Black Flag: Guerilla Warfare in the Trans-Mississippi

by Roger Busbice

A "guerrilla" is, today, most commonly defined as "one who engages in irregular warfare especially as a member of an independent unit carrying out acts of harassment and sabotage." "Irregular military units" may be similarly defined as "not belonging to the regular army organization but raised for a special purpose." A "partisan ranger" may be defined as "a member of a guerrilla band operating behind enemy lines", and "bushwhackers" are those "living or hiding out in the woods or who fight in, or attack from, the bush". Finally, "jayhawker", in regard to the War Between the States, can be defined as "an anti-slavery guerrilla in Kansas and Missouri before and during the war, or as a Unionist bandit or guerrilla operating in several Southern states." These definitions obviously possess a common thread: in dry prose they describe a warrior rather than a soldier, individuals who fight in their own fashion--rarely giving mercy nor expecting any--in a manner separate and distinct from the "civilized" rules of warfare. The credo of the guerrilla is, and has been, simply and devastatingly, "war to the knife and the knife to the hilt". It was a concept known and respected by the Saxons of England in their battle against Norman rule in the years after Hastings, by the Spanish in the brutal struggle against the French during the Napoleonic Wars, by the Irish in their innumerable campaigns against the British, and by countless others in the tragic and bloodstained second half of the twentieth century.

The clearest, the most refined, version of guerrilla warfare in American history, other than the Indian wars, can be found in the War Between the States--and, specifically, in the war west of the Mississippi. Guerrilla war in the Trans-Mississippi did not begin with Fort Sumter and did not end with Kirby Smith’s surrender. It was a gut-wrenching expression of defiance, courage, and slaughter which defied the rules of conventional nineteenth century views of conflict. Winston Churchill once described the War Between the States as the "last war between gentlemen" and, in the east, even among the Partisan Rangers of John Singleton Mosby’s command, such was usually the case. The most significant violation of the rules of war in that region resulted not from Mosby’s chivalrous version of irregular warfare but from the murderous actions of Union cavalry general George Armstrong Custer who unhesitatingly executed prisoners of war.

In the middle South, during the war, genuine guerrilla warfare was waged in West Virginia, in Tennessee, and in Kentucky. Unionists in east Tennessee and northern Alabama spread terror among civilians and, by their actions, brought reciprocal terror to their own from Confederate irregulars such as Champ Ferguson. The black flag, the historic symbol of no quarter, was flown on both sides of the Mississippi and shouts of "no prisoners" were heard from pro-Confederate townspeople in what is now Bluefield, West Virginia when Southern troops arrived to drive out the hated Yankee occupation forces in 1863. Yet, it was in the Trans-Mississippi, the Confederate department which included the states of Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, and Missouri, along with the Indian Territory which is now Oklahoma and the Arizona Territory which included what is now southern New Mexico, that guerrilla warfare played its most important role.

In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act with its emphasis on "popular sovereignty" led to violent confrontation between bands of antagonists. John Brown and his free state followers murdered Southern settlers on Pottawatomie Creek. Pro-slavery Missouri "border ruffians" burned the abolitionist town of Lawrence, Kansas. "Bleeding Kansas" became a national by-word. Sectional loyalties and ideological differences were soon overshadowed by the ancient yearning, on both sides, for revenge.

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln, the leader of a sectional party dedicated to increasing the power of an already-expanding Federal government, was elected President of the United States with only thirty-nine per cent of the popular vote. Southerners, reared on the Jeffersonian belief in states’ rights, feared the potential tyranny of the Lincoln administration. South Carolina’s secession from the Federal Union was soon emulated by the other states of the Deep South. A new nation, the Confederate States of America, was born and the South prepared for a war it hoped would not come. Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861. He refused to recognize the constitutional legitimacy of secession and the independence of the Confederacy. Troops of the Federal Union remained on Confederate soil precipitating the attack on Fort Sumter on April 12. In the Upper South, the states of Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee seceded and joined the Confederacy. In Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, many individuals and families also cast their lot with the South. However, support for the new Confederate nation was not unanimous in the Southern states--even in the heartland of the Confederacy there were pockets of Unionists. In the earliest days of the war, the seeds were sown for true "civil war" in many communities, and "bushwhacking" and "jayhawking" would become common terms far from the Missouri-Kansas border.

