How Does Earle Support The Guerrillas

Women of the Confederate cause, especially those close to the guerrillas, came to play a crucial part in the guerrillas’ success. Historian Jonathon Earle writes, “when the Civil War swept on to the border, women became the quartermasters of the guerrilla war effort, with their domestic skills becoming highly valued military tools.” One example to support Earle’s claim, is the event that arguably was the cause of the raid on Lawrence Kansas. Union General Thomas Ewing Jr. issued General Orders Number 10, which called for the removal of any women or children associated with well-known guerrillas. This led Ewing to arrest several women, including the famous guerrilla “Bloody Bill” Anderson’s sisters. The women were sent to a makeshift prison

Her court trial records, reveal her efforts to aid three of her cousins who were also acting as guerrillas. She was responsible for cutting down three to four miles of telegraph line, before being caught by Union soldiers and sentenced to imprisonment. She refused to give the names of her cousins, or the name of the Confederate general that offered her money to cut down the lines, yet she did respond that, “these men belong to a secret society to which I belong.” She did not just aid the guerrillas, she felt as if she was one. Union authorities tried their hardest to track down and defeat the bushwhackers, but the guerrillas would retaliate after every incident, often in a more effective manner than the

One way to gain information on Union forces’ locations or movements, was to dress up in Union coats, and pretend to support the Union in order to gain information from civilians. They would also dress as normal civilians in order to blend in without being detected by Union forces, this added to the Union’s difficulties in searching for the guerrillas. Also, when guerrillas were captured while wearing civilian clothes, it made it difficult for Union soldiers to determine whether to treat them as a captured enemy, or as a civilian criminals. In one instance, Mary Lakenan wrote down a guerrilla attack that her father had witnessed. A small group of guerrillas in “Bloody Bill” Anderson’s gang, led a the 39th Missouri Infantry on a chase that eventually led to an ambush resulting in the massacre of the entire Infantry. The allowed the Infantry to chase them into the middle of an open field, where around three hundred guerrillas were waiting in creek beds along three sides of the field. When the Infantry reached the middle of the field, the guerrillas ran out on horseback, and killed a number between one hundred-twenty and one hundred-fifty Union