William T. Anderson
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William T. Anderson a.k.a "Bloody Bill" (1839–October 26, 1864) was a pro-Confederate guerrilla leader in the American Civil War, known for his brutality towards Union soldiers and pro-Union civilians in Missouri and Kansas.
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[edit] Early years
Anderson was raised in Randolph County, Missouri by his parents, William Anderson, Sr., a hat maker, and Martha (Thomason) Anderson. In 1850, his father travelled to California, leaving Anderson and his two brothers, Ellis and James, to provide for the family in his absence. After William Anderson Sr. returned from California, the Anderson family moved to Agnes City Township, Kansas, in 1857.
Anderson worked for a time on a wagon train and allegedly was suspected of horse theft. He supposedly conducted several forays into Missouri, primarily to steal horses. However, these may simply be post-war tales meant to blacken his name even further. Anderson's father was murdered in March 1862. Most accounts claim a neighbor did it and that Anderson and his brother Jim later confronted the neighbor, killing him and another man. Now in trouble with the law, Anderson had to leave Kansas.
[edit] Anderson as a guerrilla
By the spring of 1863, if not earlier, Anderson and his brother Jim had become bushwhackers and joined Quantrill's Confederate guerrilla company. Anderson later became one of Quantrill's lieutenants. The same year, Union authorities, frustrated by their failure to stamp out the bushwhackers, decided to arrest relatives of the leading members of Quantrill's guerrilla company. Anderson's sisters, Mary, Josephine, and Martha, were imprisoned with nine other women, all accused of assisting Confederate partisans. They were housed in a Kansas City, Missouri building which had been made structurally unsound by Union soldiers, who removed partitions and posts in an effort to make more space. On August 14, the building collapsed, killing four of the women, including Josephine. Anderson's sister Mary survived, but was permanently crippled. This incident has been considered the spark for the virulent brutality that Anderson would henceforth demonstrate against Union soldiers and civilians.
On March 2, 1863, Anderson married Bush Smith of Sherman, Texas. They later moved to a farm in Ray County, Missouri, but Anderson continued his guerrilla activities.
[edit] Raids on Lawrence, Kansas, and Centralia, Missouri
Anderson participated in Quantrill's raid on Lawrence, Kansas on August 21, 1863, which was meant to avenge the Sacking of Osceola, Missouri by Kansas Jayhawkers nearly two years earlier. About 200 civilian men and boys were reported to have been killed and many homes and buildings in Lawrence were burned to the ground. Soon afterward, Quantrill led his men on a winter retreat to Texas. There he and Anderson quarreled, and Anderson returned to Missouri in March 1864 at the head of his own guerrilla organization.
In 1864 Anderson gained notoriety for his particular savagery against Union soldiers and civilian sympathizers alike. He and his men usually shot their prisoners, and often mutilated and scalped the dead. He dictated or perhaps personally wrote letters to newspapers in Lexington, Missouri, promising further violence against pro-Union civilians and threatening to take women of Union families as hostages. In one of them, he wrote: "I have chosen guerilla warfare to revenge myself for the wrongs that I could not honorably avenge otherwise. I lived in Kansas when the war commenced. Because I would not fight the people of Missouri, my native state, the Yankees sought my life but failed to get me. Revenged themselves by murdering my father, destroying all my property, murdered one of my sisters and have kept the other two in jail for 12 months. But I have fully glutted my vengeance. I have killed many, I am a guerilla. I have never belonged to the Confederate Army, nor do my men."
That year he was joined by a group of recruits who had served briefly with Archie Clement, his own lieutenant; these recruits included Frank James, who had been one of Quantrill's Raiders, and the sixteen-year-old Jesse James. During this time, Anderson's men adopted the practice of dangling the bloody scalps of their victims from their horse bridles.
On September 27, 1864, Anderson led fellow bushwhackers in the Centralia Massacre (Missouri), looting and burning buildings and terrifying the local populace. They barricaded the tracks of the Northern Missouri Railroad, and forced a train to stop. They robbed the civilian passengers, and killed 21 Union soldiers who were returning home to Iowa and northwest Missouri on furlough. Anderson left one Union sergeant alive for a possible prisoner exchange; the rest he had stripped, shot, and scalped or otherwise mutilated.
The same day, Union Major A.V.E. Johnston of the 39th Missouri Infantry Volunteers set off with his men to pursue Anderson's band. Anderson, in conjunction with other guerrilla leaders such as George Todd, sent out a detachment that lured Johnston into a trap. After discharging their single-shot rifles with little effect, the Union solders retreated in a panic as the guerrillas cut them down. Those who tried to surrender were executed. Around 120 mounted infantrymen were killed in the ambush and pursuit. Bodies of the soldiers were decapitated and mutilated by some of the guerrillas.
[edit] Anderson's death
During the Centralia massacre, the attention of Union commanders in Missouri was drawn south by the incursion of General Sterling Price with 12,000 men. After a costly attack on a federal garrison at Pilot Knob, Missouri, Price turned away from St. Louis and marched west, drawing Union forces south of the Missouri River. Anderson briefly consulted with Price, then returned to the north side of the river, where he faced only local Union militia forces.
Forced to confront Anderson's marauding in north Missouri, the Union headquarters gave Colonel Samuel P. Cox command of a large detachment of Missouri militiamen, with orders to find and kill the notorious bushwhacker. On October 26, 1864, he located Anderson's men near Albany, Missouri.
Cox used one of Anderson's favorite tactics against him. He sent out a mounted detachment to lure the guerrillas into a trap. The trick worked. Anderson led his men on a headlong charge after the retreating Union cavalrymen, straight into a firing line. He was shot twice in the head, and toppled from his horse behind the Union line. Found on Anderson's body after his death was a silken cord with fifty-three knots. It was believed that this was his way of keeping a record of his killings. Human scalps were also found on the bridle. His body was taken to Richmond, Missouri and was put on public display and photographed. His body was then dragged through the streets before being buried in an unmarked grave in Richmond's Pioneer Cemetery. His birth year was incorrectly put as 1840 on a tombstone years after his death.
[edit] Trivia
Like other noted western figures (such as Jesse James and Billy the Kid), Anderson had his impersonators. One tale has him changing his name and running a saloon in Oklahoma. In 1924, a Brown County, Texas settler named William Columbus Anderson was interviewed by Henry C. Fuller, a staff writer for the Brownwood Banner-Bulletin. Anderson claimed that he was the real Bloody Bill and that another guerrilla's body had been mistakenly identified as his. W. C. lived in a big farmhouse he built at Salt Creek, near Brownwood, until his death at age eighty-seven in 1927.
[edit] Sources
- Albert E. Castel, Thomas Goodrich, Bloody Bill Anderson: The Short, Savage life of a Civil War Guerilla
- Edward E. Leslie,The Devil Knows How to Ride: The True Story of William Clarke Quantrill and His Confederate Raiders
- Thomas Goodrich Bloody Dawn: The Story of the Lawrence Massacre
- T.J. Stiles, [http://www.
[edit] External links
- Official website for the Family of Frank & Jesse James: Stray Leaves, A James Family in America Since 1650: http://www.ericjames.org
- Biography of Bloody Bill Anderson
- Biography of Bloody Bill Anderson
- page about Bloody Bill