In the Trans-Mississippi, thousands of men, dedicated to the dream of Southern independence and the defense of Southern rights, rushed to join the Confederate army. Dozens of regiments, battalions, and batteries came into existence. Richmond, the new Confederate capital was threatened by Union forces, as was the thinly def ended line extending across Kentucky. In Missouri, a pro-Confederate state government was driven from power by Union forces. The great majority of soldiers and units from the Trans-Mississippi were soon on their way to the battlefields of the Upper South in an effort to halt the Northern invasion. To a large extent, the states and territories of the Trans-Mississippi itself were left defenseless. In the early months of 1862, the Union army advanced into Arkansas and the Indian Territory while a Union naval fleet under Flag Officer David Farragut fought its way past Forts Jackson and St. Philip to take New Orleans. Missouri was virtually an occupied province dominated by Union troops and their irregular allies, the hated Kansas "jayhawkers". In Louisiana and Texas, local bands of Unionist "jayhawkers" also appeared. The so-called "Free State of Winn" in north central Louisiana proclaimed allegiance to the Federal Union, and German settlers in the hill country of Texas rose against the Confederacy. Among the majority of Southerners who were deeply devoted to the Confederate Cause, it was obvious that partisan or guerrilla units were immediately necessary to combat both Unionist "jayhawkers" and regular Union forces.

In May, 1862, the Confederate Congress approved the Partisan Ranger Act which authorized the formation of irregular units designed to wage "hit and run" warfare against the Yankees. The "wily Swamp Fox", in the words of Paul Hayne, had indeed "come again to the earth". In every part of the Trans-Mississippi, companies of rangers or guerrillas appeared. Generally consisting of men of fighting age, who had sometimes transferred from regular army units, the bands also included the very old and the very young. Women, blacks, and, especially, American Indians were among those who actively fought for Dixie as partisan rangers. Usually armed with revolvers, shotguns, and Bowie knives; and wearing tattered gray or, more frequently, civilian clothes or captured Union blue; and following their own officers, their own flags, and their own definitions of justice, the Southern guerrillas began to strike at the enemy. Unionist "jayhawkers", from Clay County, Missouri to St Martin Parish, Louisiana were the target of preference while Union army garrisons and patrols throughout the occupied areas of the Trans-Mississippi Department were the target of necessity.

In southeast Louisiana, the corrupt and tyrannical reign of Union general Benjamin F. "Beast" Butler had infuriated the entire Confederacy. Finally removed by President Lincoln, who was himself guilty of repeatedly violating the principle of habeas corpus, Butler was replaced by the equally vain and ambitious Nathaniel Banks. Louisiana towns were destroyed by Union forces, Louisiana plantations were burned, Louisiana farms were stripped bare, and Louisiana citizens were humiliated and brutalized. In north Louisiana, the parishes of Winn, Jackson, and Union were terrorized by the Unionist "jayhawkers", and the Catahoula swamps were largely under their control. Determined to fight back, Confederate Louisianians were soon serving in officially-designated partisan ranger units such as the Briarfield Rebels Company of Cavalry, the Calcasieu Rangers Company, Boyd’s Mounted Partisan Rangers, the LoveIl Scouts Company, the Louisiana Scouts and Sharpshooters, McWaters’ Rangers Company, the Prairie Rangers, and the Teche Guerrillas Company. Confederate irregulars battled "jawhawkers", captured deserters, harassed Union forces, and, to a large extent provided peace and security for the civilian population. This was particularly true during the extraordinarily successful year-and-a- half long administration of Governor Henry Watkins Allen when partisan rangers were crucial in establishing stability and security for Confederate Louisiana. As always, however, there were exceptions: The Prairie Rangers, commanded by Captain S. M. Todd, operating in south-central Louisiana were described by one loyal Confederate citizen as "lawless wretches and prairie banditti" who were no better than "Lincoln’s merce nary hirelings." Nonetheless, Confederate partisans, along with regular cavalry, succeeded, during the spring of 1864, in cleansing much of the state of Unionist "jay hawkers". General Richard Taylor instructed Confederate units to "scour this.. .country thoroughly and shoot "every man found with arms in his hands against whom reasonable suspicion exists of a determination to resist the laws...." In the Lafourche District of southeast Louisiana, geography was particularly conducive to guerrilla warfare, and clashes between partisan rangers and "jayhawkers" were frequently struggles without quarter.

