Jayhawker

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Jayhawkers were guerrilla fighters during the American Civil War in Kansas who often clashed with States' Rights and pro-slavery partisans, as well as Missouri militia units.

While the term originated during the Bleeding Kansas Affair, Civil War jayhawkers are to be distinguished from Free State Jayhawkers who fought during Bleeding Kansas, which occurred in the decade leading up to the Civil War. Some Civil War jayhawkers had in fact supported Kansas' admission to the union as a slave state, and had fought on the opposite side from the Free-Staters during the earlier conflict. Rather than anti-slavery sentiment, which motivated the Free-Staters, jayhawker bands organized to prevent and repel possible invasions of Kansas by Missouri bushwhackers. Some of their organizers, such as James Henry Lane, were nonetheless prominent abolitionist politicians. As is often the case in insurgencies, the conflict between bushwhackers and jayhawkers rapidly escalated into a succession of atrocities committed by both sides. The term "jayhawking" in fact became contemporary slang for stealing.

Well-known jayhawkers include Lane and Charles "Doc" Jennison. Lane and his band of militants wore red gaiters, earning them the nickname "Redlegs." This moniker is often used interchagably with the term "jayhawkers," although it is sometimes used to refer specifically to jayhawkers who refused to join units officially sanctioned by the U.S. Army. Guerrillas on both sides of the Missouri-Kansas border achieved some measure of legitimacy through sanction from the Federal and Confederate governments, and the bands who scorned such sanction were typically even more vicious and indiscriminate in their methods than their bureaucratically recognized counterparts.

Jayhawker bands waged numerous invasions of Missouri and also committed some of the most notorious atrocities of the Civil War, including the Lane-led massacre at Osceola, Missouri, in which the entire town was set aflame and many of the male residents killed. The sacking of Osceola inspired the 1976 film The Outlaw Josey Wales, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. Jayhawkers also were accused of engineering the collapse of a jail in Kansas City in which female relatives of bushwhackers were incarcerated by Union sympathizers because of their connection to pro-Confederate guerrillas. These two incidents precipitated the Lawrence Massacre in Lawrence, Kansas, led by William Quantrill and his band of bushwhackers, who retaliated by setting the town on fire and killing an estimated 200 male residents.

[edit] Cultural influence

The sports teams at the University of Kansas in Lawrence are known as the Jayhawks. The Jayhawk is a mythical bird, a cross between a blue jay and a sparrow hawk. It was believed to attack its prey from ambush.
A cattle-drive being held up by Jayhawkers is depicted in The Tall Men.

[edit] References

Castel, Albert (1997). Civil War in Kansas: Reaping the Whirlwind. (ISBN 0700608729)
Kerrihard, Bo. "America's Civil War: Missouri and Kansas." TheHistoryNet.
Starr, Steven J (1974). Jennison's Jayhawkers: A Civil War Cavalry Regiment and its Commander. (ISBN 0807102180)