Plundering the enemy in the Civil War

Victory in war is not just marked by territory gained and the number of enemy killed, it's also measured by the material you take from him. The Official Records of the Civil War are filled with accounts--boasts, really--of the amount of booty taken from a defeated enemy.

In Missouri, for example, the 10th Kansas Volunteer Infantry was moving through western Missouri hunting Confederate bushwhackers in September of 1862. They burned the houses, outbuildings, and provisions of a dozen known guerrillas and took 100 stand of arms, 10,000 rounds of ammunition, four yoke of oxen, five wagons, a number of tents, dry goods, and camp equipment. Presumably these were found in the houses, as no actual combat is recorded. They also recovered property stolen during Quantrill's raid on Olathe, Kansas, on September 6. As the regiment headed back to Kansas, some sixty African-Americans followed them to freedom.

The rebels did some prize taking themselves. A report from September 11 says, "Confederates made off today with a 24-pounder howitzer in a skirmish at Bloomfield. They are now headed toward Holcomb's Island with the howitzer in tow."


Photo courtesy Library of Congress. This ruined home is actually in Petersburg, Virginia.

First Kansas Colored Volunteers honored with State Historic Site

I've written here before about the First Kansas Colored Volunteers, a unit mostly comprised of runaway slaves from Missouri and Arkansas who fled to Kansas. They had the honor of being the first black regiment in the American army to see combat when they fought the Battle of Island Mound in Missouri on October 26, 1862. There they defeated a much larger force of Confederate bushwhackers.

Now, after long preparation, Missouri has set up the Battle of Island Mound State Historic Site. On the 150th anniversary of the battle they had a formal opening and reenactment. Check out the photo gallery on their site for some great shots!

Yeah, I'm a bit late with this news. Much have something to do with traveling in Iraq. :-)

Guest Post: The Red Legs

I'm always happy to take guest posts from writers and researchers of the Civil War and Old West, and so I'm pleased today to bring you Bill Hoyt, author of Good Hater: George Henry Hoyt's War on Slavery. He's here to tell us about Hoyt's role in the actions of the infamous Red Legs. Take it away Hoyt!


Depending upon who is telling the tale, the Red Legs of Kansas were either soldiers, scouts, and guides particularly fitted for service along the bloody border, or else they were pillagers as “full of the devil as a mackerel is of salt.” The truth was even more complicated.

The Kansas Seventh Volunteer Cavalry, known in Missouri as “Jennison's Jayhawkers,” began wearing red leggings as early as 1861. Quickly picking up the symbol, other Unionist Red Legs thereafter gained a reputation for thieving, looting, and even bank robbery. A number of such gangs pillaged both sides of the Missouri/Kansas border in late 1861 and early 1862, much to the chagrin of the general in charge at Fort Leavenworth, James G. Blunt of Kansas.

Another threat was rising in 1862 that scared Kansans even more than Red Legs: William Clarke Quantrill.  As the Confederate captain grew bolder, looting Shawneetown, Olathe, and a few other border towns that year, the cries grew for a protective force that could keep Quantrill at bay.

Enter Captain George Henry Hoyt, late of the Kansas Seventh Volunteer Cavalry. Though relatively new in Kansas, Hoyt was no stranger to the border. After serving as an attorney during John Brown’s 1859 trial in Virginia, Hoyt had come to Kansas in 1861 with John Brown, Jr., eventually replacing him as captain of Company K, perhaps the most fiercely abolitionist company in any Kansas regiment. As a member of Col. Charles R. “Doc” Jennison’s personal staff, Hoyt had led many raids on bushwhackers, raids from which any captured bushwhackers consistently died “trying to escape.”

While Hoyt’s poor health had forced his resignation from the Seventh, now serving in Mississippi, his July of 1862 return to Kansas made him available for a different kind of duty: running an irregular company of scouts and spies that would provide border “services” to Kansas regiments stationed in and around Kansas City.

He called his company the “Red Leg Scouts,” giving notice to Missourians that he intended to continue what Jennison’s boys had started the prior year. Into that company he gathered nearly three dozen men who knew the order, could not serve in the army for various reasons, and most importantly, were as fearless and as merciless as himself.

J is for Jayhawkers

I've talked about bushwhackers a lot on this blog. These rebel guerrillas were the terror of Missouri and Arkansas, but they weren't the only terror. Their Union counterparts were called Jayhawkers. Many were based in Kansas and raided across the state line into Missouri and Arkansas.

Like the bushwhackers, some were ardent if somewhat lawless supporters of their cause. Jim Lane, for example, stole slaves from Missouri and Arkansas and created the First Kansas Colored Volunteers, the first black regiment in the U.S. army to see combat. Others were little more than bandits. Charles "Doc" Jennison, pictured above in a very dapper frontier outfit, leaned more toward the bandit side. While he did fight bushwhackers and Confederate regulars, he also ransacked secessionist and proslavery homes, mostly for personal gain.

The Jayhawkers and bushwhackers personified the bitter border war that helped lead to the start of the Civil War. The hatred had grown so great that mercy was in short supply and thieves and killers rode beside patriots. The downward spiral of brutality and bloodshed has left animosities that are still felt by some in the region today.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

F is for First Kansas Colored Volunteers

For me, the most fascinating unit in the Civil War west of the Mississippi is the First Kansas Colored Volunteers. Most of the soldiers for this Union unit were runaway slaves from Missouri and Arkansas, many of them "stolen" on raids by Kansas guerrillas and given their freedom in Kansas. These raids were often led by abolitionist Kansas senator Jim Lane. It was Lane who created the unit in 1862, against the direct orders of President Lincoln, who was still waffling on the issue of black soldiers.

The regiment got its "first taste of powder" on 26 October 1862 when they fought and defeated a much larger force of rebel guerrillas at the Battle of Island Mound. Until then, most white people North and South assumed that blacks wouldn't make good soldiers. The First Kansas Colored Volunteers started to change this racist mentality.

I'm shopping around a book proposal about the First Kansas and am having trouble finding a publisher or agent to take it on. This seems strange to me considering that I already have more than ten books published, including two on the Civil War. I'm no stranger to book rejections, it's part of the business, so I'll keep trying. It's a story worth telling.