Over the last two years,
my research project has taken me into areas that I never thought I’d be
studying in detail. I am editing the diary and other papers of Albert C.
Ellithorpe, an officer in the First Indian Home Guards. My previous Civil War
research related to the trans-Mississippi Confederacy, so it is an interesting
mental shift to go to the “other side,” but my mind has also been stretched as I’ve studied American Indians as well as guerrilla warfare. Both have turned out
to be fascinating areas, and I’ve discovered a number of sources that are new
to me.
A helpful source has been
the four-volume set written over the last ten years by Bruce Nichols, a Defense
Department analyst. His Guerrilla Warfare
in Civil War Missouri details the actions of Southern
guerrillas/partisans/bushwhackers in the four geographical (northwest,
northeast, southwest, southeast) regions of Missouri. In the process he explores the motivations of these men, tactics, weapons, Union policy changes,
and many other topics. Ellithorpe participated in some operations against
guerrillas in southwest Missouri, so I’m finding some extremely helpful
background information in the Nichols set. The books have piqued my interest so
much that I’ve ordered the recently published volumes covering 1864 to the end
of the war even though Ellithorpe had left active duty by then.
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