Compiling this topic, lecture topics for this year, she called me into her office and pitched me this idea. She ended up, when i told her and i agreed i probably did know somebody who might be interested in doing this topic, she said, when i think of outlaws, scalawags, and scoundrels, there is only one person who comes immediately to mind. I am so touched. That is exactly the type of characters every girl longs to be associated with. Before you can start looking at the outlaws that the civil war spun off, you have to take a flip back and see and understand the guerrilla warfare that was going on during the civil war to understand how that same mindset continued after the war and manifested itself in the wild west. Irregular warfare in the civil war, you have those who are somewhat associated with the organized military and calvary raiders in the borderland area, kentucky and everything, were probably the most closely associated. Rangers had partisan who acted on their own, but answered to the military. But they had the blessing of the government. John mosley would fall under those. Those are the more civilized versions of regular warfare. Under that you had guerrilla warfare, and that was all across the south. When i say guerrilla warfare, i mean when i say guerrilla warfare, i mean it is more people taking up arms for themselves and fighting. Some of them may have done it because they were in killorbekilled situation. Others used the chaos as an opportunity to do whatever the heck they wanted to. Just kind of like, cool, nobody is here to stop me so i will take this from you. Or maybe i have never liked you, i will shoot you and be done with you. There is a lot of that going on. And then there were some who did fight with a political cause in mind. They did not want to join the organized army because that would mean leaving home. They wanted to stay home and protect their families. In their minds, we were fighting for a political cause. They were just doing it on their own. All of those fell into the category of guerrilla warfare. While you did see across the south, it was mostly concentrated in a couple of areas. You see it in the mountain areas in appalachia in western virginia on down into georgia. And then you saw it in the ozark mountains in this area, missouri to arkansas. It was really prevalent and concentrated here on the frontier. Missouri, kansas, where it existed even before the war. If you research the topic, it is an absolute mess. It really was a freeforall. Some of those ways they fought continued until after the war. When the british army landed in South Carolina and start marching north to virginia, they encountered guerrilla warfare. The most wellknown of those was swamp fox, francis marion. He was not the only one they encountered. They dealt with guerrillas the entire way up into virginia. On the frontier, you had the whole fight over the settlements of making estates between kansas and missouri and a fight whether it was going to be a slave state or not. And people like john brown who killed people who disagreed with him because he can. A lot of this you can see before the war. Appalachia had been settled by those with scotch irish roots and that created a culture that was filled with endemic violence and retribution of justice. Individuals were the guardians of their own interest. Selfsovereignty kept the order. That is the culture they are coming from, and the war presented an opportunity for that concept to multiply unrestrained. Law and order stood breaking down, and suddenly what is already there is bubbling up to the surface. Additionally, you now have a bunch of weapons in circulation that were manufactured for the war, and so its a lot easier to get your hands on a weapon or multiple weapons. All of that went into it as well. An historian wrote, he wrote a book about something a little bit later than what we are discussing tonight, but he noted that shock value always has a longer shelf life than tedious detail. That is true about the guerrilla warfare during the war and the outlaw stories after the war. These stories were so violent and shocking to people that they are passed down from generation to generation, and many of them grew legendary. Eventually, local amateur historians would be the ones to capture these accounts, but they just captured them and they did very little to verify their accuracy or curb the mythology that had been interwoven into them. It is tricky to sort fact from fiction in both the guerrilla warfare during the war and what it morphed into after the war. With the outlaw stories. That is something to keep in mind as you hear information about some of these things. How much of it is actually true . How much of it is speculation . Or grew out of that truth . Many of these outlaw stories have become legends, and these outlaws have taken on a largerthanlife persona, and a lot of the stories have been romanticized. As an example, it is hard to find fact from fiction, in arkansas in stone county, there is a legend about the hess brothers who robbed the u. S. Int and made their way to stone county where a posse caught up with them. A shootout occurred and the brothers were killed. There were no bullets on them. There is a legend that all of this gold is hidden. It can be hard sometimes to know what exactly is true and what isnt. Ferguson was the most wellknown guerrilla during the war. He fought some with the organized troops but he was really cruel and murdered more than simply fighting in war. After the war, he became only one of two former confederates executed for war crimes. He was not the only person fighting guerrilla warfare in the area. I wrote a 150page masters thesis on the guerrilla warfare in western virginia during the civil war. If you need some reading material, feel free to google my name and guerrilla warfare. If you need to fall asleep at night, start reading it. Guaranteed to put you right to sleep or your money back. What is interesting to me is that if you start reading about appalachia in the early 20th century, especially the moonshining that went on. It is interesting