Scorched Earth Policy in Civil War Missouri

By the middle of 1863, 150 years ago, the Civil War in Missouri had gotten nasty. Regular Confederate forces had long since been pushed out of the state, but the Union troops were constantly harassed by cavalry raiders and guerrillas.

Many Missourians supported the South, especially in the small towns and countryside, and Union troops took vengeance on them by burning their homes, barns, even entire villages. Guerrillas did the same with Unionist homes and villages.

For example, in June a Union scouting party torched the house of a Mr. Robertson after guerrillas had been found sheltering there on two occasions. They also burnt the town of Sibley, which the guerrillas used as a base for sniping at boats passing down the Missouri River. That same month, rebel guerrillas burnt the Unionist town of Butler in Bates County. After the civilians fled the inferno there were no more Union families in the county.

In August, another Union detachment torched Gouge's Mill. They'd found a recruitment poster for the Confederate army tacked to a tree nearby, and discovered it was a rendezvous point for Confederate recruiters and a local guerrilla band. There was a blacksmith shop and gunsmith shop on the premises that the rebels used to repair their equipment. Another house nearby where they were accustomed to stay was also burned to the ground.

The war in Missouri would only get worse.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons. This is actually a modern fire of an early 20th century barn, with the firefighters cropped out. :-)

Tsarist coastal artillery in Estonia and Jesse James in Italy

While I was away on my writing retreat in Tangier I popped up on the Web a couple of times. The organizers of the èStoria Festival, who hosted me for the release of the Italian edition of my Jesse James book, have posted this video of my panel on the outlaw. Everyone's speaking Italian except for yours truly, so I'll forgive you if you don't watch it.

I also did a guest post for the Osprey Publishing blog on a shore battery in Estonia dating to the Tsarist era. It’s located near the village of Suurupi, overlooking the Gulf of Finland. It's an interesting bit of military history and nearly gave us a nasty surprise!

An unplanned ride through enemy lines

As I've mentioned before, by 1863 the fight in Missouri was mostly one between Union soldiers and militia and Confederate bushwhackers. Prominent among these irregular rebel fighters was Major Tom Livingston. He was quite successful for a time and gathered a lot of attention from Union forces.

On May 13, 1863, one Union detachment caught up with him at the Centre Creek lead mines. Livingston had about a hundred well-armed men and were probably in the area to get lead with which to make bullets. Union troops surprised him and attacked.

The official Union report states, "It was a desperate bushwhacking fight; both sides were hand-to-hand in the brush for awhile. Captain Henslee's horse became very much frightened, and charged immediately through the rebel crew; it is supposed fifty guns were fired alone at him in this passage; escaped unhurt. He fired as he went through; killed 1; charged back again in order to save himself and killed another."

If you're going into battle, make sure you can control your horse!

One of my books has been translated into Swedish!

After hearing earlier this year that two of my military history books for Osprey Publishing are being translated into Italian, it turns out that I'm also getting readers in Sweden. My book American Civil War Guerrilla Tactics has been translated into Swedish and bound with two other Osprey titles into one of a multivolume series on the Civil War. You can see my byline at the bottom of this volume.

Here's the whole series. It's published by Svenskt Militärhistoriskt Bibliotek (the Swedish Library of Military History) and is, oddly enough, my first hardcover edition.

 

A big thanks to Stefan Aguirre, one of my new Swedish readers, for these photos!

Tracking rebel guerrillas in the Civil War

In Missouri and Arkansas during the Civil War, the thick underbrush was the Confederate guerrillas' greatest ally. Anyone who has hiked in those states knows the foliage gets so thick you can't see ten feet. This meant the Union troops trying to hunt down the rebels had to get good at tracking, using the same techniques they'd used to hunt deer in peacetime.

In 1863, Captain William Kemper of the Ninth Cavalry Regiment, Missouri State Militia, was having trouble with guerrillas in Clay County in western Missouri, especially a band under the command of Fletch Taylor.

Kemper had his men lie beside a road for a while in ambush but the guerrillas never passed, so he turned to tracking. He scouted along the Fishing River and came to the farm of John Eaton, a known secessionist. Kemper reported: "I noticed at the yard fence a path made, both by horses and men. . .I took the  track at once, and followed it through a pasture adjoining the yard into a densely brushy pasture, where I came upon the party of bushwhackers."

