Indebtedness and the Origins of Guerrilla Violence in Civil War Missouri (Essay‪)‬

BY MOST MEASURES, T.E CONFEDERATE GUERRILLA INSURGENCY IN Missouri during the Civil War was the most widespread such conflict that has occurred on American soil. By one calculation, nearly twenty-seven thousand Missourians died in the violence. Owing to these conditions, the state's population dropped by one-third during the war, though an unknown number of those people later returned. Counterinsurgency measures tied up tens of thousands of Union troops with garrison and guard duty, search-and-destroy missions, and patrols. The relative level of guerrilla violence in various states can be gauged by comparing the states' total recorded numbers of clashes between guerrillas and regular troops over the course of the war. Missouri had by far the highest number. (1) This article examines the reasons for the anomalously high level of guerrilla violence in pro-Confederate parts of Missouri compared with other districts that were occupied by Union troops, including conquered parts of the Confederacy proper. Pro-Confederate Missourians had all the same reasons for "going to the brush" as did their counterparts elsewhere. But the Missourians had one additional grievance against Unionists that historians have previously missed. In 1861 the state's secessionist leaders hatched a large-scale financial conspiracy that failed with calamitous results, causing widespread indebtedness among Missouri's pro-Confederate population and the forced sale of hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland. Guerrillas from the counties with the heaviest land sales belonged disproportionately to these dispossessed families.