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Bushwhacking was a form of guerrilla warfare common during the American Revolutionary War, War of 1812, American Civil War and other conflicts in which there were large areas of contested land and few governmental resources to control these tracts. This was particularly prevalent in during the Civil War where there were sharp divisions between those favoring the Union and Confederacy in the conflict. The perpetrators of the attacks were called bushwhackers. The term "bushwhacking" is still in use today to describe ambushes done with the aim of attrition. Oxford Dictionary
Bushwhackers were generally part of the irregular military forces on both sides. While bushwhackers conducted well-organized raids against the military, the most dire of the attacks involved ambushes of individuals and house raids in rural areas. In the countryside, the actions were particularly inflammatory since they frequently amounted to fighting between neighbors, often to settle personal accounts.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> "Civil War: Guerillas, Jayhawkers, Bushwackers*, White River Valley Historical Quarterly, Volume 2, Number 4, Summer 1965 It became particularly associated with the pro-Confederate secessionist guerrillas of Missouri, where such warfare was most intense. Guerrilla warfare also wracked Kentucky, Tennessee, northern Georgia, Arkansas, and western Virginia (including the new state of West Virginia), among other locations. "Life of a Guerilla in Missouri", The Missouri History Museum "Missouri Bushwhackers – Attacks Upon Kansas", Legends of America "Bushwhacking - a system of warfare and execution", The Fort Scott Tribune, June 21, 2008
In some areas, particularly the Appalachian regions of Tennessee and North Carolina, the term bushwhackers was used for Confederate partisans who attacked Union forces.Trotter, William R. Bushwhackers! The Civil War in North Carolina: Vol. II The Mountains. Greensboro, North Carolina: Signal Research, Inc., 1988.Inscoe, John C. & Gordon B. McKinney. The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: Western North Carolina in the Civil War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Residents of southern Alabama used the name in the same manner.Kelly Kazek, and Wil Elrick. Alabama Scoundrels: Outlaws, Pirates, Bandits & Bushwhackers. The History Press. 2014 Several bushwhacker bands operated in California in 1864.Reader, Phil. Copperheads, Secesh Men, and Confederate Guerillas: Pro-Confederate Activities in Santa Cruz County During the Civil War. Santa Cruz Public Libraries, 1991.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Archived
Pro-Union guerrilla fighters in Kansas were called "Jayhawkers".O'Bryan, Tony. "Jayhawkers". Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1854–1865. Kansas City Public Library They were involved in cross-border raids into Missouri.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Third War. Irregular Warfare on the Western Border, 1862–1865. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Combat Studies Institute Press, 2012
In Missouri, however, secessionist bushwhackers operated outside of the Confederate chain of command. On occasion, a prominent bushwhacker commander might receive formal Confederate rank, as in the case of William Quantrill.Schultz, Duane. Quantrill's war: the life and times of William Clarke Quantrill, 1837-1865. St. Martin's Press, 1997. Or they might receive written orders from a Confederate general, as "Bloody Bill" Anderson did in October 1864 during a large-scale Confederate incursion into Missouri,Albert Castel and Tom Goodrich. Bloody Bill Anderson: The Short, Savage Life of a Civil War Guerrilla. Stackpole Books, 1998. or as when Joseph C. Porter was authorized by Gen. Sterling Price to recruit in northeast Missouri. Missouri guerrillas frequently assisted Confederate recruiters in Union-held territory. For the most part, however, Missouri's bushwhacker squads were self-organized groups of young men, predominantly from the slave-holding counties along the Missouri River and Mississippi rivers. They independently organized and fought against Federal forces and their Unionist neighbors, both in Kansas and Missouri. Their actions were in retaliation for what they considered a Federal invasion of their home state.O’Bryan, Tony. "Bushwhackers". Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1854-1865. The Kansas City Public Library
Union troops often executed or tortured suspects without trial and burned the homes of guerrillas and those suspected of aiding or harboring them. If official credentials were doubted, the suspects were often executed, as in the case of Lt. Col. Frisby McCullough after the Battle of Kirksville. Bushwhackers retaliated by ambushing federal soldiers and frequently going house to house and executing Unionist sympathizers.Sutherland, Daniel E. American Civil War Guerillas: Changing the Rules of Warfare. Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, 2013.