The guerrillas were only surprised for a moment. They were used to hasty exits, whether from camp or from the house of some friendly rebel woman cooking them dinner. Covering their retreat with a hail of bullets from their six shooters, they soon disappeared into the brush. Kemper would have to hunt for Taylor's group again.

In that crowd of retreating bushwhackers was a certain Jesse James and his brother Frank James. They were known to authorities as rebel guerrillas. It wouldn't be many years before they were known to the whole world

Lieutenant Sardius Smith on his experiences in Civil War Missouri

As I've mentioned frequently on this blog, the Civil War in Missouri quickly shifted from one of standing battles to a Confederate guerrilla campaign in the Union-occupied state. Guerrilla wars are especially brutal, and Missouri was no exception. Rebel irregulars burnt homes and used various tortures on Unionist civilians such as foot burning.

The Union soldiers assigned to suppress the insurgency became hardened as well. In 1862 Lt. Sardius Smith wrote in his diary, "We are getting quite hardened by this kind of thing, and I can go into a house with a pistol in my hand, with a smile on my face, speak politely to the ladies, ask where their men are in order that I may shoot them or take them prisoner with as much grace as though I was making a call for friendship's sake."

Anna Slayback of St. Joseph had a civilian's view when she wrote on May 9, 1862, "We Union people are very low up here. The laws are becoming more stringent on the rebels in Mo. & they must be put down. They are impudent & rejoice over our defeat. This must not be."

In a later letter she wrote, "Were the rebels a foreign foe or a stronger people, then subduing them might be called victories. But this is a family quarrel, brother against brother, & we bite & devour one another that other nations may mock & laugh at our folly."

A Missouri bushwhacker meets a bloody end

This rather gruesome image is of Captain William H. Stuart, a Confederate bushwhacker from Missouri. He started bushwhacking early in the war and later joined the band of Bloody Bill Anderson. He helped Bloody Bill on his ride through central Missouri in the autumn of 1864 in support of General Price's Confederate invasion. This is covered in my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness, although Stuart himself is never named. He was probably at the slaughter of the wagon train and the attack on Fayette, for example.

Stuart also spent a fair amount of time riding with his own small band, and this is when he met his end. The November 25, 1864, issue of Columbia Missouri Statesman states:

"Death has overtaken another notorious desperado and robber, in the person of rebel captain Stewart [sic], who, a companion of Anderson and a participator in many of the enterprises of that brigand, has been a curse to this section for many months past.

"Stewart was killed at the house of M'Donald in old Franklin, Howard county, on Friday last, by a cattle drover. Two drovers were at the home of Mr. M'Donald when Stewart and two companions rode up for the purpose of robbing or murdering them. The drovers fastened the doors of the house and Stewart in attempting to break them down was shot by one of the drovers and killed instantly. One shot penetrated his neck, another entered near the mouth, and a third passed fairly into the corner of the forehead. The other two guerrillas escaped.

"Stewart was a man of medium height, spare made, smooth of face, and wore very long hair of a red color. He was on the whole a fine looking man. The drover who killed him was in town on Wednesday and had in his possession a photograph of the desperado taken after death, exhibiting plainly the holes where the fatal bullets entered. Stewart was from the vicinity of Warrensburg, Johnson County, Missouri."

Death photos of bushwhackers and outlaws were common in those days, both as gruesome mementos and as a way for authorities to identify suspects. Bloody Bill also had his death photo taken, as did Jesse James and the Dalton brothers.

This card was sold at auction a couple of years ago by Heritage Auctions, which has all sorts of great stuff to buy if you have more disposable income than I do.

There is some debate of the spelling of Stuart's last name. This genealogical website states that it's actually spelled Stewart.

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.

Firefight in a haystack: just another day hunting bushwhackers in Civil War Missouri

June of 1862 was a tough month for the Union forces occupying Missouri. The bushwhackers seemed to be everywhere, cutting telegraph wire, attacking outposts and patrols, killing mail couriers, and committing depredations on Unionist civilians.

Several major firefights are recorded for this month. The strangest occurred on the 18th, when a group of Union soldiers arrived at Hambright's Station near Independence in order to arrest some suspected guerrillas. As they made the arrest, a black man on the farm (presumably a slave) quietly took the soldiers aside and told them more guerrillas were hiding in a nearby haystack.

A skirmish ensued, in which the guerrillas fired out of the haystack and the soldiers fired into it. Hay doesn't provide much protection against bullets and so one guerrilla was killed and the other two wounded and captured. The soldiers completed their mission by burning Mr Barnes' grocery store, presumably for supporting the rebels.

