Tara Lake

Atlanta, GA
Posted July 16, 2014
www.TaraLake.com
Micheal Fellmans Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri
During the American Civil War Review
By Tara Lake
Michael Fellman, author of Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri During the
American Civil War, delves into the troubling history of sectional guerilla conflict that plagued
Missouri beginning in 1861. Fellman, who takes pains to humanize citizen Missourians as
family-centered, property-owning farmers, evangelical Christians, and lovers of law and order,
nevertheless depicts a state that, primed by the troubling warfare of the Bloody Kansas episodes
of the previous decades, devolved into a chaotic place of war where rules of engagement and
citizen safety were shattered
1
.
In a sense, Fellman introduces the reader to a separate, and nearly distinct Civil War
one he positions, successfully, as the worst guerilla war in American History
2
. Largely a
collection of accounts, Inside War paints a vivid picture of a troubling period. In particular,
Fellmans explorations of the impact on civilian life and the impact on the lives and public
symbolism of women brought to bear by the violence of the guerilla struggle are notable
exemplary of the value of the book as a close study of a period to often overlooked in traditional
Civil War historiography.

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Utilizing archival documents and the records of testimonies collected by authorities such
as Federal hearing boards, Fellman demonstrates the precarious existence endured by civilians in
Missouri and Kansas, who were often beholden to the capricious will of unknown armed men.
Fellman describes the complex nature of guerilla alliances and tactics revealing the likelihood
of personal revenge or criminality enacted under the guise of wartime legitimacy. Guerrillas
might be well-known local boys, a neighbor, or an entire stranger from either the Union or
Federal forces
3
. Fellmans study highlights the peculiarities of Missouri making the state so ripe
for such exploitation. Missouri, Fellman argues, could be considered a border state in every
sense of the word Not merely vulnerable to attack from outside its borders, but characterized
by a shifting social, political and economic landscape were sentiments and senses of identity
were closely held. Critically, the long shifting and confused border between Union and
Confederacy was wide open to attack and counter-attack, and the states people were bitterly
divided internally
4
.
Fellman presents the marked contrasts of the region as critical social elements throughout
the state, which included citizens in resistance to the older, would-be aristocracy of slaveholders
along the border and those in resistance to the market economy spreading from the
Northeast
5
. And there were the personal contentions that exploded under guerilla violence,
Fellman reasons. Fellmans study reveals a chaotic environment where, in the absence of
military companies the improvised war often assumed a deadly guerrilla nature as local citizens
took up arms spontaneously against their neighbors
6
. While the reason for such scuffles, attacks
and killings could be political in nature, they could also be only scantily related to the war as

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Fellmans work demonstrates. To substantiate the authors claims, he includes documented
accounts of guerilla acts of terror, including one of the most notable attacks of the war, the raid
on Lawrence, Kansas led by William C. Quantrill and manned by 500 guerillas. Fellmans
description offers hints of the political and wartime motivations of the attack the town, which
suffered the loss of 150 civilian men and boys squarely in Union territory, could have been
viewed as a recruiting ground for Federal forces.
Fellmans book argues that, more often than not raids were not so large in scope and
often could not be as easily justified by the objectives of the war or political differences. The
example of Ellen Brookshire terrorized by Confederate-sympathizer guerillas into providing
food and terrified by the likelihood of some unfriendly neighbor reporting her family as
guerrilla supporters to the union authorities, is one such example. Another would be that of
Pauline Ellison, widowed and alone with five daughters, who was so frightened after being
robbed for a pencil and threatened with the burning of her home that it took a month for federal
authorities to persuade her to identify the two guerrillas whom in fact she had known for nine
yearsneighbors of long standing
7
. Fellmans use of records and testimony unites with a clear
socio-economic deconstruction of the guerilla conflict in Missouri to reveal a perfect storm of
sorts one that fueled a guerilla war in which terror was both a method and goal in a series of
broader aims: food, arms, horses, loot, information, ridding the region of enemy civilians, and
above all, revenge
8
.
Fellmans study paints the picture of an assaulted society in which the face to face
nature of traditional rural society was no guarantee of social harmony
9
. Little else could be

