Missouri Confederate States of America Government Website Springfield, Missouri
Capt. William Anderson (Bloody Bill) One of the best known and most feared of all Missouri Confederate guerrillas was William Anderson who, surprisingly, considered himself a Kansan.
William and Martha Anderson, Bill's parents came to Randolph County in 1840. This is the same year Bill was born. He had an older brother Ellis, younger brother James and younger sisters Mary C., Josephine and Martha. Mrs. Anderson's parents, William and Mahala Tomason also lived with the family. Bill's father was a professional Hatter and was a Charter Member of the I.O.O.F. Lodge here in 1847. The family lived north of town on the J.D. Hammet farm and in town near the Rake factory on West Depot Street. They later moved south of town in the Hagar school area to be nearer to relatives. In 1850 Bill's father went with a group of men from the county to the California Gold Fields. During this time away, Bill and his brothers were the heads of the family and their relationship with their sisters was both brotherly and fatherly. Bill attended school in town located near the corner of east Mulberry and north Oak street and the Hagar school south of town. As Pro-Southern settlers the family moved to Agnes City, Kansas in 1857.
It is believed that Bill served in the Missouri State Guard up until the withdrawal from Lexington, at which time he returned home. In March 1862, Bill's father was murdered by Pro-Northern neighbors in some type of dispute.
Born in Randolph County, Mo., he spent his teenage years near Council Grove, Kan., where he was drawn into the Border War when his father, a Southern sympathizer, was shot to death by a prominent Unionist, some say for horse-stealing, others say for simply having pro-slavery views. Whatever the reason, Bill Anderson returned to Missouri and, desiring revenge, joined William Quantrill´s guerrillas.
Up to a few days prior to the 1863 raid on Lawrence, Kan., Anderson seemed content to follow rather than lead. Then, in an attempt to curb the growing guerrilla problem in Missouri, Union soldiers imprisoned a number of the womenfolk of known bushwhackers in a deteriorated building in Kansas City. The building collapsed on August 14, killing some of these women, including Anderson´s sister, Josephine. Another sister was maimed for life. This event, cited by many of the guerrillas as one of the primary reasons for the August 21 raid on Lawrence, intensified Anderson´s hatred and turned him into a Federal soldier´s nightmare.
Stories about Anderson´s rage are legion. It is said he carried a silk cord on which knots were tied for every Yankee he killed. Some report that he cried and even frothed at the mouth during battle. By 1864 his quarrels with Quantrill led him to form a fierce guerrilla band of his own that included 16-year-old Jesse James.
Anderson´s greatest fame came as a result of a massacre and battle with Union soldiers in and around the central Missouri town of Centralia. On September 27, 1864. Anderson accompanied by approximately seventy men, invaded the town of Centralia. Wearing Confederate uniforms, this band of ruthless marauders showed no mercy to the inhabitants as they systematically raided homes and stores, raped, murdered and one report has it that a store of Whiskey barrels were found and Anderson and many of his men drank all the raw alcohol using their shoes as drinking vessels. In a final act of wanton destruction, the entire town was reduced to a burning ruin.
By chance, Anderson decided to check the train schedules and found that a train was due to pass through the station at midday. When the train was forced to stop at the barricade built across the line by Anderson's men, all the passengers, including twenty-six Union soldiers were rounded-up on the depot platform.
A Union officer, Lieutenant Peters, had already recognised Anderson earlier from the train window as it halted at the station. Knowing Anderson's formidable reputation for instantly executing Union officers without trial, Peters wrapped a blanket around himself and jumped from the train in an attempt to hide beneath the platform of the now burning depot. The keen-eyed Anderson spotted Peters bid to desert his troops and shouted to his men -
"Pull that bastard out of there!"
Knowing that he had to get away or be tortured and killed, Peters decided to run for his life. With a sinister coolness Anderson draw a pistol, took aim, and with unnerving accuracy, pumped six bullets into Peters killing him instantly.
