Sir,

What scholars are trying to effect is a greater understanding of the Border War, the current histories of which have numerous flaws. Here's another excerpt from my book that might open your eyes to another aspect of the guerrillas: they were not ordinary men but members of the elite class of western Missouri:

The Missouri guerrillas, during and after the Civil War, became the victims of a thorough character assassination. This denigration began as soon as they mounted their horses and resisted Federal authority. The propaganda attacks occurred in newspapers, books, and in U.S. Army official correspondence. First, the guerrillas were called “thieves” and “robbers,” then the attacks degenerated into references to “demons” and “devils.” And this tradition continues today in the titles of a recent motion picture, Ride with the Devil, and a book on Quantrill, The Devil Knows How to Ride: The True Story of William Clarke Quantrill and his Confederate Raiders (1998). Despite their loaded, propagandistic titles, both the film and book mentioned are more enlightened representations of the guerrillas and Quantrill than most other recent creations of their type. But demonizing the guerrillas has always had commercial value in newspapers, movies, books, and historical articles; incorporating the term “devil” into titles, for instance, is a more certain method of generating commercial success.

The most important and influential early attempt to demonize and misrepresent the Missouri guerrillas was by the acknowledged dean of Border War historians, William Elsey Connelley, a Kansan, in his 1910 history, Quantrill and the Border Wars. No one knew better than Connelley what class of people the guerrillas were: he talked with former guerrillas, dined with them, interviewed them for his histories, then scandalously misrepresented them, saying:
They [guerrillas and their families] scarcely pretended to raise anything more than a scanty patch of corn; and when they could not put on their tables the flesh of the almost wild razorback hog which roamed the woods, they made meat of woodchucks, raccoons, opossums or any other “varmint” their gun could bring down. They did not scorn hawks or owls if hunger demanded and no better meat could be found.

It was this “White Trash” [Connelley’s capitalization] which added so much to the horrors of the war, especially in Missouri, and so little to its real prosecution. Wolflike in ferocity, when the advantages were on their side, they were wolflike in cowardice when the terms were at all equal. They were the Croats, Cossacks, Tolpatches, Pandours of the Confederacy--of little value in battle, but terrible as guerrillas and bushwhackers. From this “White Trash” came the gangs of murderers and robbers, like those led by the Youngers, Jameses, Quantrills and scores of other names of criminal memory.

This characterization of the Missouri guerrillas is not just inaccurate; it is patently absurd, as the reader will discover when Bowen’s census data is consulted. If it were not for the indelible, pervasive, and stultifying influence Connelley has had on generations of historians, he might be ignored. But his misrepresentations live on.

Quantrill also was a favorite target and butt of Connelley’s vituperative remarks. Even Quantrill’s family lineage was maligned by Connelley, who said:
But this union of this couple [the marriage of Quantrill’s mother and father] produced him that shed blood like water, a fiend wasteful and reckless of human life. They endowed him with depravity, bestowed upon him the portion of degeneracy. In cruelty and a thirst for blood he towered above the men of his time. Somewhere of old his ancestors ate the sour grapes which set his teeth on edge. In him was exemplified the terrible and immutable law of heredity. He grew into the gory monster whose baleful shadow falls upon all who share the kindred blood. He made his name a Cain’s mark and a curse to those condemned to bear it.

Connelley, who was for some time the Secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society, maligned Quantrill saying, “A character capable of such baseness is incomprehensible. Depravity in such a form and carried to such an extent bewilders, becomes a mystery.” Quantrill, according to Connelley, “betrayed and murdered his friends and drenched a border in blood”; he “had no convictions, stood for no principles, was in favor of no State or party, had no choice of communities, could not comprehend honesty, was an utter stranger to loyalty, and did not know such a thing as friendship.” Thomas Goodrich, author of some of the better books on the Border War, felt somehow compelled to observe, “Even his name had a strange, surreal sound--Quantrill!” This is a particularly odd criticism, since the guerrilla leader had no choice in his paternity, even if one agrees with Goodrich’s peculiar claim, which seems to have no substantiation.
So who were these guerrillas, so maligned, so demonized, by most historians and writers for more than 130 years? In the 1970s, Don R. Bowen examined demographic data from the Census of 1860 for Jackson County, Missouri, to determine the guerrillas’ background in relation to the following:
(1) Age; (2) state, territory or country of birth; (3) number and order of siblings; (4) residence in 1860; (5) occupation, if any; (6) marital status; (7) number of children; (8) value of real property owned, 1860; (9) value of personal property owned, 1860; (10) number of slaves owned, if any; (11) regular military service in either the Missouri State Guards or the Confederate States Army; and (12) regular military rank . . . [Bowen also determined in relation to the guerrillas’ parents, their] (1) occupation, (2) value of real property owned, 1860; (3) value of personal property owned, 1860; (4) number of slaves owned, if any.