This was only the beginning. Missouri faced three long years of guerrilla warfare before it would be over.

Photo courtesy U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. It actually shows a haystack on an Indian reservation in 1941, but that's OK, it's a nice picture.

The dangers of delivering the mail in Civil War Missouri

The Official Records has an interesting report from 150 years ago.

Report of Colonel Daniel Huston, Jr., Seventh Missouri Cavalry.

HEADQUARTERS SUB-DISTRICT,
Lexington, Mo., June 15, 1862.

SIR: I have received a report from Lieutenant-Colonel Buel to the following purport

A mail escort, which left Independence for Harrisonville on the morning of the 11th instant, consisting of 23 men and 2 non-commissioned officers of Captain Cochran's company of Missouri State Militia, was fired into 15 miles from Independence, and 2 men of the escort were killed and 2 wounded. A scout sent out by Colonel Buel failed to find the marauders. Colonel Buel also reports that information, believed to be reliable, had been received that Quantrill, with 60 men, was near Pink Hill. He closes his communication by saying:

I shall not for the present have any more of my men shot carrying the mail between Independence and Harrisonville. I am obliged, by orders from District Headquarters, to keep the route open. I shall compel secessionists in this vicinity to carry that mail for a while. I believe this will be the best course I can pursue. On receipt of your dispatch yesterday I prepared one for Major Linder, at Harrisonville, and sent it by a secessionist, who has returned safely. . .

As I explain in my book American Civil War Guerrilla Tactics, while sending secessionists to deliver the mail reduced attacks, it only encouraged the conscripted secessionists to join the bushwhackers. If they were going to be shot at, they reasoned, they might as well be shot at by the other side! Telegraph was the safest way to communicate, but it was impossible to protect the entire line and bushwhackers were constantly cutting them.


Photo of the Army of the Potomac's General Post Office in Brandy Station, Virginia, 1863, courtesy Wikipedia.

B is for Bushwhackers

It's the second day of the A to Z Challenge and so of course B is for bushwhackers!

Bushwhackers were Confederate guerrillas. They generally did not have an official position in the Confederate army and fought the war "on their own hook." They were especially rife in Missouri and Arkansas, where they burned bridges, tore down telegraph wire, ambushed Union patrols and supply wagons, and even attacked small towns.

One of the protagonists of my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness is teenaged bushwhacker Jimmy Rawlins. He and his friends cause trouble in Missouri until they meet up with the band of Bloody Bill Anderson, the most notorious bushwhacker of them all. Jimmy is fictional, but Bloody Bill was all too real.

This photo shows three of Bloody Bill's men, well equipped with Colt Navy revolvers and bottles of liquor. Number 2 is Dave Poole, who has a memorable scene in the novel at the Battle of Fayette.

B is also for the Battle of Boonville, the first battle in Civil War Missouri and one of the first anywhere in that war. While it only lasted twenty minutes, it had an important effect on the war west of the Mississippi. Hit the link to see an article I wrote about it.


Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Today in the Civil War: hunting for Quantrill in Missouri

By early 1862, William Clarke Quantrill was already making a name for himself as a rebel guerrilla. He had been involved with the border war for several years, serving on both sides before finally throwing in his lot with the South in 1861 when the war started in earnest.

Now he led quick, effective raids against Union outposts and infrastructure. In late March he burned an important bridge between Kansas city and Independence. Colonel Robert B. Mitchell of the Second Kansas Cavalry set out with about 300 men in pursuit. On this day 150 years ago he caught up with Qauntrill's band at Little Santa Fe, Missouri.

In his report in the Official Records, Mitchell says,

"I. . .reached Little Santa Fe about 10 o'clock that night, and sent Major Pomeroy about 3 miles from the town, with instructions to arrest one David Tate, whom I had reason to believe was connected with Quantrill. Major Pomeroy had with him a detachment of Companies D and E. . .When Major Pomeroy reached the house he demanded entrance, and a gun was immediately fired through the door. He then called upon them to surrender, and to send out their women and children if they had any in the house. After waiting some time, while shots were fired from the house, he ordered a volley to be fired into the house. The cries of women were then herd, when he ordered the men to cease firing. The women and children then came out and firing was resumed on both sides."