Anderson ordered that the remaining twenty-six Union troopers be lined up in an open field. With the feeling that they were certainly going to be slaughtered, most dropped to their knees sobbing and begging for mercy - a sight that Anderson revelled in.
Armed with four Navy Colt pistols in his waistband, a sabre, a hatchet, four rifles and a bag of pistols on his horse, Anderson proceeded to psychologically terrorise his victims by strutting up and down in front of them. Ignoring their pleas for their lives to be spared Anderson stopped, lighted a cigar and then, in a somewhat subdued manner, asked -
"Boys, do you have a Sergeant in your ranks?"
Met with no response, Anderson repeatedly asked the same question with the inference that co-operation would mean that their lives would be spared. Eventually, Thomas M.Goodman took a pace forward and announced his rank.
"Fine, we'll use you to exchange for one of my men that them damned Yankees have caught".
The fearsome lunatic Anderson then withdrew two of his pistols and walked down the line of troopers firing until the chambers of both guns were empty then, he repeated this act twice more until he had murdered all the Union men in cold blood single-handed.
Upon his later escape, Sergeant Goodman reported Anderson's heinous crime to the authorities - but it was too late, the guerilla band had moved on to attack Union troops in neighbouring States.
A short while later, Anderson married a young girl in Texas and settled in a small farmhouse in Ray County, Missouri - although this episode proved to be a temporary respite that did nothing to curtail Bloody Bill's thirst for murder and indiscriminate pillage.
While leading his guerilla band near Orrick, Missouri on October 27th 1864, Anderson was ambushed by Captain S.P.Cox and his Union troops. Anderson was caught completely unaware and was riddled with bullets then left for dead in his saddle. His loyal followers put up a fight to try and recover Anderson's corpse, but they were driven back by superior firepower.
Anderson's body was taken to Richmond, Missouri where it was propped up in a chair and a pistol was placed in the dead man's hand then photographs were taken. A short while later, the Union troopers, full of loathing for the dead man, decapitated Anderson and impaled his head on a telegraph pole at the entrance to the town as a signature to all that the infamous killer was indeed dead. Anderson's torso was roped and tied to a horse then dragged along the streets of Richmond before being dumped in an unmarked grave outside of town.
This account of Anderson's demise has been contested however. One claim has it that another man resembling Anderson was killed at Orrick and Anderson changed his name and escaped to Erin Springs, Oklahoma where he ran a saloon. Yet another report says that Anderson settled in Salt Creek, Brown County, Texas where he lived for some sixty years under an assumed name. There may be an element of truth behind this story since a man resembling Anderson died on November 2nd, 1927 in Salt Creek, and on the bedside table was a photograph of three young women - later identified as Anderson's sisters.
Anderson once said he had killed so many Federals that he “grew sick of killing them.” 
William Clarke Quantrill
William C. Quantrill was one of the most well known of The Missouri Partisan Rangers. And some of his raids were the most daring and recorded of the war. Although many times his manuevers were intentionally misplayed by the Federal media, his legend in Missouri is one of greatness and honor.
William Clarke Quantrill, a school teacher from Canal Dover Ohio, came to Kansas in 1857 to farm. He later joined a regiment of Missouri Confederate troops just before the Civil War.
Dissatisfied with a lack of aggressiveness after the battle of Lexington, Missouri, in September 1861, Quantrill left the army to organize his group of Partisan Rangers.
His rides and missions are legendary. Most famous was the "Pay Back" at Lawrence, Kansas on Aug. 21, 1863. Here he led somewhere between 300 - 400 Missouri Partisan men to avenge the dastardly killing of many of his men's female relatives in the collpase of a makeshift jail in Kansas City, Missouri.
The collapse of the hotel, hastily (and sabotaged by Federals) turned jail, occured a scant week earlier on August 14, 1863. This was facilitated by the weakening of support beams and structure by the Federal of the old 3 story jail. Premeditated murder of women and children, to be certain.
In the end, William Clarke Quantrill was shot and later died in 1865.
Captain Quantrill was trapped in barn on the James H. Wakefield farm, about one mile from Smiley, Kentucky by Edward Terrell and his cavalry detachment of hired assassins on May 10, 1865.
While attempting to escape, he was struck by two Spencer balls, one in the hand, the other paralyzing him from the waist down.
Captain Quantrill was then transferred to a Federal military hospital in Louisville, then to a Catholic Hospital in Louisville. After almost a month of fighting for his life, Captain Quantrill died at the Catholic Hospital in Louisville at 4pm, June 6, 1865.
He was buried in the old Portland Catholic Cemetery at Louisville. In 1887, his mother had his bones brought back to Ohio. The man she paid to remove the body stole some of the skeleton, and years later, parts of it showed up in the hands of a Kansas collector.
Eventually, these stolen parts were moved to the Old Confederate Veteran's Home & Cemetery at Higginsville, MO.
On October 24, 1992, William C. Quantrill was re-interred in the Old Confederate Veteran's Home Cemetery with full Confederate honors due him by the Missouri Division of the Sons Of Confederate Veteran's.
True Missourians and patriots will never forget your courage and honor.
God bless you Captain Quantrill. Rest in peace...
Jesse Woodson James 1847-1882
Jesse Woodson James (September 5, 1847 - April 3, 1882), was born in Kearney, Missouri. His father, Robert James, was a Baptist minister who helped found William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri.
At seventeen, James left his native Missouri to fight as a Confederate guerilla in the American Civil War as part of Quantrill's Raiders, participating in raids in Kansas. He once killed eight men in a single day. After the war, he returned to his home state and led one of history's most notorious outlaw gangs. He was wounded while surrendering at the end of the war, and later claimed to have been forced into outlawry because his family had been persecuted in the war.
With his brother Frank James and several other ex-Confederates, including Cole Younger and his brothers, the James gang robbed their way across the Western frontier targeting banks, trains, stagecoaches, and stores from Iowa to Texas. Eluding even the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, the gang escaped with thousands of dollars. James is believed to have carried out the first daylight bank robbery in peacetime, stealing $60,000 from a bank in Liberty, Missouri.
Then on July 21, 1873 the James-Younger gang pulled off the first successful train robbery in the American West by taking US$3,000 from the Rock Island Express in Adair, Iowa.
Despite their criminal and often violent acts, James and his partners were much adored. Journalists, eager to entertain Easterners with tales of a wild West, exaggerated and romanticized the gang's heists, often casting James as a contemporary Robin Hood. While James did harass railroad executives who unjustly seized private land for the railways, modern biographers note that he did so for personal gain -- his humanitarian acts were more fiction than fact.
On September 7, 1876, the James gang attempted to rob a bank in Northfield, Minnesota. The townspeople returned fire, and all of the members of the gang except for Frank and Jesse James were killed, wounded or captured in a wooded ravine along the Watonwan river just south of La Salle, Minnesota.
Jesse James had married his own first cousin, named Zerelda after his mother, after a nine-year courtship. They had two children, Jesse Edwards and Mary. She and Frank James' wife tried to get the brothers to take on a more normal life, and with a $10,000 reward on his head, Jesse and his wife moved to Saint Joseph, Missouri to hide out, where he lived under the assumed name of Tom Howard and rented a house for $14 a month.
In April 1882, Jesse James recruited Robert and Charles Ford to help him rob the Platte City bank. While James stood on a chair in his home in St. Joseph to straighten and dust a picture, the Ford brothers drew their guns. Robert Ford's shot hit James in the back of the head, ending his outlaw days for good. Ford hoped to claim the $10,000 offered for James's capture but received only a fraction of the reward and was charged with murder. He did, however, secure himself a place in Western outlaw lore which lives on in literature, song, and film.
James' epitaph, selected by his mother, read: IN LOVING MEMORY OF MY BELOVED SON, MURDERED BY A TRAITOR AND COWARD WHOSE NAME IS NOT WORTHY TO APPEAR HERE.
The Ford brothers were sentenced to hang but were pardoned by the governor of Missouri. Charles Ford committed suicide two years later, and Robert Ford was killed in a bar room brawl in Creede, Colorado, in 1892.
Rumors have persisted that Ford did not kill James, but someone else. Some stories say he lived in Guthrie, Oklahoma as late as 1948, and a man named J. Frank Dalton, who claimed to be Jesse James, died in Granbury, Texas in 1951 at the age of 103. Some stories claim the real recipient of Ford's bullet was a man named Charles Bigelow, reported to have been living with James' wife at the time.
The body buried in Missouri as Jesse James was exhumed in 1995 and DNA analysis gave a 99.7% probability that it was Jesse James. 
| Frank James Alexander Franklin James Born: 10-Jan-1843
Birthplace: Kearney, MO
Died: 18-Feb-1915
Location of death: Kearney, MO
Cause of death: Heart Failure
Remains: Buried, Hill Park Cemetery, Independence, MO
Military service: Missouri State Guard (allied with Confederates, Civil War) As a boy Frank James attended school, showed an earnest interest in English literature, and hoped to become a teacher. He was still a teenager when the American Civil War changed his plans. He fought for the Confederates, engaging in at least two bloody battles before falling sick and being left behind by his fellow troops. He surrendered to Union forces and was briefly held prisoner, then sent home. He later took up with guerrilla fighters for the South, and rode with William Quantrill's raiders in several terrorist attacks, including the savage siege of Lawrence, Kansas, where nearly 200 locals were murdered and much of the town was burned. After the war James and his brother Jesse, along with Cole Younger and several other outlaws, formed an infamous criminal gang. For more than a decade they robbed and killed, roaming across Missouri, Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and Kentucky, as far north as Minnesota and as far east as West Virginia. Though trials were rare, the James-Younger Gang is generally held responsible for at least twelve bank and seven train robberies, four stagecoach hold-ups, and the murders of at least eleven citizens. Thanks to fictionalized accounts of their crimes, they were seen as celebrities, and were especially admired among Southern partisans. After the coward Robert Ford killed Jesse James in 1882, Frank James lost interest in crime, and negotiated his surrender on the terms that he stand trial only for his Missouri crimes, and not be extradited to Minnesota, where he was wanted for the botched robbery of the First National Bank of Northfield. He then rode to Jefferson, Missouri, where he surrendered personally to Governor Thomas Crittenden in the state capitol. He was charged only with the murder of a passenger in a train robbery, and at trial he was defended by former Confederate Secretary of War Leroy Pope Walker. Observers wrote that from the selection of jurors sympathetic to the vanquished South, it was clear that the Confederate veteran James had little to fear in the courthouse. Found not guilty in spite of the evidence to the contrary, he spent his last thirty years leading the more ordinary life he had once yearned for, working as a shoe salesman, a night watchman, and a farmer. He reportedly augmented his income by charging tourists 25¢ to visit his family farm, where they could view artifacts from his criminal years and visit his brother's grave. |
General Sterling Price
(September 20, 1809 – September 29, 1867) was a lawyer, politician, and militia general from the U.S. state of Missouri, an American Army general during the Mexican-American War, and a Confederate Army major general during the American Civil War.
Price led an army back into Missouri in 1864 on an ill-fated expedition to recapture the state for the Confederacy. He took his remaining troops to Mexico following the war rather than surrender to the Union Army.
Sterling "Old Pap" Price was born near Farmville, in Prince Edward County, Virginia into a family of Welsh origin whose ancestor John Price was born in Brecknock, Wales in 1584 and settled in the Virginia Colony. Sterling Price attended Hampden-Sydney College in 1826 and 1827, where he studied law and worked at the courthouse near his home. He was admitted to the bar and established a law practice. In the fall of 1831, he and his family moved to Fayette, Missouri. A year later, he moved to Keytesville, Missouri, where he ran a hotel and a merchandise store and had a plantation, Val Verde. On May 14, 1833, he married Martha Head of Randolph County, Missouri. They would have seven children, five of whom survived to adulthood.
During the Mormon War of 1838, Price was a member of a delegation from Chariton County, Missouri sent to investigate reported disturbances between Latter-day Saints and anti-Mormon mobs operating in the western part of that state. His report was favorable to the Mormons, stating that they were not guilty, in his opinion, of the charges levied against them by their enemies. Following the Mormon surrender in November 1838, Price was ordered by Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs to Caldwell County with a company of men to protect the Mormons from further depredations following their defeat.
Price was elected to Missouri State House of Representatives in 1836–38, and again in 1840–44, and he was chosen as its speaker. He was then elected as a Democrat to the 29th United States Congress and served from March 4, 1845, to August 12, 1846, when he resigned to participate in the Mexican-American War.
Price raised the Second Regiment, Missouri Mounted Volunteer Cavalry and was appointed its colonel on August 12, 1846. He marched his regiment to Santa Fe, where he assumed command of the Territory of New Mexico after Gen. Stephen W. Kearny departed for California. Price served as military governor of New Mexico, where he put down the Taos Revolt, an uprising of Native Americans and Mexicans in January 1847. President James K. Polk promoted Price to brigadier general of volunteers on July 20, 1847.
Price was military governor of Chihuahua in July 1847 and commanded the Army of the West at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Rosales on March 16, 1848.The battle was fought because Price received false reports of a Mexican advance into New Mexico. It is notable today because it was the last battle of the war, taking place after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had been ratified by the United States Congress on March 10.
Following the war, Price was discharged on November 25, 1848, and returned to Missouri. He bought a farm and engaged in agriculture on the Bowling Green prairie. He became a slave owner and a tobacco planter. Always popular, he was easily elected Governor of Missouri and served from 1853 to 1857. As governor, he was instrumental in expanding the railroad network in the state. After the expiration of his term, he became the state Bank Commissioner from 1857 to 1861. Price was elected presiding officer of the Missouri State Convention on February 28, 1861, which voted against secession.
Price initially opposed Missouri's secession, but when Francis Preston Blair, Jr. and Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon seized the state militia's Camp Jackson at St. Louis, Price was outraged. He was assigned by Gov. Claiborne Fox Jackson to command the newly reformed Missouri State Guard in May 1861. He led his young recruits (who affectionately nicknamed him "Old Pap") in a campaign to secure Missouri for the Confederacy. One of the major engagements in this campaign was fought at Lexington, where Price defeated Colonel James A. Mulligan's Union force in the "battle of the hemp bales" and secured the city for the South--albeit only temporarily, as it turned out.
Price was commissioned in the Confederate States Army as a major general on March 6, 1862, merging his Missouri State Guard into the Army of the West. Among his most notable battles during the Civil War were: Battle of Wilson's Creek, Missouri, the First Battle of Lexington, Missouri (mentioned above), Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, Battle of Corinth II, Mississippi, Battle of Helena, Arkansas, Battle of Westport, Missouri, Battle of Carthage, Missouri, Battle of Prairie D'Ane, Arkansas, Battle of Pilot Knob, Missouri, Battle of Westport, Missouri, and Battle of Mine Creek, Kansas. Although he was devoted to the Southern cause, he saw military operations only in terms of liberating Missouri. Most of his later battles were fought against overwhelming odds and ended in defeat.
He commanded the Army of Missouri during Price's Missouri Raid of 1864, during which he led his army of previously Missouri State Guardsmen (now Confederates) from Arkansas and across Missouri. The first major engagement occurred at Pilot Knob, where he unsuccessfully attempted to capture Fort Davidson, causing the needless slaughter of many of his men. From Pilot Knob, he swung west away from St. Louis and towards Kansas City, Missouri. Just southeast of town, he was boxed in by two separate Federal armies and forced to fight. Price gave battle at Westport (now a part of Kansas City), but it did not go in his favor and he was forced to retreat to Kansas. Price was once again forced to fight, and suffered another defeat at Mine Creek. His battered and broken army was forced to retreat to the state of Texas.
Instead of surrendering at the war's end, he led what was left of his army into Mexico, where he unsuccessfully sought service with the Emperor Maximilian.
Price was a leader of a Confederate exile colony in Carlota, Veracruz. When the colony proved to be a failure, he returned to Missouri, impoverished and in poor health. He died of cholera in St. Louis, Missouri and was buried there in Bellefontaine Cemetery.
His daughter-in-law Celeste, wife of his son Celsus, died in childbirth with her newborn child on the same day as Price. She was the daughter of Thomas Lawson Price.
The Undefeated Rebel: General Joseph Shelby
Joseph Orville Shelby was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1831. He espoused the pro-slavery cause and took active part in schemes to make Kansas a slave state.
In 1861 he took the southern side and marched to Independence, Missouri to prevent the occupation by U.S. Dragoons from Fort Leavenworth. Captain Shelby took part in the famous Rattle of Wilson Creek (Missouri) and was made a colonel after the Battle of Lone Jack (Missouri). He raised his own regiment, which became known as the "Iron Brigade".
In 1862-63, he took part in the expedition against Springfield, also capturing the federal garrisons at Neosho, Greenfield, Stockton, Hermanville, Warsaw, Boonville and Marshall, Missouri.
During the fall of 1864, he captured Potosi, Missouri, destroying the railroad. After bloody fighting, he captured Boonville, Waverly , Lexington and California, Missouri. General Shelby's "Iron Brigade" engaged in the Battle of the Little Blue and Westport and twice saved the army from utter ruin. Missouri Confederates held General Shelby in the highest esteem and referred to him as the greatest Missouri soldier of the Confederacy. He was appointed U.S. Marshal for the Western District of Missouri in 1893.
Newspapers from the east had adverse comments regarding the appointment of General Shelby. One U.S. Senator was quoted as saying:
"Nearly thirty years have elapsed since the termination of the war. All that one can ask, even the most loyal Unionist, is that the government shall not be confided to men who, during that awful time, represented not fair battle, but rapine, cruelty and chaos. We, or most of us, believe Jo Shelby belonged to the latter class. Still, we can do nothing to prevent the consummation of the outrage in making such a man the representative of law and order. All we can do is to enter our solemn protest."
As for as General Shelby was concerned, sufficient answer to what was printed about him was found in a letter endorsing his appointment and congratulating him, written by William Warner, ex Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic. The former war governor of Missouri, Thomas Fletcher, went in person to the Attorney General to say, no mistake would be made in the selection of General Shelby as the U.S. Marshal.
During his tenure, the Great Pullman Strike occurred in 1894, which was one of the most famous civil disturbances of the 19th century.
U.S. Marshal Joseph Shelby died in Bates County, Missouri . Many commanders, both North and South, thought Jo Shelby to be the best cavalry general of the South. From the black plume he wore in his cap to the large sorrel horses he rode (after getting three shot from under him at Cane Hill, Arkansas, he superstitiously would only ride sorrels) to his daring tactics, Shelby struck an heroic figure. A successful businessman in Missouri before the war and a prominent slaveholder, he raised a three-regiment cavalry brigade in 1862, taught it western fighting tactics, and conducted a number of raids in Missouri and Arkansas for the rest of the war. A real thorn in the side of Union leaders, Shelby's "Iron Brigade" inflicted much damage in raids all along the western border region. Most distinguished were his operations in Sterling Price's raid into Missouri in the fall of 1864, especially at Glasgow and Sedalia (both of which he captured), Waverly, and Westport. When the war ended, he refused to surrender, and simply took his men to Mexico to fight for Maximillian. But after Maximillian was killed in 1866, Shelby returned to Missouri. His popularity only increased in the hero-hungry post-war South, which was bolstered further after he appeared as a defense witness in the trial of the James brothers, who had ridden with him during the war. He died in 1897, and his funeral was the second largest in the post-war South for a Confederate leader, after only Jeff Davis's. 