These are relatively objective, unbiased criteria for establishing the true social position of the guerrillas for those honestly interested in discovering it. In Bowen’s thorough, but largely ignored study, he concluded that one-third of the guerrilla leaders owned slaves; three quarters of their parents did. Of the guerrilla followers, one-tenth owned slaves, while half of their parents owned slaves. Because slave owning was rare in the general population, it is easily seen that these young men were from the more prominent, affluent families in the area. Bowen said, the guerrillas were not only better off than the general population of Jackson county, they were, generally speaking, “very much better off,” in fact, “in terms of the times, wealthy people.”

Buttressing the assumption of the social prominence of the guerrillas and their families, Bowen also demonstrated that three-quarters of the guerrilla leaders, at some time, were lieutenants or above in the army of the Confederate States or the Missouri State Guard. According to Bowen, the leaders of the guerrillas were the kind of men who, in ordinary times, would have filled leadership positions in their communities. In addition, they were well-socialized members of their communities--an extremely important feature for guerrillas, who depend ordinarily on local support to survive.

Bowen concluded that the guerrilla leaders were largely “the sons and heirs of an established local elite.” Over 90 percent of the guerrillas’ fathers held middle- to upper- class positions in the community, and their slave property alone was worth “double the county-wide mean.” All of this, of course, negates Connelley’s ridiculous contention that the guerrillas were “White Trash” and makes the contention that they were ordinary thieves highly questionable.

Bowen contends that the Union occupation of western Missouri threatened the property of the guerrilla families, their status, and, in some cases, their lives. According to Bowen’s search of the index of the U.S. Army’s Official Record, the guerrilla families, in respect to the Federal Army, suffered “search of property, seizure of property (livestock, crops, slaves, etc.), destruction of property (burning of buildings, shootings of horses, etc.), arrest or detainment of persons, forced bail or bond giving, forced removal of families, summary execution, [and] execution by court martial.” According to Bowen’s count, ninety-three guerrilla families were subjected to the above sanctions during the war. The threat to the property of the young guerrillas’ families by the Federal forces was also a menace to the young guerrillas’ own future estates and status. In response, and largely for that reason, the young guerrillas waged war on the Federal army and its allies, the Missouri militias--not for plunder, as many historians contend.
Once the guerrillas took to the bush, it totally disrupted their lives; their ordinary ways of supporting themselves disappeared, and they were forced to sustain themselves, as all guerrillas do, by obtaining food, forage, and shelter from the local people, usually voluntarily but, if necessary, through some measure of coercion. The guerrillas’ preferred source of sustainment, of course, was taking what they needed from their enemies--the Federal Army, Union supporters, and spies in the area. It should be obvious that guerrillas do not receive ordinary payments for their services like their enemies, the Union soldiers and Missouri militiamen. There are no biweekly or monthly checks in the mail or disbursements in army pay lines. What should be equally obvious is that guerrillas must be able to sustain themselves by whatever means necessary, as all guerrillas do; to consider anything otherwise seems extraordinarily naïve or unrealistic.

Some historians have referred to the guerrillas “stealing” and “plundering.” When the Federal armies did the same thing, but on a massive scale, such writers call it “appropriating” or “living off the land.” Obviously, the Federal Army never paid for any “appropriated” Southern property, and it was lost to the owners forever, whether it was called “theft” or “appropriation” or some other fatuous term. From a Southerner’s perspective, the Union army was “plundering,” and there was no real distinction between the actions of guerrillas and Yankees--except in magnitude. The guerrillas received most of their forage and food, however, from friends. The only justification the Union Army could conjure for their “appropriating” of property was to justify it by the then-current “laws of war.” But these laws possessed no moral validity, expressed no moral imperative, but were merely the codification of military and governmental expedients against a hated enemy. Even property appropriated by the U.S. Army from Union farmers was often not paid for, or paid for only when, as in the case of the Solomon Young family (mentioned earlier), several decades had passed and when lawyers were summoned to attempt to enforce payment.