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.
In February 1862, the Missouri provisional government’s new state treasurer, George Caleb Bingham, saw a troublesome development in his war-torn state. Garrisoning federal troops, especially in the western portion of Missouri, were subjecting civilians "to a kind of winnowing process by which the 'tares' were to be separated from the wheat — the loyal from the disloyal portion of the inhabitants."
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.
Fort Bain, a fortified log house capable of housing 50 people, served as a base of operations for radical abolitionist John Brown, James Montgomery, and its namesake, Captain Oliver P. Bain.
The spotlight of "Bleeding Kansas" briefly settled on the town of Easton, Kansas on January 17, 1856, when the proslavery Thomas Cook was shot and killed by the antislavery Reese P. Brown in an apparent political dispute.
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.
Confederate bushwhackers led by notorious guerrilla Archie Clement (who had taken over for "Bloody Bill" Anderson after his death), demand the surrender of Lexington, Missouri, despite the surrender of General Robert E. Lee a month prior.
A makeshift Union prison holding female relatives and associates of proslavery Missouri bushwhackers (by order of General Thomas Ewing Jr.) collapses, killing four of the women.