Seeking revenge for this setback, Anderson’s guerrillas raided Centralia on September 27. They prowled the village for three hours, looting stores and terrorizing citizens. Drunken Bushwhackers burned the depot, and the arrival of a stagecoach from Columbia gave them an opportunity for more plunder. A westbound train from St. Charles provided unexpected bounty: 25 unarmed Union soldiers. The helpless Federals were lined up on the platform and stripped of their uniforms. Anderson ordered Clement to “muster out” the naked and half-naked prisoners. Little Archie, a pistol in each hand, gleefully began to shoot them, and the fusillade was joined by the other guerrillas. The event became known as the Centralia Massacre.

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A Union detachment chased the fleeing guerrillas, who turned at bay outside Centralia and killed 114 of their pursuers. David Pool proved that Archie Clement was not the only barbaric Bushwhacker. Pool chose to enumerate fallen enemies by jumping from one body to another. “If they are dead, I can’t hurt them, ‘he asserted. “I cannot count ‘em good without stepping on ‘em.”

On October 11, Anderson’s Bushwhackers sacked Boonville, while their leader joined Quantrill to capture Glasgow. Todd, riding with Jo Shelby’s cavalry division, was killed in battle near Independence on October 21, and Anderson fell five days later in a skirmish near Orrick.

Everywhere, Bushwhacker leaders were dying. On January 10, 1863, Joe Porter had been killed in a skirmish with Federal troops near Marshfield. Quantrill fled to Kentucky with a few loyal followers. On May 10, 1865, they were surprised by Federal rangers in Spencer County. Quantrill was shot in the back and lay in agony for nearly a month, paralyzed, before he died.

Archie Clement surrendered to Federal authorities at the end of the war, but he was shot from his horse in Lexington on December 13, 1866, while attempting to flee arrest by state militiamen. Jim Lane, too, died a violent death. Despondent over his failing political fortunes, Lane shot himself while in Lawrence on July 1, 1866, dying 10 days later.

Jesse James lasted longer–he was murdered in 1882, shot down in his own home by “the dirty little coward” Robert Ford, who was himself killed by a James supporter a few years later.

The Jayhawkers and Bushwhackers died off, some violently, some in the peace and prosperity of old age. But the wounds of the bitter struggles in Kansas and Missouri, which presaged the Civil War and epitomized its brutality, lasted. Understandably, the first years after the war saw emotions still running high on both sides, and a number of acts of violence and revenge, some by individuals, others by groups, continued to darken the public mind.

In one typical postwar incident, in the western hamlet of Haynesville, Mo., a pro-Union townsman named Loft Easton drank heavily and accused a former guerrilla captain named Jim Green (whom he had run into at a local grocery store) of being part of a company of Bushwhackers that had burned out Easton’s father during the war. Green attempted to reason with Easton, pleading with him “not to get in a fuss,” but the drunken man continued berating Green and all other Southern guerrillas he could bring to mind. Green, to his credit, attempted to walk away from the fight, pulling a pistol and telling Easton not to follow him. Easton kept coming, however, and a grocery clerk, perhaps attempting to keep the peace–or else a fellow Union sympathizer of Easton’s–tried to knock Green’s gun out of his hand. Instead, for his troubles, the clerk found himself on the fatal end of a stray shot from Easton.

Green dove for his pistol while Easton continued firing wildly. Getting up, he shot his assailant once, knocking him over, then coolly walked up and killed Easton with two more shots to the head. A local diarist, Sarah Harlan, herself a pro-Union resident of Haynesville, noted fairly, “I believe that everybody that seen it justifies Jim.” Green surrendered to the local sheriff and was placed on bond awaiting trial; he eventually was exonerated of all charges against him.

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