THE CIVIL WAR: THE TRUE STORY BOOK 1

The True Account of William "Bloody Bill" Anderson

Captain Willam Anderson: February 1st 1840- October 26th 1864: Aged 24

Born in Kentucky in 1840 before moving to Missouri and eventually living in Kansas when the Civil War started, Bill Anderson soon earned the nom de plume "Bloody Bill.

An unusual event made a guerrilla out of William Anderson. His family had been living in Council Grove, Territory of Kansas at the start of the war. After William Quantrill's raid on Aubry, Kansas on March 7, 1862, a Federal company from Olathe, Kansas sent a patrol from Company D, Eighth Kansas Jayhawker Regiment to investigate. Southern sympathizers living nearby were sought out and accused of aiding the raiders. William Anderson's father and uncle were named as such. When the Jayhawker company arrived at the Anderson farm on March 11th, William and his younger brother Jim were delivering 15 head of cattle to the U.S. commissary agent at Fort Leavenworth. When the brothers returned to their farm they found their father and uncle hanged in retaliation, their home burned to the ground, and all their possessions were stolen.

Two days later Bill and his brother Jim were both riding with William Quantrill. Anderson removed his sisters from Kansas where for a year they lived at various places stopping finally with the Mundy family on the Missouri side of the line near Little Santa Fe. When asked why he joined Quantrill, Anderson replied by saying, "I have chosen guerrilla warfare to revenge myself for wrongs that I could not honorable revenge otherwise. I lived in Kansas when this war commenced. Because I would not fight the people of Missouri, my native State, the Yankees sought my life but failed to get me. [They] revenged themselves by murdering my father, [and] destroying all my property."

By 1863, all Bill had left was a brother and two sisters that miraculously survived the August 13 Union jail collapse in Kansas City when Union guards from the 9th Kansas Jayhawker Regiment, serving as provost guards in town, intentionally collapsed a three-story brick building on a number of young Southern female prisoners. Fourteen-year-old Josephine Anderson was not only killed: the Yankees raped and murdered her. Bill's ten-year-old sister Martha's legs were horribly crushed crippling her for life while his sixteen-year-old sister Molly suffered serious back injuries and facial lacerations. Both girls would carry their battered bodies and emotional scars for years to come.

Anderson soon rose to the rank of captain in Quantrill's command. He is often accused of brutality and atrocities towards his Union enemies but, Anderson's own words belie that mistaken belief. In 1864 when Anderson rode east toward Boonville, Missouri to meet General Sterling Price as he was making his last raid into Missouri, Anderson split up his command in order to seek food and shelter from sympathizing farmers in the area. Union Major Austin King of the 6th Regiment, Missouri State Militia stationed in Fayette reported that his men, on September 12th, killed five of Anderson's men and captured seven horses and twelve pistols. One was 17-year-old Al Carter, who had moved his family to Howard County from Kansas City because of General Ewing's General Order No. 11. The other was 17-year-old Buck Collins, who was foraging for food with Carter when they were cut off and surrounded at a farmhouse by twenty-five Federals looking for Anderson. The Federals shot the two men from their saddles. After killing Carter, the soldiers shot out his eyes then scalped him. Carter had long black curly hair, and the Federals believed they had killed Anderson. The atrocity only showed the deep hatred of the Union troops toward the guerrillas and the brutal deeds of which they were capable.

On September 27th, Anderson was camped outside Centralia, Missouri. He took part in his company into town to search for much-needed supplies. A westbound train loaded with 25 Federal soldiers came into view. The guerrillas surrounded the cars. Eyewitnesses at the scene described how the soldiers on board with rifles crowded the windows and the platforms and fired briskly at the guerrillas. Before the firing stopped, Anderson's men overran the train. The 25 soldiers, most of whom were on furlough from General William T. Sherman's army, were taken from the train and lined up alongside the platform. Anderson questioned the soldiers and told them how Union troops had recently killed and scalped a number of men from his command. Anderson, still reeling from the recent loss of his closest men, announced, "You Federals have just killed six of my men, scalped them, and left them on the prairie. I will show you that I can kill men with as much skill and rapidity as anybody. From this time on I ask no quarter and give none." When the soldiers protested, Anderson replied, "You are Federals, and Federals scalped my men, and carry their scalps at their saddle bows. I have never allowed my men to do such things." One sergeant was singled out and spared for an exchange for one of Anderson's men recently captured.