The story was repeated in much of Texas, in Arkansas, and in the Indian Territory where Stand Watie of the Cherokees, using irregular tactics, effectively resisted Union domination. Missouri, however, proved to be the heart and soul of guerrilla resistance to Union occupation. There, the absence of an effective Confederate state govern ment, a population that contained at least as many, if not more, Union sympathizers as Confederates, the presence of vengeful Kansas "jayhawkers", a particularly brutal Union military regime, and a lengthy history of "border warfare" resulted in a different and deadlier situation. In 1861, the psychopathic Charles Jennison led his marauding Kansas Union irregulars into Missouri and, in Thomas Goodrich’s words, "embarked upon a frenzy of looting, arson, and murder." Since most able-bodied men who favored the South were serving with the secessionist Missouri State Guard, Jennison’s "jayhawkers" were free to terrorize women, children, and the elderly. Southern men were mutilated and killed, often in front of their families. In the fall of that same year, the so-called "Kansas Brigade" under the command of the notorious U. S. Senator Jim Lane, a fanatical "jayhawker" whose viciousness equaled Jennison’s, invaded Missouri. With fire and sword, Lane laid waste to all he encountered. A correspondent for the New York Daily Times declared,

I found all through Western Missouri a deadly horror entertained toward Lane.... Everywhere that he has been, he carried the knife and torch with him, and has left a track marked with charred ruins and blood.

As in other parts of the Trans-Mississippi, the "defenders of the Union" burned towns, villages, and homes; stole livestock, destroyed crops, robbed civilians, threatened women and children, and committed cold-blooded murder. The "jayhawkers", in the suffering they inflicted on families and communities, anticipated the ruthless doctrine of "total war" which would later be embraced by "regular army" generals William T. Sherman and Philip Sheridan. The rules of war had no meaning when Unionist irregulars, proudly flying their "Stars and Stripes", could merrily attack a peaceful and defenseless village like Chapel Hill, burn one hundred fifty houses and leave women, children, and the sick and infirm wandering in the snow to die, in many cases, of exposure. In the orphaned Southern state of Missouri, in the blackened ruins of her cabins, in the bloodstained streets of her once-prosperous towns, and among the refugees in her hills and in her forests, arose a cry for vengeance--for the black flag.

The Confederate guerrillas of the border country came into existence tn the name of justice. Their motives were direct and to the point: The families, the people, of the South would be avenged. Within a short period of time, all pretense of waging war according to the rules would be abandoned. Union authorities considered the Rebel guerrillas to be outlaws, not soldiers, and treated them as such. Guerrillas were executed by Union troops, and, in retaliation, the guerrillas unhesitatingly embraced the black flag. "No quarter’ was the order of the day for both sides, and the bloodiest, most comprehensive, and most intense guerrilla conflict in American history resulted.

In December, 1861, the man destined to become the great guerrilla chieftain of the Trans-Mississippi organized a band of ten guerrillas. William Clarke Quantrill was, most probably, born in Ohio in 1837. After teaching school for two years in the Midwest, he moved to the Kansas-Missouri border country; and, though Northern-born, became an ardent Southern sympathizer. Quantrill made many friends in Missouri and, after the bloody "jayhawker" raids of 1861, cast his lot with the new Confederacy. Though only in his mid-twenties, he possessed extraordinary leadership skills and was a natural cavalry tactician. Captain Quantrill’s unit grew in size and in effective ness. Within a matter of months, he had approximately one hundred fifty tough gray riders--men of courage, determination, and, most significantly, vengeance. Pro-Confederate Missourians, left in rags and ruins by the Unionists, cheered as Quantrill’s guerrillas struck back at the "jayhawkers" and their Kansas base. Regular Union troops tried desperately to find and destroy Quantrill and his men. On occasion, as at Little Santa Fe in Kansas, they came close, but Captain Quantrill’s resourcefulness and nerve guided the guerrillas to safety time and again. It is impossible to over emphasize the motivation of Quantrill’s guerrillas: There was no middle ground. The black flag waved over both sides and defeat meant death. For Southern men in the upper Trans-Mississippi, guerrilla warfare offered the only effective means of resisting Union power. Hiram George, who rode with Quantrill, explained his reasons with the words, "They (the Union irregulars) burned and took everything I had. They killed my father, hung (sic) my brother." Normally happy-go-lucky Cole Younger quietly stated, "The knowledge that my father had been killed in cold blood filled my heart with the lust for vengeance." Quantrill provided these men with a close-knit, hard-riding organization which promised justice and many responded with intense loyalty which lasted until the end. Thomas Goodrich quotes Frank James, "I will never forget the first time I saw Quantrill. . . he was full of life and a jolly fellow. He had none of the air of the bravado or the desperado about him. We all loved him at first sight...." A Missouri woman described him as "gentle of manner and courteous as well". For most Confederate citizens in Missouri and in the Trans-Mississippi, William Clarke Quantrill was an avenger and a saviour. A rueful Yankee officer declared, "His men were braver and more dangerous than the Apache or Comanche Indians.. .they were industrious, bloodthirsty devils who apparently never slept... .They were familiar with every cowpath, knew every farmer, ninety-five per cent of whom would give his all to help a bushwhacker fighting the ‘northern invader’." It was a concise definition of successful guerrilla war.

