This book is a thorough study of all known guerrilla operations in Civil War Missouri during 1863, the middle year of the war. This work explores the tactics with which each side attempted to gain advantage, with regional differences as influenced by the personalities of local commanders. An enormous variety of sources—military and government records, private accounts, county and other local histories, period and later newspapers, and secondary sources published after the war—are used to identify which Southern partisan leaders and groups operated in which areas of Missouri, and to describe how they operated and how their kinds of warfare evolved. The actions of Southern guerrilla forces and Confederate behind-enemy-lines recruiters are presented chronologically by region so that readers may see the relationship of seemingly isolated events to other events over a period of time in a given area. The counter-actions of an array of different types of Union troops are also covered to show how differences in training, leadership, and experiences affected behaviors and actions in the field.

Bruce Nichols is an analyst for the United States Government in the Department of Defense. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Bruce Nichols

Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 397
Bibliographic Info: 110 photos, maps, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2012 [2007]
pISBN: 978-0-7864-6928-4
eISBN: 978-0-7864-9190-2
Imprint: McFarland

Preface      1
Introduction      7

1. Winter 1863 in Southwest Missouri      11
2. Winter 1863 in Northeast Missouri      21
3. Winter 1863 in Southeast Missouri      29
4. Winter 1863 in Northwest Missouri      41
5. Union Policy Evolves in Early 1863      53
6. Spring 1863 in Northeast Missouri      63
7. Spring 1863 in Southeast Missouri      72
8. Spring 1863 in Southwest Missouri      86
9. Spring 1863 in Northwest Missouri      104
10. Summer 1863 in Northeast Missouri      126
11. Summer 1863 in Southeast Missouri      140
12. Summer 1863 in Southwest Missouri      156
13. June and July 1863 in Northwest Missouri      173
14. August 1863 in Northwest Missouri      201
15. Fall 1863 in Northeast Missouri      229
16. Fall 1863 in Southeast Missouri      242
17. Fall 1863 in Southwest Missouri      276
18. Fall 1863 in Northwest Missouri      295

Afterword      322
Notes      329
Bibliography      361
Index      369

“Nichols’ impressive four volumes will undoubtedly be the standard encyclopedia of guerilla activities in Missouri for years to come. No historian interested in Civil War guerrilla warfare should be without the entire set. Nichols is to be congratulated for his excellent work in documenting this dark but pivotal time in Missouri’s history…highly recommended”—Civil War News; “monumental…nothing remotely approaching the scale of this undertaking has been attempted before on this topic, and these meticulously researched tomes will almost certainly stand the test of time as essential reference tools”—The Civil War Monitor; “readers interested in the Civil War in Missouri owe a debt of gratitude to researcher Bruce Nichols for his extensive documentation of the guerrilla warfare that raged throughout the state…will likely stand the test of time as an invaluable resource for a wide range of interested readers”—www.cwba.blogspot.com.