"Two of the men then came of one the windows and surrendered. They stated to Major Pomeroy that Quantrill was in the house with 26 men. Major Pomeroy then threatened to fire the house, and upon their continued refusal to surrender he ordered the house to be fired, and an attempt was made to fire it, but without success. Major Pomeroy and Private Wills, of Company D, were at this time shot. Major Pomeroy becoming disabled, Captain Moore took command, and sent back to me requesting re-enforcements, so as not to let any of the men escape. Captain Moore the house and they still refusing so to do,[unclear in the original] he ordered the house to be against set on fire, and this time the flames rapidly envolved [sic] the house."

The men in the house who were not wounded then burst out the weatherboarding at the back of the house and ran for the timber immediately in the rear. Two were shot down as they ran - 1 killed instantly and 1 mortally wounded. . .The others escaped, and though the woods were carefully scoured, no traces of them were found. While the firing was taking several men were seen to fall in the house, and the prisoners stated when they were first taken that there were 4 or 5 wounded. Five bodies could be distinctly seen in the flames at the time I reached the spot with that part of the command which was left behind."

"I caused all the horses and horses equipments of the enemy to be gathered together and guarded and remained at the house until 6.30 o'clock in the morning, when I started for the house of one Wyatt. As we nearer the house 6 or 7 men were seen to break from it into the brush immediately adjoining the premises. I immediately dismounted some of my men and sent them into the brush, but succeeded in capturing only 2."

"The command being without provisions, and being satisfied that Quantrill and those of his gang who had been in the locality had undoubtedly fled, I returned to the Tate House and started back to camp, leaving Captain Moore's command, with 1 wounded. We reached camp about 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon."

"Our loss was as follows: Major Pomeroy, severely wounded with a Minie ball in the right thigh near the femoral artery; Private William Wills, of Company D, since died, with a Minie ball in the right arm near the shoulder, and also with buck-shot in the groin and abdomen. We also lost 2 horses in the fight. The jayhawkers' loss was 5 killed or wounded and burned up in the house, 2 killed outside, and 6 prisoners. We took 25 horses, some of which have already been identified as belonging to parties in this State, from whom they were stolen, and about 20 sets of horse equipments."

It's interesting that in this Union report, Quantrill's rebel band is referred to as "jayhawkers". Modern historians generally use this term only for Unionist or supposedly Unionist irregulars. Back then, apparently, the definition wasn't so clear.

Friendly fire in the Civil War

Civil War Missouri was a chaotic place. Combatants often wore no uniforms or the uniforms of the opposing side. Enemies sniped from the thick underbrush or attacked civilians in the dead of night. A sense of paranoia spread throughout the land. One good example of this paranoia is preserved in the pages of Turnbo's Tales of the Ozarks: War and Guerrilla Stories.

In the closing days of the war, four or five veterans of the Federal army were passing through the country, possibly headed home. Some had their wives and children with them. They stopped at an old vacant house near the base of Washington Bald Hill three miles northwest of Lutie, Missouri. Vacant homes were numerous by then as many of the civilians had fled the terrible guerrilla war that had ravaged the state for several years.

On the following morning, just before dawn, they were attacked by fifteen Federal soldiers returning from a scouting expedition. They began shooting through an opening or crack in the house, thinking Confederates were hiding inside. The men in the house fired back, thinking they were being attacked by Confederates.

As Turnbo related, "Directly the soldiers ordered the men in the house to come out and surrender which they refused to do. They not only thought they were Confederates, but the worst type of bushwhackers or guerrillas and they did not propose to surrender to them. . .it was cheaper to fight until they died rather than surrender and be put to death afterward like a lot of fattening hogs."

"The outside men now said, 'We will burn you out if you do not give up your arms.'"

"The inside party replied, 'Burn the house if you want to. We will fight you by the light of the fire.' The inside party continued, 'Who are you fellows?'"

"'We are Federal soldiers,' the spokesman answered."

"'Good! We are all of the same stripe,' said one of the insiders, 'and there is no need of us fighting.'"

"An explanation followed and peace was made between the two parties."

Nobody was killed in this affair. As we'll see tomorrow, these incidents were common and didn't always end so happily.

Northern Arkansas in chaos during the Civil War

In my last post about foot burning in the Civil War, I talked about how northern Arkansas was a No Man's Land during the late Civil War.

