The Civil War Guerrilla: Unfolding the Black Flag in History, Memory, and Myth

New Directions in Southern History

by Joseph M. Beilein Jr. (Contributor), Christopher Phillips (Contributor), Victoria E. Bynum (Afterword)

Most Americans are familiar with major Civil War battles such as Manassas (Bull Run), Shiloh, and Gettysburg, which have been extensively analyzed by generations of historians. However, not all of the war's engagements were fought in a conventional manner by regular forces. Often referred to as "the wars within the war," guerrilla combat touched states from Virginia to New Mexico. Guerrillas fought for the Union, the Confederacy, their ethnic groups, their tribes, and their families. They were deadly forces that plundered, tortured, and terrorized those in their path, and their impact is not yet fully understood.

In this richly diverse volume, Joseph M. Beilein Jr. and Matthew C. Hulbert assemble a team of both rising and eminent scholars to examine guerrilla warfare in the South during the Civil War. Together, they discuss irregular combat as practiced by various communities in multiple contexts, including how it was used by Native Americans, the factors that motivated raiders in the border states, and the women who participated as messengers, informants, collaborators, and combatants. They also explore how the Civil War guerrilla has been mythologized in history, literature, and folklore.

"The Civil War Guerrilla" sheds new light on the ways in which thousands of men, women, and children experienced and remembered the Civil War as a conflict of irregular wills and tactics. Through thorough research and analysis, this timely book provides readers with a comprehensive examination of the guerrilla soldier and his role in the deadliest war in U.S. history.

Genres: History, Civil War

258 pages, Hardcover

First published March 3, 2015

Reviews

[Preston Moore]

This work is tilted a more to the scholarly side of writing. It is a collection of eight independent essays edited by Joseph Beilein and Matthew Hurlbert. The overall purpose is to determine where the truth lies in the guerrilla conflict of the Civil War, and the Introduction begins by questioning the historicity of the guerrilla black flag of no quarter. As flags and banners were not commonly used in irregular warfare, the black flag was likely not the ubiquitous symbol of the guerrilla, despite its prominent place in the popular conception of Civil War guerrillas. Guerrillas were complex humans – men, women, and children – who experienced the war in myriad ways and sided with the Union, the Confederacy, ethnic groups, tribes, and families. The first four essays are geographically focused. The last four essays look at the guerrilla war in recollection and fiction. Altogether, the essays of this work analyze the history, memory, and myths surrounding guerrilla warfare and bring the reader closer to an understanding of the complex nature of the irregular component of the Civil War. Geography and local conditions, collective ideologies and individual motives, and ethnicity and family all contributed to the struggle. Additionally, memories, myths, and fiction surrounding those elusive figures who did not leave many historical records, shape the present-day conception of Civil War guerrillas.

[Shannon Pritchard]

Revisionist history

This seems to be a work by the prototypical self proclaimed intellectuals who really have no idea of real life and hard men. The have nerdy college boy ideas that they write about in chapters full of pretend understanding with titles like "Spatiotemporal Patterns within Missouri’s Irregular Civil War". Their main goal seems make the false argument that a bunch of robbed, burnt out and hunted non slave holders were really fighting to defend slavery.