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trusted especially the assumption that guerillas were necessarily Confederate sympathizers or
affiliated militias or troops. Utilizing documented testimonies, Fellman argues that men in
Federal uniforms also raided and attacked the homes of civilians, often utilizing the uncertainty
of appearance. With the story of Elizabeth Hawkins (raided by men in pale blue pants, deep
blue jackets, and pale blue overcoats) and that of an elderly male resident of Boonville, (robbed
for 13 horses and mules by Union volunteers masquerading as Confederate soldiers), Fellman
highlights the unethical and violent actions of Union soldiers and guerillas who preyed as
mightily on civilians as did their Confederate counterparts. As the author indicates, Union
soldiers could imply that they were Confederate bushwhackers pretending to be Union
troops!
10
. Fellmans descriptions of Confederate violence among neighbors and Union
duplicity emphasize the authors arguments on the singularity of the Missouri guerilla conflict in
American Civil War history.
While many of Fellmans selected accounts of prominently feature women, Fellmans
text also explores, specifically, the ways in which chivalric notions of the protection of
womanhood strained, and often collapsed, under the stresses of guerilla warfare. Within this
context, A wish to strike back at those women who were active participants on the enemy side
contradicted a powerful desire to remain gentlemen to the ladies
11
. Fellmans narrative
demonstrates the ways in which women in the Union and Confederate regions of Missouri found
ways to register their distaste for enemy politics and abuses, even when these acts placed them in
physical and mortal danger and could lead to repercussions such as imprisonment and loss of
resources. Fellman argues that, like male civilians in a guerrilla war theater, women were both

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victims and actors
12
. However, unlike men, women were often without the support of
weaponry and male comrades, which could provide protection. Lack of protection, Fellman
argues, could have disastrous or deadly consequences.
Chivalric codes of white soldiers on both sides of the conflict often protected women
from violence, but Fellman notes that this protection was often hollow. Womens personhood
might be spared, but their adult male relatives, their property, homes, clothing, food, and dignity
were likely targets. Too, the promise of chivalric protection was fragile indeed and extended
only to white women who were considered well behaved. All others could expect the worst
treatment. Through the use of several accounts, Fellman proves that, [i]f rape [of white women]
was unusual, extreme brutality toward women was common, including what one might call near
rape or symbolic rape
13
. The case of a raid on Mary Halls home demonstrates this. The
woman suffered the robbery of her home, along with the threatened murder of her children
(whose clothing was set afire beneath their bed), the murder of her young adult son, and the near-
rape of her 16-year-old niece. Fellman describes this type of attack as characteristic of guerilla
invasions of the realm of women, part of a set of behaviors that lay on the dark side of the code
of protecting women
14
.
Some abandoned the code altogether, Fellman argues, a theory he demonstrates with an
account of the murder of a widow by Confederate guerilla forces in response to her refusal to
feed men who threatened her, which they had interpreted as an insult to their honor from an
alien woman
15
. Fellman convincingly argues that such breeches were more common when
African or Native American women were the targets. The scholar notes that the moral

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framework of the guerilla honor code of protection toward women and children applied to
white women only: black women and Indian women were below the pale for fighters on both
sides. Indeed one might argue that all white women were treated with respect in part because
other non-white women were available to be trampled
16
. This was the case in the sexual assault
of an enslaved 18-year-old woman, allegedly by guerilla James Johnson.
Perhaps to emphasize the extraordinary wrongs visited upon women and children deemed
outside the coverage of the complicated notions of chivalry held by guerillas, Fellman recounts
the infamous Sand Creek massacre of the Cheyenne people, in which women and children were
murdered, scalped, and dismembered. Fellman uses this example to great effect, recalling the
practice of displaying, in various ways, the dismembered genitalia of massacred women, an act
that shatters any notion of propriety and sensibility towards the protection of womanhood. In
this way, Fellman bolsters his claim that insufferable abuses were common in the environment
produced by guerilla warfare in Missouri.
Fellmans text is a comprehensive study of a troubling collection of events occasioned by
the Missouri guerilla conflict during the Civil War. Employing a substantial use of documents
and testimonials, Fellman reveals a complex society of loyalties, vendettas, political strife, class
struggle, and gender dynamics, all of which are reshaped by the circumstances of both a
legitimate war and a guerilla conflict where alliances were constantly shifting and unreliable.
Fellmans work demonstrates the wide range of impact of the conflict: on Union policy, on a
wide-scale Confederate-waged guerilla war that did not materialize (largely because of
Missouris strife), on the role of guerilla identity in the reconstruction of manhood in Missouri
territory, and on the creation of Missouris peculiar Civil War legacy and heritage. Beyond the

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authors study of the immense impact of guerilla warfare and the disintegration of traditional
gender constructions and order in civilian Missouri, Fellmans study of the Guerilla Conflict of
Missouri provides a compelling framework of understanding of several extraordinary years and a
decades-long legacy of a fascinating complexity of circumstances that demands further study.