One of the most vicious actions during the Civil War by the bushwhackers was the Lawrence Massacre. William Quantrill led a raid in August 1863 on Lawrence, Kansas, burning the town and murdering some 150 men in Lawrence.Trow, Harrison, and Burch, John P. Charles W. Quantrell: a True History of His Guerrilla Warfare On the Missouri And Kansas Border During the Civil War of 1861-1865. Kansas, City, Missouri, 1923.Edward E. Leslie. The Devil Knows How To Ride: The True Story Of William Clarke Quantril And His Confederate Raiders. New York: Random House, 1996. Bushwhackers justified the raid as retaliation for the Sacking of Osceola, Missouri two years earlier, in which the town was set aflame and at least nine men killed, and for the deaths of five female relatives of bushwhackers killed in the collapse of a Kansas City, Missouri jail.Thomas Goodrich. Bloody Dawn: The Story of the Lawrence Massacre. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1991.Joseph M. Beilein, Jr. "Of Eyes and Teeth: The Trial of George Maddox, the Raid on Lawrence, and the Bloodstained Verdict of the Guerrilla War", The Civil War Monitor
To end guerrilla raids into Kansas, the Union commander of the District of the Border, which comprised counties along the Missouri-Kansas state line, "Evacuation Day", The Kansas City Public Library Thomas Ewing, Jr., ordered the total depopulation of Jackson, Cass, Bates, and northern Vernon counties in Missouri under his General Order No. 11.Jeremy Neely, "General Order No. 11", Missouri State UniversityAlbert Castel. "Order No. 11 and the Civil War on the Border", Missouri Historical Review, Vol. 57, July 1963, pp. 357–368. Archived Nearly twenty-five thousand rural inhabitants had to go to areas near Union camps or leave the state; their houses were burned to prevent them from returning; altogether, twenty-two hundred square miles of western Missouri became a desolation by the end of September 1863.Rafiner, Tom A. Cinders and Silence: A Chronicle of Missouri's Burnt District. Harrisonville, Missouri: Burnt District Press, 2013.Rafiner, Tom A. Caught between three fires: Cass County, Mo., Chaos, & Order No. 11, 1860–1865. Harrisonville, Missouri: Burnt District Press, 2010. A minister, George Miller, who lived in Kansas City, wrote, "For miles and miles we saw nothing but lone chimneys. It seemed like a vast cemetery – not a living thing to break the silence." The District of the Border became known as the "burnt district".Andy Ostmeyer. "Civil War: Order No. 11 reduced border to a wasteland". The Joplin Globe, September 24, 2011
The Missouri–Arkansas border had been desolated as well. The Arkansas Gazette wrote in August 1866:
In other areas of Missouri, properties were also pillaged and destroyed by both warring sides since atrocities during the Civil War were in many ways a continuation of Bleeding Kansas violence.Albert Castel. Frontier State at War. Kansas, 1861–1865. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1958.
After the end of the war in 1865, the Mason Henry Gang continued as outlaws in Southern California with a price on their heads for the November 1864 "Copperhead Murders" in the San Joaquin Valley of three men they believed to be Republicans. Tom McCauley, known as "James" or "Jim Henry", was killed in a shootout with a posse from San Bernardino on September 14 of that year, in Railroad Canyon, in what was then San Diego County. John Mason was killed by a fellow gang member for the reward in April 1866 near Fort Tejon in Kern County.
In 1867, near Nevada, Missouri, a band of bushwhackers shot and killed Sheriff Joseph Bailey, a former Union brigadier general, who was attempting to arrest them. Among those suspected of his killing was William McWaters, who once rode with Anderson and Quantrill.Michael J. Goc. Hero of the Red River: The Life and Times of Joseph Bailey. Friendship, Wisconsin: New Past Press, 2007.
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