If you look at any national map of the Civil War, you will see no contrast between Kansas and Missouri. Both are shaded alike as Union states. Were we to map the memory of the war, on the other hand, the border between them would be bright and stark. Kansas would still be Northern. But much of western Missouri would go with the South. The war’s legacy in Missouri’s borderlands presents something of a mystery. Consider the example of Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower. They had a lot in common. They served consecutive terms as president. They grew up only 160 miles apart in the late-19th century – Truman in Independence, Missouri, and Eisenhower in Abilene, Kansas. Local history mattered to both of them. Yet very different versions of the past lived in their imaginations.
Bursheba Fristoe Younger knew better than perhaps anyone the thorough devastation wrought by nearly a decade of guerrilla warfare along the Missouri-Kansas border. The Youngers, like many households, traced their hardships back to the partisan violence of the 1850s. A slaveholding family of southern descent, they owned a dry goods store in Cass County, Missouri, which was repeatedly robbed by antislavery bands of Kansas “jayhawkers.” At the outbreak of the national Civil War, Bursheba’s husband, Henry, remained an avowed Union man, but in July 1862, Unionist militia ambushed, robbed, and murdered the family patriarch as he traveled home from Westport.
A bridge named after and maintained by Napolean Bonaparte Blanton spanned the Wakarusa River to the south of Lawrence and was the site of several border war events.
In a controversial attempt to quell guerrilla warfare along the Missouri-Kansas border, Union General Thomas Ewing issued General Order No. 11, exiling several thousand people from their homes in western Missouri. The August 25, 1863, orders required that “all persons” living in Jackson, Cass, Bates, and northern Vernon counties “remove from their present places of residence.”
On September 27, 1864, roughly 80 guerrillas under the command of William T. “Bloody Bill” Anderson stopped a train outside of Centralia, Missouri. They then asked for a volunteer from among the Union soldiers on the train. Fully expecting to be executed, Sergeant Thomas M. Goodman stepped forward. Instead of killing the sergeant, however, the guerrillas shot the line of 22 unarmed Union soldiers.
By Tony O’ Bryan, University of Missouri—Kansas City
The “bushwhackers” were Missourians who fled to the rugged backcountry and forests to live in hiding and resist the Union occupation of the border counties. They fought Union patrols, typically by ambush, in countless small skirmishes, and hit-and-run engagements.
Just to the east of Platte City, Missouri, the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad crossed over the Platte River - at least until September 3, 1861 when pro-Southern bushwhackers undermined the structure and sent a train plunging into the water below, killing up to 20 passengers.
Before William Clarke Quantrill was a feared Missouri bushwhacker, he joined with jayhawkers to plan a raid that would liberate slaves from a slaveholding Missouri farm.
