"Partisan rangers" Topic

"During the American Civil War, groups of so-called "partisan rangers" engaged in bloody campaigns of guerilla attacks, raiding and psychological warfare against rival military units and civilians. These units had tenuous ties to the regular Confederate and Union Armies and were led by men who often operated outside the recognized rules of warfare…"

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Questions:

a) Anyone wargame this?
b) Regular Soldiers under a flag, or criminals hidden behind a flag?

Amicalement
Armand

Foundry has some figures for this in their Old West line, I believe. They are the Riding With the Devil and Bloody Border figures.

Regular Soldiers under a flag, or criminals hidden behind a flag?

OK I'll throw some gasoline on the fire.

I think you need to draw a distinction between those that operated in areas such as Kansas-Missouri and those like Mosby that operated elsewhere. In Kansas and along the Missouri frontier a very nasty war was being waged before Sumter was fired on, and this spread to adjacent areas as the war progressed. This tended to attract sadists, thieves and other unsavory elements and an outrage by one side resulted in an outrage by the other. Another area where this happened was in East Tennessee where Champ Ferguson and Beatty operated.

Thanks my friend.

Amicalement
Armand

Partisan Ranger was an official term. The Confederacy raised such units under special terms: they were entitled to keep a certain percentage of the stuff they captured from the Federals. Mosby's battalion was the most famous of these.

Guerillas such as Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson were, so far as I know, not so officially sanctioned, although Bloody Bill did have some orders from Sterling Price on him when he was killed.