However, new Unionist irregulars, the infamous Kansas "Red Legs", launched raids into Missouri. Death and destruction were widespread, and Union military authorities played their role in the terror by persecuting families suspected of having fathers, sons, or husbands serving in the Confederate guerrilla bands. In the summer of 1863, at the order of Union general Thomas Ewing, William Tecumseh Sherman’s brother-in law, large numbers of Southern women and children were arrested, imprisoned, or, in many cases, banished from Missouri. One group of women was confined in a rat-infested dilapidated brick building near the rverfront in Kansas City. The structure had been weakened by the removal of support pillars, and, on the afternoon of August 13, 1863, it collapsed. Five women were killed and many more were seriously injured--some maimed for life. When word reached the Confederate guerrillas, their reaction was understandable and immediate--they would go to Kansas.

On the morning of August 21, William Clarke Quantrill and nearly five hundred Southern guerrillas reached the town of Lawrence, Kansas--the hated symbol of New England interlopers, the headquarters of the Union "jayhawkers", and the home of Senator Jim Lane. Shrieking the high-pitched "rebel yell", the guerrillas charged into Lawrence--the day of reckoning had arrived. Women and children were not harmed, but the men of the town were shot down where they stood. By mid-morning, Lawrence, the "jayhawker" capital, was burning. Over one hundred fifty Kansans were dead. Only one guerrilla died in the raid. Unfortunately, from the guerrilla perspective, Jim Lane had escaped justice. The esteemed Senator Lane spent the morning hiding in a corn crib.

Among the men who followed Quantrill into Lawrence was a young guerrilla named William Anderson. His sister was among the dead in the Kansas City disaster, and, as Anderson rode forward that day, he shouted a new battle cry--the name of his dead sister. He soon left Quantrill’s band and organized his own unit which would include among its members seventeen year-old Jesse James. Captain Anderson would become known simply as "Bloody Bill" and the soldiers of the Federal Union would pay again and again for the condemned building in Kansas City.

Union retaliation for the destruction of Lawrence was swift and terrible. General Ewing signed General Order No. 11 which declared that virtually the entire population of four Missouri counties, more than twenty thousand people, were to be driven from their homes within fifteen days. Union soldiers carried out the order with "savage efficiency" and western Missouri became a blackened desert. In addition to Bill Anderson, several of Quantrill’s officers and followers established units of their own as the guerrillas sought to evade massive Union forces. Newer, smaller bands of guerrillas fought against the merciless power of the Union military administration. Horror reached new levels on both sides.

For the remainder of the war, in Missouri and in the Union occupied areas of Arkansas, Louisiana, and the Indian Territory, guerrilla warfare would continue unabated. For desperate Southerners in those regions, it would be the only means of resistance against an ever-growing Yankee army. The Confederacy began to collapse in the spring of 1865, and only the guerrillas and partisan rangers of the South still held hope that defeat could be averted. William Clarke Quantrill, accompanied by a small band, crossed the Mississippi and rode into Kentucky hoping, according to some accounts, to strike at the Lincoln-Johnson administration in Washington. He was mortally wounded by Union troops on May 10, 1865 near Louisville. That same day, in Georgia, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was captured by Union cavalry.

The end had come, but for Southern guerrillas, it was not an acceptable conclusion to a long and bloody struggle. In southeast Louisiana, in western Missouri, and in the Indian Territory, resistance continued into the summer of 1865. Union authorities promised amnesty to guerrillas who would take an oath of allegiance to the United States but, in many cases, the amnesty was a fraud. Former guerrillas were some*times killed, sometimes imprisoned, and, almost always, regarded with suspicion and disdain by the victorious Union. For many who had ridden under the black flag, there was no home to which to return--there was no future. For some, especially in battered Missouri, the gun, still, was the only hope. For some--Frank and Jesse James, the Younger brothers, and others--the war continued.

(Speech given at symposium on guerrilla warfare sponsored by the North Louisiana CMI War Roundtable in Shreveport, Louisiana on May 7, 1999. Copyright 1999)

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