During the American Civil War, much of the fighting in Missouri and Kansas was not between registered soldiers but partisan bands of guerilla fighters.
Because they weren't in the military and lived outside the law, they were free to commit some of the worst atrocities history has ever seen. The Civil War is something Americans don't like to remember. In school you learn about the secession, the south opening fire, Gettysburg, the Emancipation Proclamation. Not so much about maggots on the battlefield.
The Civil War's most famous troop of guerilla fighters is probably the several hundred men under the command of Bloody Bill Anderson.
"Guerilla fighters" is a kind term. Their methods of political usurpation included robbery, rape, and murder. Terrorism isn't a recent phenomenon.
Chafing under what was widely considered the oppression of the Union, Jesse James — the famous train-robber himself — joined Anderson's troop as a teenager. He was outfitted with pistols and trained in the art of guerilla warfare. What he saw under Anderson's command is said to be what turned him into a murderer.
Anderson's men frequently ambushed Union soldiers on horseback, each carrying several revolvers. They'd empty a gun, let it drop to the ground, unholster another, keep firing. With three revolvers, that gave each man a good eighteen quick shots. In days when loading a rifle in twenty seconds was a result of assiduous practice, this made Anderson's attacks fearsomely deadly. Usually, federals were immobilized with shots to the legs or torso and finished off after the end of the battle with bullets to the head. Soldiers taken from the killing fields for burial frequently had several holes punched in their skulls.
Even in photographs that are a century and a half old, the eyes of Bloody Bill Anderson reveal an unsettling emptiness.
Probably the most brutal of Anderson's outings is the attack on Union soldiers at Centralia, Missouri on September 27, 1864.
Background
The Confederacy was losing the war.
With Grant's Army of the Potomac coming from the West and Sherman driving up from the South, the Confederacy found itself in a desperate position to relieve pressure in the eastern theatre.
Confederate General Kirby Smith asked fellow General Sterling Price to invade Missouri, entering through the southeast and driving North to St. Louis. After taking St. Louis, Price was to take his troops into Illinois and then south into Kentucky and Tennessee to halt Sherman's advance. Should he fail to take St. Louis, Pierce would make his way west to capital Jefferson City, reinstall Confederate Missouri Governor Thomas Reynolds, and continue into Tennessee.
To help Price's efforts, General Smith requested the help of guerilla bands in Missouri, instructing them to cause as much trouble as possible to divert Union forces from attacking the enilsted Confederates.
Bloody Bill goes North
Bill Anderson wasted no time.
As soon as he received the request, Anderson took his men north over the Missouri River and started to terrorize everything in sight. He attacked a stopped Union supply train, surprising the federals on board and taking fourteen lives.
The next day, six confederate rangers were shot to pieces escaping from a cabin outide Rocheport. When word reached Anderson, he took his men to a Union blockade at Fayetteville.
It was a disaster.
The guerillas, on horseback and armed with pistols, were easy shots for the Federals. Thirteen of Anderson's men were killed, thirty wounded. Reluctantly, he retreated to Glasgow, while Federals ran over guerilla corpses on shod horses until they fell apart and threw them into a common grave.
The events at Rocheport and Fayetteville were heavy on the guerillas' minds when they reached Centralia.
Train
On the night of September 26th, Anderson and his men camped at the farm of a southern sympathizer three and a half miles from Centralia. The next morning he dressed eighty of his men in Union uniforms and led them into the town to obtain information.
While Anderson questioned town leaders about the location of Union troops, his men ransacked a clothing store, found whiskey barrels, and drank out of stolen leather boots.
Late in the morning a stagecoach arrived from Columbia carrying Congressman James Rollins and Boone County Sherriff James Waugh. The Congressman and the Sherriff escaped execution by giving false names. While Anderson's men robbed the passengers they heard a train whistle in the distance.
Surprise.
The train was carrying some 130 passengers, including 23 Union soldiers en route from Atlanta to see their families.
The guerillas abandoned the stagecoach robbery, hurried to the next train depot and fitted the tracks with ties. The train conductor, seeing men in Union uniforms on the track, stopped the engine; by the time he sensed danger he was unable to bypass the block. Anderson and his men forced the passengers out, separating them into groups of soldiers and civilians. The soldiers were stripped of their uniforms and shot by a firing squad. Those who weren't killed outright were finished off with gunfire, or had their heads smashed in with rifle butts.
Anderson restarted the locomotive, set it ablaze, and set it moving on the track again. Eventually it reached the depot at Sturgeon and sparked another fire. Anderson left the Union soldiers where they had been killed and took his men back to the farm for rest.
Centralia Massacre
The real massacre didn't happen until later that day.
Late in the afternoon, Union Major AVE Johnson rode into Centralia with some 155 inexperieced and poorly-armed men under his command. Attracted by the smoke of the flaming depot, he found the naked corpses of the Union soldiers and immediately inquired around town about the number of guerillas involved. The citizens explained that while some eighty men had had taken part in the attack, there were many more camped in the outskirts. Despite the civilians' pleas to the Major to hold back, Johnston rode gallantly out, vowing to return to Centralia with the head of Bloody Bill Anderson.
Little time passed before ten guerillas rode up near on horseback and trotted off — a Native American trick. Thinking he had the enemy on the retreat, Johnston gave chase, eventually finding the eighty men who'd ransacked the train waiting, dismounted, at the bottom of a hill near thick forests.
Johnson's men were equipped with single-shot muskets. If you're good, you can get off five shots a minute with these. Because the guerillas were at the bottom of a slope, the Union's first volley of fire passed almost harmlessly over their heads.
While Johnston's men reloaded, the eighty train-robbers charged up the hill while the rest of the guerillas came out of the woods on both of Johnston's flanks.
The battle — if you can call it that — lasted about a minute.
Jesse James himself shot Major Johnson in the forehead.
At age sixteen, Jesse James saw a man get his severed genitals stuffed into his mouth.
It was said that not one of the dead soldiers was found with the same head he'd started the day with.
After the battle was over, Anderson's men methodically and brutally mutilated every corpse on the field. Scalpings, beheadings, disembowelments — you name it, Anderson and his men did it.
Dave Poole, one of their comrades, was jumping from body to body across the battlefield. And when he was asked what he was doing, he said that he was counting them and that was the easiest way to do it.
Beheadings, disembowelments, torture, fiendish torture, men begging for the lives. This is where the emotions finally come and bear fruit in Missouri. This is the place where every man who has felt the oppression of Federal soldiers for the last three years, can finally have his vengeance.1
Even in photographs that are a century and a half old, the eyes of Bloody Bill Anderson reveal an unsettling emptiness.
Poetically, Bloody Bill Anderson died a month later in a Union ambush similar to the one he'd staged at Centralia. His corpse was photographed, mutilated, and buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Richmond.
Today, the Union victims rest in the National Cemetery in Jefferson City, Missouri.
1 The two quotes are from TJ Stiles and Tom Goodrich, respectively, for PBS's "American Experience: Jesse James." Quoted here from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/james/sfeature/sf_qa.htm
Sources
The History Channel
http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?month=10272961&day=10272992&cat=10272941
Centralia Chamber of Commerce
http://centralia.missouri.org/massacre/index.htm
PBS
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/james/sfeature/sf_qa.htm
Western Historical Manuscript Collection: University of Missouri
http://www.umsystem.edu.whmc/Mohist/sept27.html
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia,_Missouri