For the first two years of the war, most of Arkansas was firmly in Confederate hands. The Ozarks in the northern part of the state, however, went their own way as they always have. Some people were for the south, others for the north, and many simply wanted to stay out of it. When Little Rock fell on 10 September 1863, central Arkansas came under the control of the Union. The rebel armies retreated to southern Arkansas and were too weak to challenge the Union troops in the center of the state.

The Union troops in Arkansas were undermanned, and could do little more than hold the line. Large swaths of the Arkansas Ozarks were left unguarded and soon became prey to roving bands who robbed civilians. Some of these groups claimed to be on one side or the other, but many were simply bandits.

In the fall of 1864, Confederate General Sterling Price decided to launch an ambitious plan to march north from southern Arkansas and invade Missouri. This is the setting for my Missouri Civil War novel A Fine Likeness. In preparation for the invasion, Price sent Confederate cavalry raider J.O. Shelby and his Iron Brigade to slip across the Arkansas River into northern Arkansas to round up deserters and conscript locals. Shelby reported “the entire country overrun with able-bodied men; recruiting officers quarreling or sunk in total apathy; predatory bands of thieves roaming over the country at will, killing some, burning the feet of others, and all hungering with the lust of robbery; one officer refusing to report to another, no organizations, no discipline, no arms, no leader, no desire to fight, no anything.”

Currently I'm writing another book in the House Divided series that is loosely tired to A Fine Likeness. One of the protagonists is a member of Shelby's Iron Brigade who deserts after Price is defeated and retreats south. He finds himself hiding out in this chaotic region. It's a great setting for a historical novel because anything can happen there, and everything does.

For more on Shelby and his Iron Brigade, check out my book Ride Around Missouri: Shelby's Great Raid 1863.

Civil War bridge burner goes on trial

There's an interesting item from the Official Records about a trial held in Columbia, Missouri, on March 1, 1862.

"William F. Petty, a citizen of Boone County, Mo., did aid and assist and incite others to aid and assist in the destruction by fire or otherwise of certain rails, ties, bridges and timbers belonging to and necessary for the use of the North Missouri Railroad Company in the transaction of their ordinary business. All this at or near Sturgeon, Mo., on or about the 21st of December, 1861."

Petty pleaded not guilty to burning the Sturgeon railroad bridge or having any knowledge of plans to burn the bridge. Since the punishment for such an act was death, his plea was hardly surprising.

So what really happened 150 years ago today? A carpenter named Jacob Crosswhite testified, "I had been taken a prisoner in Sturgeon before the fire. Was at home in bed when some men came to my house, burst open the door, called me to strike a light. I did so. A man put his hand on my shoulder and told me I was his prisoner. I dressed myself and they carried me up in town; from there to Sturgeon bridge. The bridge was on fire and a good many there. Some were standing around; some piling up chunks on the fire; some tearing up railroad track.

"From that place we marched about four miles to Long Branch bridge; found that afire; staid there two or three hours. There were a good many men there had gone down from Sturgeon bridge. After the bridge was pretty well burned down we went back to Sturgeon. I did not see prisoner at either bridge. First saw him next morning at Mr. Riggs', two and one-half miles southwest of Sturgeon, where the band camped. He was in the crowd of men who had burned down the bridge and tore up the railroad the night before. 'Twixt daylight and sun-up a crowd of cavalry attacked them. Some few men fought awhile; the rest ran. Don't recollect seeing him any more until we got three or four miles from place of fight. I was still prisoner of the bridge-burners. They stopped on White Oak Ridge. They there released Schooler, another prisoner they had, and carried me on with them. They next stopped for any length of time at prisoner's house. I was released on parole near prisoner's house. W. R. Schooler and Adam Gosling were prisoner with me."

Crosswhite added that the men called him "captain" and he seemed to be in charge. Two other former prisoners of the rebel band testified the same thing. None of the three said they saw Petty at the scene of the crime.

Some witnesses to the defense swore that he was elsewhere on the night of December 20/21, when the Sturgeon bridge was burned.

"The court was then closed and after mature deliberation on the evidence adduced finds the prisoner, W. F. Petty. . .guilty. And does therefore sentence the said W. F. Petty as follows: To be shot to death at such time and place as the commanding general of the department may direct."

How to load and shoot a Colt 1851 Navy Revolver

I've talked a lot on this blog about the Missouri bushwhackers and their use of the Colt Navy revolver. They often carried several of these and would close with the enemy as quickly as possible, absorbing the one volley of the Union troops single-shot rifles and then opening up a murderous fire at close range. This tactic worked time and again. In my Civil War novel, Union militia captain Richard Addison begs his general for pistols to fight back against the bushwhackers. When they aren't forthcoming, he decides to raise the money in other ways. . .

