By the third year of the war, a vast area of Missouri had been burned and depopulated. The western counties closest to Kansas were the hardest hit. Many former residents were either dead, had fled before torch and ambuscade, or had been evicted as a result of Union Brig. Gen. Thomas Ewing’s notorious Order Number 11 of August 1863, which mandated the removal of all western counties inhabitants and the burning of their homes so that they could not harbor Confederate guerrillas.

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Typical of the towns affected by Ewing’s order was Nevada, about 25 miles east of Fort Scott. So many guerrillas lived in and around the little community that it had become known to Unionists as the “Bushwhacker capital.” On May 24, 1863, it was the site of an attack on a Federal militia party by Bushwhackers led by Captain William Marchbanks and “Pony” Hill. Two days later, reinforced Union militia returned to Nevada and burned it. In some ways, Order Number 11 simply confirmed what had already been happening.

For all its infamy, Order Number 11 did achieve one goal: it deprived Bushwhackers of the protection, nurture and victims that fed their depredations. They simply took their business elsewhere. Elsewhere was “Little Dixie,” the area flanking the rich valley of the Missouri River. Little Dixie’s presence in the northern half of Missouri derived from a topographic peculiarity. As settlers, mostly Southerners, moved north and west into Missouri, the Scottish-Irish “hillbillies” from the upper South naturally gravitated toward the mountainous area of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas. Lowland planters from the deep South crossed the path of the highlanders, settled in the fertile river basin, and financed pillared mansions with the income from slave-raised hemp and cotton.

Despite desperate Union efforts to suppress Confederate Bushwhackers, Little Dixie witnessed almost daily–even into the war’s last year–the savagery of guerrilla warfare. Take, for example, the three months from mid-July to mid-October 1864. By then, moody Bill Quantrill’s behavior had become too bizarre for many of his own men. Some adopted Bill Anderson as their leader; others followed George Todd and John Thrailkill. Quantrill was left to wander at the head of a small band of loyalists.

Bill Anderson had grown up in Huntsville. Hometown allegiance, however, apparently did not deter Bill from raiding the place on July 15, robbing merchants and a bank of $45,000 and shooting down a passerby imprudent enough to try to stop the raiders. Anderson did, at least, make his boys return money stolen from people with whom he had gone to school.

Two days later, Anderson led 35 followers into nearby Rocheport, savaging the town and terrifying its inhabitants. On July 23, 100 of his raiders gutted the railroad station in Renick. The next day, the Bushwhackers ambushed and dispersed a pursuing company of the 17th Illinois Cavalry. Two slain Federals were found scalped. Attached to the collar of one was a note: “You come to hunt bush whackers. Now you are skelpt. Clemyent Skept you.” Eighteen-year-old Archie had left his mad calling card.

Following the engagement, Anderson’s men moved north into Shelby County, where they destroyed the Salt River railroad bridge and torched depots at Shelbina and Lakenan. Then, in August, Anderson attacked the riverboat Omaha near Glasgow and raided Rocheport again, shooting up more boats and snarling all river traffic.

Todd and Thrailkill, for their part, moved to Keytesville on September 20, capturing the Union garrison and burning the courthouse. During the same month, Anderson’s men robbed 13 stagecoaches in Howard County. On September 23, Todd joined Anderson. The 300 guerrillas thus mustered together wiped out a 12-wagon Federal train near Rocheport, capturing 18,000 rounds of ammunition and killing 15 Union troops. The combined forces, briefly joined by Quantrill, then attacked Fayette, where they were repulsed by Federal soldiers barricaded in the courthouse.

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