More About Guerrilla Warfare

Lately I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading about guerrilla warfare in Missouri and Arkansas. Since the 1980s there has been quite a bit of scholarly interest in the topic although there are certainly a number of avenues deserving more attention. Daniel E. Sutherland’s book, A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role Of Guerrillas In The American Civil War (2009) is a “big picture” study, helpful for understanding the overall dynamics and the importance of guerrilla warfare.(For more about this important book see my March 25, 2010 posting). Although some of the same material is covered in his book, Sutherland’s essay “Guerrillas: The Real War In Arkansas” in Civil War Arkansas: Beyond Battles and Leaders is a good overview. Sutherland argues in the essay that the guerrilla war in Arkansas was “Not a war within a war, as some historians have suggested, not even a second war, but the war” (p. 133).

Michael Fellman’s, Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict In Missouri During The American Civil War (1988) is an in-depth study of the official policy of both sides, the plight of civilians, Union soldiers and their response to guerrillas, the impact of guerrilla war on women, and the postwar. Fellman tackled many other topics as well in this thoughtful book; I found it helpful to read it twice.

Take the books and the article above and couple them with Bruce Nichols’ books, and you’ll have a greater understanding of guerrilla warfare in the trans-Mississippi.

Missouri's Guerrilla War

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.

The Importance of Guerrilla Warfare

John S. Mosby, William C. Quantrill, Champ Ferguson, and John Hunt Morgan are all well known guerrillas or perhaps you choose to label them instead as bushwhackers or raiders or rangers or outlaws. However, George M. Jessee, Jacob Bennett, Tom Henry, Jerome Clark (Sue Mundy), Joe Bailey, John Gatewood, Funderburk Mooney, George W. Rutherford, and Pleasant W. Buchanan were also just a few of the other Confederate guerrillas. Every Confederate guerrilla it seems was opposed by an equally ferocious jayhawker, buffalo, Red Leg or other Union supporter.

For many years, guerrilla warfare has been regarded as little more than an intensely violent and rather localized sideshow of the American Civil War. Recently, I read Daniel E. Sutherland’s A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role Of Guerrillas In The American Civil War (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2009) and emerged with a much greater appreciation for the immense importance of guerrilla warfare.

Rather than being confined to a handful of geographic areas during the war—Missouri, Arkansas, and North Carolina spring readily to mind—guerrilla warfare occurred in every southern state as well as some northern ones as well. And this warfare was not minimal in nature but had a significant impact on the civilian population as well as the course of the war. What was so decisive about guerrilla warfare? Dr. Sutherland uses a vast array of primary sources to argue convincingly that “Rebel irregulars also helped their nation lose the war” (277). The inability of the Confederate government to control the activities of their "irregulars" led to situations where guerrillas did not work in tandem with the military; also outlaws and other criminal types preyed on southern civilians who yearned increasingly for the return of order and stability even if it meant victory for the Federals. As Sutherland explains it “The inability of political and military leaders to exploit the benefits of guerrilla warfare splintered a national bid for independence into a hundred local wars for survival and shook public confidence in the ability of the government to protect its citizens” (278). Moreover the guerrilla war and the animosities it generated spilled over into the Reconstruction period.

This is one of the most important books that I have read in recent years about the war, and I hope that it is read widely. Several months ago, Drew Wagenhoffer posted an excellent interview with Dr. Sutherland about his book and its important conclusions. I encourage you to check it out!