that needed to be worked out: how I want to present the material, and what my focus should be. And the two elements intersect.

I find myself profoundly inspired by another fantastic book read last year: The Unvanquished — The Untold Story of Lincoln’s Special Forces, the Manhunt for Mosby’s Rangers, and the Shadow War That Forged America’s Special Operations, by Patrick O’Donnell. That book re-ignited my dormant interest in the Civil War, which was once nearly as consuming as my passion for frontier history.

There is a very significant overlap of those two areas of interest in the irregular warfare of the era — and there has been a whole lot of really excellent work done on the subject since I last delved seriously into Civil War history.

I have had a number of ideas about what The Ranger Project should look like, but since devouring The Unvanquished, I can’t shake the whispers of the Muse bidding me to tell wild tales of insurgency and counter-insurgency in the borderlands and backcountry of America c. 1854-1882.*

 

*The dates are bookends: the kickoff of the Kansas-Missouri border conflict and the death of Jesse James, Confederate guerrilla turned legendary bandit.

Comments

  1. Quixotic Mainer says

    I can never get enough of the Civil War. It grabbed me as a kiddo, and I’ll never kick the interest.

    A caper I only heard of recently was a locomotive heist in the Tennessee campaign, perpetrated by soldiers going “black op” in plain clothes. It was a mix of comic and epic, anytime a pursuit is undertaken using an old timey handcart is noteworthy!

    The St. Albans Raid would be a cool one to take a look at too. That one smacks of a western with a bank heist and posse, transposed to my native New England.

    Reply

  2. Reese Crawford says

    The Unsung podcast is trying to tackle all the nuance of the civil war in the Trans Mississippi. Very beefy episodes and well worth a listen.

    Reply

    • JimC says

      Thanks Reese. I recently discovered this. He’s going full Dan Carlin/Darryl Cooper in scope. What an enormous project. That’s what I’m after for FP.

      Reply

  3. Will says

    Thanks for the heads up. I’m a sucker for anything having to do with John Singleton Mosby, as I was born and raised on his legendary feats, and grew up in Mosby country.

    Reply

  4. Matthew says

    I’m looking forward to the Ranger project.

    I sorta got the impression that both sides of the guerilla combat in Kansas committed horrible crimes.

    Reply

  5. Clyde says

    I currently live about 8 miles from where the Andersons lived. When Council Grove has its yearly celebration there is always a Bill Anderson re-enactor on horseback. Have really been enjoying this website, keep it coming.

    Clyde
    from just South of Agnes City, KS.

    Reply

      • Clyde says

        I suppose Fall would be the better choice, but both are nearly the same. Spring and Fall are about 2 weeks of gale force wind and torrential rain. I live on the plains and the wind outside right now is a constant 35-45 mph, that’s no BS either. In these parts we don’t call the cord on our hats “Stampede String” we call it “Tornado Wire.” I would guess late Spring or early Fall for those not used to this might be something to ponder.

        Reply

  6. Stephen Fox says

    I cut Bloody Bill’s sign thanks to James Carlos Blake’s 2000 novel The Wildwood Boys. Very much akin to Allan W. Eckert and James Alexander Thom in terms of “fictional biography”.

    Reply

  7. J.F. Bell says

    War to the knife; knife to the hilt.

    A favored phrase in other pursuits. I’ve used this to – I think – good effect, and was saddened none knew the reference. Makes me think sometimes I ought to seek better company. Doesn’t give me a whole lot of faith in the reading public, at any rate.

    Every man ought to have a couple of educated bastards in his circle.

    Reply

  9. Greg Austin Walker says

    Anderson’s quote reminded me of one of my favorite films – “The Outlaw Josey Wales” –

    Reply

  11. SQUIRE RUSTICUS says

    As per an earlier inquiry. Yes, both sides of the Border War in Kansas and Missouri committed unthinkable atrocious criminal acts. It is actually surprising their are not more deeply rooted veins of hatred still seething today. Possibly a reason is that the Counties bordering the Kansas border were totally stripped of their population by proclamation after the Lawrence Raid. The land stripped, building burned. Most of the original people did not move back.
    If it were Scotland, my people held a grudge over a battle lost through treachery for over 400 years. In more modern times they had fist to cuffs or you just would not associate with them, so I’ve been told by distant relatives living in Wick.
    Currently I’m over the border (Kansas-Missouri)working on a project, nobody has insulted me yet. I do hate being called a Jayhawker, it makes me cringe.

    Reply

  13. Jerry N says

    When I was visiting kin up near Blue Springs, MO I took a quick side trail up to Kearney and went to the James Farm. If you ask real nice, one of the nice ladies in the museum will give you a private tour of the home. Very cool.

    Reply

  14. lane batot says

    “Bloody Bill’s” story has some similarities to our Henry Berry Lowrie here in North Carolina, back during the Civil War…..

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *