1 (2) | A (4) | B (20) | C (4) | D (2) | E (1) | F (9) | G (3) | H (2) | I (1) | J (4) | K (1) | L (10) | M (6) | N (2) | O (3) | P (9) | Q (3) | R (5) | S (10) | T (3) | U (2) | W (6)

By Christopher Phillips, University of Cincinnati

Claiborne Fox Jackson, the pro-Confederate governor of Missouri at the outset of the Civil War, was born in rural Fleming County, Kentucky on April 4, 1806. The son of a moderately prosperous tobacco farmer and slaveholder, Jackson received only slight formal education before migrating with three older brothers in 1826 to Franklin, Missouri, where he engaged in business.

By Deborah Keating, University of Missouri – Kansas City

The violence that erupted along the Missouri-Kansas border before the Civil War continued throughout the conflict as Union and Confederate sympathizers waged guerrilla warfare on behalf of their interests. Both sides instigated atrocities against the regular armies and against non-combatants, including women and children. This backdrop of brutality resulted in participants on either side being portrayed as heroes or villains, depending on one’s political perspective, and led to myth-making of a magnitude that is astonishing. Few participants better represent this dichotomy than Frank and Jesse James: they were either guerrillas, robbers, and vengeful murderers or victimized young Robin Hoods, seeking revenge for the atrocities they and their families suffered.

By Tony O’ Bryan, University of Missouri—Kansas City

Before the start of the Civil War, the name “jayhawkers” applied to bands of robbers, associated with the Kansas Free-Stater cause, who rustled livestock and stole property on both sides of the state line. During this period, a jayhawker could be a hero or a villain, depending on individual circumstances or one’s opinion on the issue of slavery in Kansas Territory. By the time the war ended, however, the term “jayhawkers” became synonymous with Union troops led by abolitionists from Kansas, and "jayhawking" became the generic term for armies plundering and looting from civilian populations nationwide.

By Christopher Phillips, University of Cincinnati

Charles R. Jennison, abolitionist and federal cavalry colonel, was born on June 6, 1834, in Antwerp, in upstate New York’s famed “Burned-Over District,” so named for its fervid evangelical religious revivals that were foundational to Northern antislavery reform. In 1857 he moved his young family to Osawatomie, Kansas, perhaps not coincidentally the home of John Brown, whose by then notorious radical politics Jennison would soon emulate.