The revolvers weren't perfect, however. They were extremely slow to reload, as this annotated video shows. This is why the guerrillas carried more than one, and often had preloaded cylinders in the deep pockets of their guerrilla shirt. Also note how much smoke these things create. I've talked about the fog of war before. Now imagine fifty bushwhackers blazing away as quickly as they could. Things would get pretty hazy.

Getting "slightly" wounded in the Civil War

"Buck" from a "buck and ball", Wikipedia

I’ve been thinking about the term “slightly wounded” that's so often seen in battle reports. I doubt if the large lead balls of the era were capable of giving a light wound unless they barely grazed a man. From what I’ve heard, a body or head shot was always grievous and often fatal, and a shot to the limb often shattered the bone and led to the loss of that limb. So how did these "slight" wounds come about?

If my personal library can't help me, my first stop with Civil War questions is the Missouri in the Civil War Message Board. I asked if these wounds could come from the common use of “buck and ball”, in which three (or sometimes more) pellets of buckshot were wrapped in the cartridge paper along with the ball.

Consider for a moment that your position takes a volley from a hundred of the enemy. One hundred bullets are now singing through the air at you. Not a pleasant thought. Also there are 300 buckshot pellets coming at you, so you are three times as likely to get hit by a bit of buckshot as you are by a ball.

Assuming you only get hit by one pellet, you'll probably only be wounded, and probably only “slightly” wounded. Now add to this that many soldiers, especially Confederates and some Union militia, only had shotguns or squirrel rifles and were firing at an unsuitably long range for those weapons, and you can see why there were so many “slight” wounds.

You can even be slightly wounded by a cannonball. I read of one incident of a shell bursting right next to a soldier. The force threw him into the air and his trajectory was stopped by the trunk of a nearby tree. He was knocked out cold, but when he came to he was unscathed except for some nasty bruises.

Someone pointed out that buck and ball was only used in smoothbores, not the Enfield or Springfield rifled muskets with their deadly Minié balls. Smoothbores were only used early in the war. That had slipped my mind. I’m sure some smoothbores still saw action in later years with the Union militia and Confederate forces. Even as late as Price’s invasion in 1864 there were many unarmed rebels in the ranks. I would think they’d grab anything available. But in essence the poster was right. The answer must lie elsewhere.

Civil War author Bruce Nichols replied, "I read in Connelley's 1910 Quantrill and the Border Wars, pages 318-9 and in Castel's 1962 William Clarke Quantrill: His Life and Times, page 113 that the west-central Missouri guerrillas developed the wartime practice of reducing the amount of gunpowder in their revolver loads both to save precious powder and to reduce pistol recoil to improve accuracy, especially from horseback. I think this was especially helpful with repeated or continued shots. Guerrillas from this region were influential in passing along such techniques and tactics to other Missouri guerrillas they encountered, so this practice may have spread."

I'm thinking this may have been common practice with regulars in the Confederate army too, since they were often short of powder.

Another researcher pointed out that slight wounds may have been caused by "spray" from whatever those bullets hit. If soldiers were hiding behind rocks or fences, and bullets hit those barriers, all sorts of stuff would be flying around. There might also be "shavings", bits of the bullets sheared off while coming out of the barrel, creating an unintended "buck" along with the "ball".

Ask a question on this forum, and you always get a wealth of answers! I'm thinking that all of these explanations contributed to the high number of slight wounds in the Civil War. Not that these wounds always stayed slight. One poster mentioned his great-great uncle received a "slight" wound in the side at Hartville in January 1864. He was listed as dead the next month.

Book Review: Jesse James, My Father

Jesse James, My Father; The First and Only True Story of His Adventures Ever Written by Jesse James

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


What an odd book.



The son of the famous outlaw, Jesse James Jr., spends the first half of this book trying to exonerate his father, and the second half trying to exonerate himself for an 1898 train robbery. After much media hype, Jesse James Jr. was found innocent.

In between the mythologizing of his father and himself we get interesting tidbits, like Jr.'s earliest memory being of a shooting at their home. There are also some rollicking good tales (wildly exaggerated) of his father's time fighting in the Civil War.

I've always been interested in Jesse James Jr. He lived in his father's shadow, and even played his famous father in two silent films that were later reworked with sound added and released as Jesse James Under the Black Flag, which is still available.


