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!
Thanks for the interview mention, Jane. This also reminds me I need to line up another one sometime soon.
ReplyDeleteWasn't that a fantastic book! I guess I was most amazed at the depth of the research. He had to go much further than a standard romp through the OR. However, if I remember correctly, he did not include anything from any archives in Texas, not the State Library and Archives, not the Center for American History. Is there really nothing in either place, or were the published primary sources and the secondary sources totally sufficient?
ReplyDelete(I read the library's copy, so I don't have it here. Please correct me if I remember incorrectly.)
Vicki Betts
I just looked through the bibliography in Sutherland's book and sure enough he did not look at any collections in the state of Texas. Certainly, he did not shirk Texas as I recall that he mentioned activity in the Hill Country and the Gainesville area. He may have decided that the printed sources were sufficient for those sections. I was extremely impressed with the depth of primary source research in the book particularly when you consider that he covered such a broad subject. It was indeed a great book; I particularly appreciate books of this type because they force you to look at the war in a different way or from a new angle.
ReplyDeleteJane,
ReplyDeleteI hadn't noticed either, but I agree that McCaslin, Falls & Pickering, and John David Smith (just to offer a few offhand) probably cover that N. Texas activity well enough for Sutherland's survey work. It is surprising, though, that no Texas collections made it into the book given the author's prior Trans-Mississippi scholarship background.
Dear Drew,
ReplyDeleteI've been studying the book closer, and Dr. Sutherland did use some primary accounts in his sections about Texas. Some of the primary accounts relating to Texas include: "Lone Star and Double Eagle" edited by Minetta Altelt Goyne, "Gideon Lincecum's Sword" edited by Jerry B. Lincecum, et. al, the Low-Mills Family Papers (Library of Congress), and the Honore P. Morancey Papers (LSU). Besides having some excellent secondary accounts on hand, perhaps he also did not dig into collections at Texas archives because as he states "By contrast, the war in Texas seemed tame, although the potential for 'tory' uprisings and lawlessness continued through 1864" (218). Perhaps Dr. Sutherland will clear up this little research mystery for us!
I certainly didn't mean to imply that anything was necessarily missing. It's just that I usually comb over footnotes and bibliographies of any in-depth new work looking for leads into collections that might help with my own particular interests dealing with the Southern homefront. I was hoping to add to my "next time you're in Austin" or Waco or wherever, list.
ReplyDeleteDr. Bynum's brand new book, "The Long Shadow of the Civil War" includes a section on guerrilla type activities in SE Texas. I sent her a couple of newspaper articles on Confederate raids into the Big Thicket. I've worked on a Unionist "plot" in the Van Zandt, Smith, Rusk, Harrison, and Panola counties area, but it never got to the guerrilla stage.
Vicki Betts
Like you, I also comb through the footnotes and the bibliographies; in fact that's usually the first part of a book that I look through. I thought your observations regarding Dr. Sutherland's book were very interesting. Dr. Bynum's book is on my "look at soon" list!
ReplyDelete