ANDERSON, WILLIAM
war against the state of Missouri and—if possi-
ble—even outdo Quantrill in bloodshed.
Commencing in the spring of 1864, Ander-
son led a band of some 50 guerrillas on a plun-
dering expedition across central Missouri.
Handfuls of Union soldiers and pro-Union
civilians were systematically robbed and
gunned down without mercy. The violence cli-
maxed on September 27, 1864, when Ander-
son, reinforced by gangs under Thomas Todd
and Si Gordon, stormed the frontier settle-
ment of Centralia, Missouri. Having robbed
the bank and several stage coaches, they then
torched a large section of the town. Anderson
also noted a railroad schedule that listed an
incoming train later that day. The raiders
bided their time until it arrived, killing the en-
gineer, looting the safe, and capturing 24
Union soldiers. All but one were summarily
put to death, with the single survivor being
exchanged for one of Anderson’s men held as
a prisoner. Shortly after the Anderson gang
rode off, a Union militia force arrived and gal-
loped after the raiders. Anderson cleverly
baited them into an ambush, surrounded
them, and took about 100 prisoners. As be-
fore, these captives were cruelly forced to
watch as the entire group was systematically
executed in batches. At one point Anderson
bragged that he had murdered so many sol-
diers that he “grew sick of killing them.”
Bloody Bill Anderson’s notoriety did not
prevent Gens. Sterling Priceand Jo Shelby
from employing his men as scouts during the
Confederates’ ambitious 1864 invasion of Mis-
souri. This effort came to grief at Westport on
October 23, 1864, a battle that finally secured
Missouri for the Union. Anderson, meanwhile,
had also met his demise. He was patrolling
outside the town of Orrick, Missouri, on Octo-
ber 27, 1864, when an ambush was sprung by
vengeful Jayhawkers. Anderson, reviled as
“the blood-drenched savage,” was killed in the
first volley, and his men were unable to re-
cover his body. The victorious Northerners,
elated by the demise of this hated outlaw, en-
gaged in a few macabre practices of their own.
They propped up Anderson’s body for public
exhibition, then photographed it holding a pis-
tol in both hands and bedecked in a striped
“guerrilla shirt.” The corpse was subsequently
decapitated by vengeful militiamen, with An-
derson’s head being impaled upon a telegraph
pole; his body was dragged through the streets
behind a horse. The remains were subse-
quently buried in an unmarked grave. Such
was the grisly end for one of the Civil War’s
most merciless Bushwhackers. With the likes
of outlaws Frank and Jesse James and others
trained by Anderson in the military arts of re-
connaissance and ambush, his legacy lived on.Bibliography
Castle, Albert E., and Thomas Goodrich. Bloody Bill
Anderson: The Short, Savage Life of a Civil War
Guerrilla. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books,
1998; Fellman, Michael.Inside War: The Guerrilla
Conflict in Missouri During the Civil War.New
York: Oxford University Press, 1989; Goodrich,
Thomas. Black Flag: Guerrilla Warfare on the West-
ern Border, 1961–1865.Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 1995; Goodrich, Thomas, Bloody
Dawn: The Story of the Lawrence Massacre.Kent,
OH: Kent State University Press, 1991; Hale, Donald
R. They Called Him Bloody Bill: The Life of
William Anderson, Missouri Guerilla.Clinton, MD:
Pritery, 1992; Smith, Robert B. “The James Boys Go
to War.” Civil War Times Illustrated 32, no 6.
(1994): 28–33, 58–62; Harris, Edwin E. “Bloody Bill
Anderson.” Westport Historical Quarterly8, no. 1
(1972): 29–32.