Lyon became the North’s first war hero. With little outside help he had organized, equipped, and trained an army, won the first significant Union victories of the war, and gained control of most of Missouri. But he had stirred up a hornets’ nest. Although guerrilla bands would have infested Missouri in any case, the polarization of the state by Lyon’s and Blair’s actions helped turn large areas into a no-man’s land of hit-and-run raids, arson, ambush, and murder.
