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. These guerrilla fighters harassed, robbed, and sometimes murdered loyal Unionist farmers on both sides of the state line. They interrupted the federal mail and telegraph communications, and (most troublesome to the Union command trying to quell the escalating violence in the border region) the bushwhackers held the popular support of many local farming families.
Men joined with the bushwhackers for a number of reasons. Some, like Frank James, had been paroled from the Missouri State Guard, and upon returning home they were constantly harassed by the “jayhawker” troops garrisoned in the border counties. Others, like his younger brother, Jesse, sought safety in the brush at a young age and thus grew into the tumultuous and violent life of a warrior bandit. Still others, like William Quantrill, were landless drifters, “border ruffians,” or bandits from the border war who sought personal gain from the complete chaos of the Civil War. Before the war, 90 percent of Missourians lived on farms and in small villages, and the majority of bushwhackers came from this broad population of yeoman farmers from the upper South, where individual lives and families were swept up into an endless cycle of violence that all would be fortunate to survive.
