A violent encounter between Southern partisan cavalry and Union forces occurred in and near Centralia on September 27, 1864, involving irregular Confederate partisan rangers under William "Bloody Bill" Anderson, whose force had camped at the Singleton farm three miles southeast of Centralia. The battle was directly related to the siege and fall of Atlanta, for before Atlanta fell on September 2, 1864, the Confederate army decided to take the conflict north, and in the West Major General Sterling Price undertook a large-scale expedition into Missouri, while partisan rangers in central Missouri were ordered to create diversions in North Missouri and attack the railroads as Price entered the state from Arkansas. After Atlanta was captured by federal forces, some of Sherman's troops were furloughed, and twenty-three Union soldiers were among them when they boarded a train in St. Charles on the morning of September 27 headed west on the North Missouri Railroad; when the train arrived in Centralia at 11:00 a.m., the soldiers were taken from the train at the depot and all but one were shot to death. Guerrilla warfare had escalated through the summer of 1864, and Anderson led a small band that roamed the area from a base at Rocheport in western Boone County. On September 23, guerrillas struck a Union wagon train at Goslin's Lane, seven miles northeast of Rocheport, destroying it and summarily executing captured teamsters and soldiers escorting it. After the guerrillas dispersed, one band was run down near Rocheport by the 9th Missouri Militia Cavalry based at Fayette in Howard County, and those Southern captives were also executed and allegedly scalped. Anderson then moved to attack the Fayette garrison, and although William Quantrill arrived and tried to take control of Anderson's band, Anderson attacked Fayette on September 24, 1864, against Quantrill's advice. The attack was a disaster for the Southerners, who suffered thirteen dead and over thirty wounded against only a handful of Union casualties. Anderson retreated northwest from Fayette and over the next several days moved his band of about one hundred east along the North Missouri Railroad. At the same time, several companies of the 39th Missouri Volunteer Infantry under Major Andrew Vern Emen Johnston were on guard duty at Paris, Missouri. These men had been in federal service only a few weeks; though some had served in local home guard units, they were largely green troops operating as mounted infantry on draft horses and armed with outmoded muzzle-loading rifles. Johnston left Paris on September 26, 1864, searching for a guerrilla band rumored to be camped near Centralia, and he found them at the Singleton farm. At Centralia, Anderson commanded the largest force he ever led, some four hundred horsemen drawn from several guerrilla bands. Early in the war Anderson had served in the State Guard and had been a minor figure among guerrillas before 1864, but from July to October 1864 he carried out a reign of terror in central Missouri that made him the most infamous of Southern partisans. He was killed near Richmond, Missouri, less than a month after Centralia. The federal commander, Major A.V.E. Johnston, had also briefly been a member of the Missouri State Guard before serving as an officer in Union militia units in northeast Missouri; little is known of his service before Centralia, but though once accused of disloyalty to the Union cause, he gave his life for that cause at Centralia and was buried in Monroe City, Missouri.