that some of those stories you read about, moonshiners fighting Law Enforcement officers, sound eerily like the stories of guerrillas fighting the soldiers during the war. It seems to me that this mindset that took place in the guerrilla warfare that took place during the war manifesting itself or showed again once the moonshiners got going. Another thing that happened in appalachia after the war were many family feuds got started. So many bushwhackers had operated around the town where they were from and they were known. Everyone knew who they were. Their descendants were feared and hated in the family lore of their opponents because they never left the area. Richard curry and gerald hamm were two historians who studied appalachia and the guerrilla warfare there, and they concluded there is no doubt guerrilla warfare intensified the spirit of lawlessness and tolerance and partisan vindictiveness that characterized the reconstruction era in that region. Across the south, you also have vigilante groups springing up after the war. The same mindset that had given rise to do what you need to do and the war that manifested itself into guerrilla warfare suddenly became manifested in the vigilante groups. Like the red shirts or the clan. They became the paramilitary wing of the democratic party, who would use them for systematic violence. Once they regained power and the republicans lost political power in the south. In arkansas especially, the guerrilla warfare was brutal and it spilled over into postwar politics and very clearly into Race Relations and it culminated in 1888 elections, one of the most corrupt in arkansas history. John clayton was a republican candidate for the second Congressional District and he ended up losing the election by 846 votes out of over 34,000 cast. You can say thats terrible luck, but it was more than luck. In conway county, as the votes were being gathered in the ballot box, four masked and armed white men broke into the voting precinct and stole the ballot box at gunpoint. That area of town was a predominately africanamerican area. Therefore most of those votes would have been for clayton. It probably would have been enough to win the general election. Clayton hired a Pinkerton Detective agency to investigate this. In that town, there was a Deputy Sheriff named Oliver Bentley and he had a brother who threatened to talk to the pinkertons. This would have been awkward for Deputy Bentley considering it was probably him who stole the ballot box, and his brother would have known that. Bentley kills his brother and invented a story saying there was an accidental discharge of the gun. It is a pretty bad accident when someone is shot five times. The death, however, was officially ruled an accident. Clayton decided to go himself to though he wasven warned it is probably dangerous. He went anyway. On january 29 of 1889, he was seated at a table in a boardinghouse getting ready to write a letter to his children when somebody shot him through a window with a shotgun. It was described as, it hit him so squarely that his brains were dispersed about the room. It blew his head off. It was more than likely either Deputy Bentley or a local saloon owner who did the killing. Fortunately enough for them bentley was the one who headed , the investigation of the murder. Bob pate was on the corners jury. Unsurprisingly, they concluded clayton had been murdered at the unknown persons. They claimed, there was a man who lived in california who had been bitter enemies with clayton for the last 20 years. We think he might have traveled and killed him. That sounds good, right . Unfortunately he was so old, he was crippled and confined to his bed. He couldnt make the trip. They also stated they received a letter from somebody in london who had hinted toward the fact that jack the ripper was the one who traveled from london and made this murder. To add insult to injury, the lady who ran the boardinghouse presented claytons family with a bill for the damages her boardinghouse sustained because she said his blood stained her carpet and she took a loss on that. Republicans were not given any sympathy whatsoever in arkansas. Interestingly enough, clayton was later declared the winner of the election. They had to do another election because the seat was vacant. His assassin was never found. Deputy bentley became the justice of the peace and he presided over a trial in which they put a man on trial for the murder from minnesota. By that the man had been dead point for two years and bentley found him guilty and said case closed. They didnt look into it any further. That is one story of how this idea of we can take matters into our own hands manifested itself in arkansas. In arkansas, where it was tied to organized politics, out west, it was more of the men who made their own law or disregarded the laws in place. A historian who wrote inside war, the definitive work on guerrilla warfare during the civil war. He concluded that most rural White Missourians lost a great deal during the war. Property,le kin , security, decent communal relations, all Building Blocks of a normal life. They had to lie and cheat and bear false witness to survive. How do you pack up from that and move on once the war is over . Its not easy. There are some people who tried and others who lost everything and ended up moving away. A great many missourians moved down to texas. Immediately after the civil war ended. And then there were those who did not even try. They decided to take the law into their own hands. Keep doing what they had been doing. Many of those who went that route had fought under one of two men during the war. William cottrell was one of the most notorious guerrillas of the civil war. He was known for the massacre at lawrence, kansas where he and his men slaughtered innocent civilians because it was a union backed town and the Union Senators liked to go there a lot. He and his men killed Union Soldiers and unionists without distinction. They did not distinguish between civilian and combat. They killed anyone they wanted to. He was killed before the war