Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri During the American Civil War

By Michael Fellman

Book Overview

During the Civil War years, the state of Missouri was plunged into the most widespread, prolonged, and destructive guerrilla fighting in American history. Robbery, arson, torture, murder, swift and bloody raids on farms and settlements--these were the ingredients of the conflict. Approaching total war, the fighting engulfed the populace and challenged any notion of civility.
A slave state that rejected secession, Missouri was beset before the war by divisive tensions that exploded into extraordinary violence once the war began. "The guerrilla conflict," Michael Fellman writes, "truly was a spontaneous creation of the people, by the people, for the people, and against the people." It was a "natural," popular war, rather than a planned, disciplined one. Its "rules" grew directly out of local circumstances and bore scant relation to the history and traditions of martial order or to the dreams of a Christian Confederacy or a democratic United States. Little remained under control; little remained forbidden.
Fellman captures the conflict from the "inside," drawing on a wealth of first-hand evidence--letters, diaries, military reports, court-martial transcripts, depositions, and newspaper accounts. We gain a clear picture of the ideological, social, and economic forces that divided the populace and launched the conflict. We witness ordinary civilian men and women struggling to survive amid the random terror perpetuated by both sides. We learn how both Confederate and Union officials, contemptuous of guerrilla fighters and their tactics, nevertheless sought to use them to their own advantage. And we see at close hand what the combatants themselves were like--how they saw themselves, how others saw them, what drove them so often to commit atrocities and brutal acts of vengeance--and we learn about the beginnings of the legend of Jesse James and its origins in guerrilla war.
Vivid, probing, and often horrifying, Inside War illuminates a crucial episode of the American Civil War, shedding light not only on the institutional, strategic, and tactical elements but also the physical, emotional, and moral experiences of a people fully at war with themselves.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 019505198X
• ISBN13: 9780195051988
• Release Date: May 1989
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.5" x 1.2" x 6.4"

Customer Reviews

Succinct and penetrating analysis

The first book I have found that explains the whys and not just the hows of the slaughter that took place in Missouri during the Civil War. The author contends that, while most residents had pro-slavery sentiments, they were also pro-Union. Therefore, most of them were not pure enough ideologically for either side, and thus subject to punitive raids from both sides. I haven't finished it yet, but it is definitely the most incisive analysis I have read thus far.

Draws you into a whole new aspect of the civil war.

Dr. Fellman has shown his expertise in the history field with this book. The author has done an excellent job of bringing to light the guerrilla conflict in Missouri. He has taken a previously unstudied event in history and made it available to all to study and become aware of. Backed up with innumerable quotes and primary documents, Dr. Fellman has provided the reader with undeniable evidence of his arguments and conclusions. "Inside War" is an excellent reference book concerning a specific aspect of the Civil War and can be read and understood by any college level student.