This is a fun read and a great insight into the mind of someone who barely knew his father (he was a kid when Jesse was killed) yet always lived with him. Just don't read it as history! for that see Yeatman's excellent biography Frank and jesse James: The Story Behind the Legend.


View all my reviews

Neo-Confederate threatens author of Civil War novel

My Missouri Civil War novel A Fine Likeness has only been out ten days and it's already getting an angry response from Neo-Confederates. I posted an announcement on the normally sane Missouri Civil War Discussion Board and included my blurb. Skip down if you've already read it.

A Confederate guerrilla and a Union captain discover there’s something more dangerous in the woods than each other.

Jimmy Rawlins is a teenaged bushwhacker who leads his friends on ambushes of Union patrols. They join infamous guerrilla leader Bloody Bill Anderson on a raid through Missouri, but Jimmy questions his commitment to the Cause when he discovers this madman plans to sacrifice a Union prisoner in a hellish ritual to raise the Confederate dead.

Richard Addison is an aging captain of a lackluster Union militia. Depressed over his son’s death in battle, a glimpse of Jimmy changes his life. Jimmy and his son look so much alike that Addison becomes obsessed with saving him from Bloody Bill. Captain Addison must wreck his reputation to win this war within a war, while Jimmy must decide whether to betray the Confederacy to stop the evil arising in the woods of Missouri.

Bloody Bill Anderson was a real person. Neil Block, Commander of the Captain William T. Anderson Camp #1743 SCV (Sons of Confederate Veterans), posted this response. I've kept his and grammar spelling intact.

"Any writing, even fiction, especially fiction that portreys Capt. Anderson in a negitive light should be considered a Hertiage Violations by the Captian William T. Anderson Camp #1743 SCV and steps will be taken to address this writers material as such............"

Okaaay. Neil Block can't even spell the name of his own organization! As you can see from their website, they're desperately trying to rehabilitate the name of this guerrilla who killed unarmed prisoners, scalped victims, and according to the scholarly biography Bloody Bill Anderson: the Short, Savage Life of a Civil War Guerrilla, had a fondness for raping young black girls. This isn't just some damned Yankke talking. The self-styled modern Missouri Confederate government admits Anderson's band had a penchant for rape.

I used Bloody Bill as a character in my novel because while he was a real person, his personality was like something straight out of central casting for a horror movie. I didn't include the rapes because I didn't want to write those scenes, so in a sense I was actually kind to Anderson's memory.

Of course I responded:

"Mr. Block,
You misspelled "portrays", "negative", "heritage", and "captain".
And you forgot the apostrophe in "writer's".
After careful consideration of the evidence I find you guilty of a Literacy Violation and hereby sentence you to complete grade school."


You can read the inevitable continuation of the thread, here.

Book Review: Cole Younger, Last of the Great Outlaws

Cole Younger: Last of the Great Outlaws by Homer Croy

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Cole Younger was one of the most successful outlaws who got their start as Confederate bushwhackers. Like Frank and Jesse James and a whole crowd of lesser names, Younger learned to ride and shoot and steal in Missouri's bitter Civil War. He became a legend, and tales of his exploits made fireside conversation in Missouri and other states for generations.

Homer Croy (1883-1965) grew up on those tales. He grew up not too far from the James farm so he heard a lot of them. Reading this book is a bit like sitting by a fire in a little cabin in the woods, hearing some oldtimer spin stories. It's hugely entertaining, but it's not history.

Croy writes in a homey, informal sort of way, often slipping out of the narrative to talk about his own experiences researching this book. He talked to many people who knew Cole Younger, and this adds a huge amount of value to his work.

He's weak on the facts, though. For example, he has Quantrill dying a few months after the Lawrence Massacre, when in fact he lived until 1865. He has Jim Younger getting shot through the jaw during the Northfield holdup, when actually he received that injury two weeks later when cornered by a posse. He also says the film Under the Black Flag was about Cole. I've seen it and it's about Jesse James, played by his son Jesse James, Jr. Croy obviously didn't see the picture, which is good for him because it was terrible.

Croy also repeats the legend of Cole Younger and Belle Starr being lovers. This has been disproved. It was Cole's uncle who had a brief affair with Belle.

But legends are what this book is about. Croy spins a fun tale, and as long as you don't take it as history, or at least reliable history, it's a highly entertaining read.

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