ended but his band did not disband. The other one was bloody bill anderson. He was one of the most brutal guerrillas of the war. He started as a lieutenant, but concluded that William Cottrell andnot vicious enough formed his own group. Following the war, many of andersons men banded together and kept their own groups. One of those men was archie clement, who was known as andersons head demon. He was only five feet tall, he weighed hundred and 30 pounds. He weighed 130 pounds. He was known as little archie. He was a consummate killer, ferocious, and he liked to scalp his victims. He was only 17 years old when he became a lieutenant in andersons company. After andersons death, he took command. He didnt even try to surrender at the end of the war. He had no interest in doing so. He began robbing banks and he joined the james gang and helped them on their first robbery. As well as frank and jesse james are still known, authorities just suspected clement and didnt turn their attention to the James Brothers until later. At the election of 1866, clement 100 members of the former gang and attacked the town of lexington, missouri, on election day. They intimidated the town enough that the Republican Party was defeated in the general election. When Missouri State militia came to counter them, clement faded into the hills. Which is exactly the same type of strategy that was used warfare during the war. He goes back into lexington and the head of the militia allowed him to come in. They didnt want to start this fight in city streets. Men andd up his peacefully left. He circled back and went to the city hotel where he is having a drink. The militia sent men there to arrest him for bank robbery. He starts a gunfight. He gets on his horse and tries to make it out of town. He was shot off his horse and mortally wounded. When the soldiers approached him he was still trying to cock his revolver with his mouth so he could get off one last shot. A soldier said, you are dying. What do you want me to do with you . He responded i have done what i , said i was going to do, die before surrender. That he did. Notiam culturals group did disband. They were denied the general amnesty given to the Confederate Army after the war ended. Many of the gang stayed together for means of force and protection. Some, like frank and jesse james, took this as an excuse to become criminals and bank robbers. You have the James Brothers on the left. Frank is on the left and jesse is on the right. The jamesyounger gang became probably the most notorious in American History and members of that gang came and went but the james and younger brothers remained a Central Power structure. Frank and jesse had a very normal childhood. Their parents met at a revival in kentucky. Their father became a baptist minister in missouri. Frank was the oldest child. Their next child died as an infant. Then jesse was born, and then they had a younger sister. When she was an infant and jesse was their father was invited to three go to california with a wagon train that was leaving from the area with men who wanted to go to california to look for gold and invited their father to go as a chaplain. He accepted but he never made it home. He contracted a fever in california and died of cholera. Their mother remarried to a wealthy doctor and dr. Samuel was the one who taught both boys how to ride and shoot horses. Frank was said to be withdrawn as a child and a bible reading boy who had a great interest in his late fathers sizable library. Particularly shakespeare. Jesse was noted to be generous, noble hearted, and assertive. They had a normal family life. There was nothing that would have made you guess what they would have later become. Frank desired higher education. He was looking forward to going to college, but when he turned 18, the civil war broke out. He enlisted in the Missouri State guard, a confederate unit because he supported the confederacy. He fought with that guard in a couple of battles and then he returned home either due to injury or illness. While he was home, he was arrested by the local militia who were Union Sympathizers and they refused to let him go until he signed an oath of allegiance. That meant he could no longer fight in the organized forces of the confederacy. He didnt want the war to passing by without him doing his part. Three months after the raid on kansas i mentioned earlier, Union Soldiers invaded the samuel family farm. Wanting to know information cottrellsam location. They questioned jesse, who was 15 at the time. He refused to tell them anything so they horsewhipped him. They took dr. Samuel, and they strung him up and hung him in the backyard. The doctor survived the ordeal, but the experience left jesse embittered and very angry so he joined andersons Guerrilla Forces the next year when he was 16 years old. Jesse tried to ride into lexington, kansas, but the Union Soldiers shot at him. They wounded him so he went to nebraska for a little while he recovered before he was able to come back. Those who knew him at that time described him as a very reliable young man who was always dressing well and reading his bible and regularly attending church. They said he never swore or took the lords name in vain. But he preferred when he was angry to make his own swearwords up. His favorite was being t ingus, which his brother nicknamed him because he thought it was so funny. Jesse claimed he had been forced into a life of crime because of what his family had suffered during the war. After the war, he turned to outlawing. And then you have the younger brothers. Four of the 14 siblings are pictured on the right. The seventh of the children supported the confederacy even though their father supported the union. sle became one of quantrill men and was made a captain. When he returned from the war, he found the family home in ruins and he was very embittered over that. He continued to associate with some of his old comrades from the war and he joined with the James Brothers and began what he claimed was taking revenge against yankee capitalist banks and railroads. His brother jim was a