"Guerrilla Warfare in Civil War Missouri 1862 " Topic

"I am about half way through the first volume (the year of 1862) of the four volume set of Guerrilla Warfare in Civil War Missouri by Bruce Nichols. (That is before my Kindle Fire started to go down hill – see my previous blog entry.) By now, I feel I can reasonably give an opinion on the book, as well as give a couple of examples of some actions that are covered in the book, but first is a quick review of the book itself.

The book sort of has a Southern slant to it, but it is fairly neutral. The author admits in the preface that he was going to be focusing more on the guerrillas and southern recruitment missions and their leadership than on the Union forces. I think he covered a fair bit on the various Union forces too, but I wish that he did spend some more time covering them. The first book is broken down into four main parts, covering the four seasons of 1862: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. Between the four seasons, the author has a couple of chapters on various subjects, like why the guerrilla bands started to be created, or the raising of the pro-Union Enrolled Missouri Militia (a part-time militia force.) Each seasonal part is then broken down into four regional sections of Missouri, Northwest, Northeast, Southeast, and Southwest. This way the author discusses a events in the northwest part of Missouri during the winter before moving on to discuss the next region, until everything is covered for that season and proceeding on to the next season in the same fashion. I actually like this method as if you were only using the book to research the events in the southwest region of Missouri, you can easily found the various regional sections in each seasonal parts. Finally, each regional section is broken down again into sub-sections that covers specific events, leaders, actions, or counties which would help to speed up research. Unfortunately, a lot of actions are not very detailed as there is not much information on them other than causalities listed…"

Full review here
link

Amicalement
Armand

I've always been fascinated by that photo because outdoor photos of soldiers taken in Missouri are extremely rare. If it is a company of the 9th Missouri State Militia Cavalry in St. Joseph, it was probably taken between April 1863 and March 1864. During that period the companies of the 9th MSM Cavalry were dispersed to counter guerrilla attacks against the St. Joseph and Hannibal RR from St. Joseph to Hannibal and the North Missouri RR from Macon to St. Charles. Although a cavalry outfit, the company pictured is armed with short infantry muskets. It would not be unusual for each company in an MSM regiment to be armed with one or more different type of weapon right up until the end of the war.

Where are the horses? (smile)

Thanks for the data my friend.

Amicalement
Armand

Part 2 here.

link

Hope you enjoy!

Amicalement
Armand