In Missouri, a limited Confederate military presence led Southern sympathizers to form guerrilla bands known as bushwhackers to harass Union soldiers and pro-Union citizens. They fought for varied reasons, often to protect or avenge their families for what they saw as injustices by the Union army and Union sympathizers, with many grievances on the western Missouri border rooted in the violence of the 1850s Kansas Missouri Border War. After the Federal command in St. Louis, Mo. declared martial law in August 1861 and Union occupation brought seizures, raids, and harsh measures, bushwhacker activity increased. Guerrilla life was violent and precarious, as captured fighters were treated as criminals rather than prisoners of war, and survival depended on local terrain and support from family and Confederate sympathizers who provided shelter, food, medical care, and intelligence. Some bands, such as William Quantrill's, numbered 400 or more, though most were smaller and often assembled for raids before dispersing. Bushwhackers used whatever weapons they could obtain, favoring multiple loaded firearms and eventually the six-shot revolver for fighting from horseback. Leaders such as William Quantrill and William "Bloody Bill" Anderson relied on ambush, disguise, rapid strikes, and attacks on stragglers, Union supporters, bridges, telegraph lines, and railroads. Confederate leaders saw guerrillas as both useful and troubling, and some sought or received formal commissions as partisan rangers, while Union authorities treated them as outlaws and issued increasingly severe orders against them. Gen. Henry Halleck's General Orders No. 2 in March 1862 allowed Union troops in Missouri to hang guerrillas as robbers and murderers, and General Orders No. 100 in April 1863 established a national policy on guerrillas. After a brutal guerrilla attack on Lawrence, Kan., Brig. Gen. Thomas Ewing issued General Orders No. 11, exiling about 10,000 people from Jackson, Cass, Bates, and northern Vernon counties in Missouri in an effort to destroy guerrilla support networks; violence dropped there but continued elsewhere in the state. Bushwhackers also took part in Price's 1864 Raid, the last official Confederate campaign in Missouri, and after the war some, including Frank and Jesse James, became notorious outlaws. On July 17, 1862, Confederate Gen. Thomas Hindman issued the Missouri Partisan Ranger Act, an extension of the Confederate Partisan Ranger Act, to sanction guerrilla action against the Union army while attempting to impose control by organizing independent companies that could attack Federal pickets, scouts, foraging parties, trains, and gunboat personnel. On Oct. 27, 1864, about 300 men of the Enrolled Missouri Militia under Union Lt. Col. Samuel P. Cox ambushed Anderson and his force in Ray County's Albany, Mo., and Anderson was shot twice in the back of the head. His body was taken to Richmond, Mo., publicly displayed, photographed, and dragged through the streets before local citizens secured it and buried him in an unmarked grave in Pioneer Cemetery; in 1908, Jim Cummins and Cole Younger arranged a funeral service at his gravesite.
