Crime
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term "crime" does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition, though statutory definitions have been provided for certain purposes; the most popular view is. One proposed definition is that a crime or offence is an act harmful not only to some individual but to a community, society or the state; such acts are punishable by law. The notion that acts such as murder and theft are to be prohibited exists worldwide. What is a criminal offence is defined by criminal law of each country. While many have a catalogue of crimes called the criminal code, in some common law countries no such comprehensive statute exists; the state has the power to restrict one's liberty for committing a crime. In modern societies, there are procedures to which trials must adhere. If found guilty, an offender may be sentenced to a form of reparation such as a community sentence, or, depending on the nature of their offence, to undergo imprisonment, life imprisonment or, in some jurisdictions, execution.
To be classified as a crime, the "act of doing something criminal" must – with certain exceptions – be accompanied by the "intention to do something criminal". While every crime violates the law, not every violation of the law counts as a crime. Breaches of private law are not automatically punished by the state, but can be enforced through civil procedure; when informal relationships prove insufficient to establish and maintain a desired social order, a government or a state may impose more formalized or stricter systems of social control. With institutional and legal machinery at their disposal, agents of the State can compel populations to conform to codes and can opt to punish or attempt to reform those who do not conform. Authorities employ various mechanisms to regulate certain behaviors in general. Governing or administering agencies may for example codify rules into laws, police citizens and visitors to ensure that they comply with those laws, implement other policies and practices that legislators or administrators have prescribed with the aim of discouraging or preventing crime.
In addition, authorities provide remedies and sanctions, collectively these constitute a criminal justice system. Legal sanctions vary in their severity; some jurisdictions have penal codes written to inflict permanent harsh punishments: legal mutilation, capital punishment or life without parole. A natural person perpetrates a crime, but legal persons may commit crimes. Conversely, at least under U. S. law, nonpersons such as animals cannot commit crimes. The sociologist Richard Quinney has written about the relationship between crime; when Quinney states "crime is a social phenomenon" he envisages both how individuals conceive crime and how populations perceive it, based on societal norms. The word crime is derived from the Latin root cernō, meaning "I decide, I give judgment"; the Latin word crīmen meant "charge" or "cry of distress." The Ancient Greek word krima, from which the Latin cognate derives referred to an intellectual mistake or an offense against the community, rather than a private or moral wrong.
In 13th century English crime meant "sinfulness", according to etymonline.com. It was brought to England as Old French crimne, from Latin crimen. In Latin, crimen could have signified any one of the following: "charge, accusation; the word may derive from the Latin cernere – "to decide, to sift". But Ernest Klein rejects this and suggests *cri-men, which would have meant "cry of distress". Thomas G. Tucker suggests a root in "cry" words and refers to English plaint, so on; the meaning "offense punishable by law" dates from the late 14th century. The Latin word is glossed in Old English by facen "deceit, treachery". Crime wave is first attested in 1893 in American English. Whether a given act or omission constitutes a crime does not depend on the nature of that act or omission, it depends on the nature of the legal consequences. An act or omission is a crime if it is capable of being followed by what are called criminal proceedings. History The following definition of "crime" was provided by the Prevention of Crimes Act 1871, applied for the purposes of section 10 of the Prevention of Crime Act 1908: The expression "crime" means, in England and Ireland, any felony or the offence of uttering false or counterfeit coin, or of possessing counterfeit gold or silver coin, or the offence of obtaining goods or money by false pretences, or the offence of conspiracy to defraud, or any misdemeanour under the fifty-eighth section of the Larceny Act, 1861.
For the purpose of section 243 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1992, a crime means an offence punishable on indictment, or an offence punishable on summary conviction, for the commission of which the offender is liable under the statute making the offence punishable to be imprisoned either or at the discretion of the court as an alternative for some other punishment. A normative definition views crime as deviant behavior that violates prevailing norms – cult
William T. Anderson
William T. Anderson, known by the nickname "Bloody Bill" Anderson, was one of the deadliest and most notorious pro-Confederate guerrilla leaders in the American Civil War. Anderson led a band of volunteer partisan rangers that targeted Union loyalists and federal soldiers in the states of Missouri and Kansas. Raised by a family of Southerners in Kansas, Anderson began supporting himself by stealing and selling horses in 1862. After his father was killed by a Union loyalist judge, Anderson fled to Missouri. There he killed several Union soldiers. In early 1863 he joined Quantrill's Raiders, a group of pro-Confederate guerrillas which operated along the Kansas–Missouri border, he became a skilled bushwhacker, earning the trust of the group's leaders, William Quantrill and George M. Todd. Anderson's bushwhacking marked him as a dangerous man and led the Union to imprison his sisters; when there was a building collapse in the makeshift jail, one of them died in custody, another sister was permanently maimed, Anderson devoted himself to revenge.
He took a leading role in the Lawrence Massacre and participated in the Battle of Baxter Springs, both of which occurred in 1863. In late 1863, while Quantrill's Raiders spent the winter in Texas, animosity developed between Anderson and Quantrill. Anderson falsely, implicated Quantrill in a murder, leading to the latter's arrest by Confederate authorities. Anderson subsequently returned to Missouri as the leader of his own group of raiders and became the most feared guerrilla in the state and robbing dozens of Union soldiers and civilian sympathizers. Although Union supporters viewed him as incorrigibly evil, Confederate supporters in Missouri saw his actions as justified owing to their mistreatment by Union forces. In September 1864, Anderson led a raid on the town of Missouri. Unexpectedly, his men were able to capture a passenger train, the first time Confederate guerrillas had done so. In what became known as the Centralia Massacre, Anderson's bushwhackers executed 24 unarmed Union soldiers on the train and set an ambush that day that killed more than 100 Union militiamen.
Anderson himself was killed in battle a month later. Historians have made disparate appraisals of Anderson: some see him as a sadistic, psychopathic killer, but for others his actions cannot be separated from the general desperation and lawlessness of the time. William T. Anderson was born in 1840 in Kentucky, to William C. and Martha Anderson. His siblings were Jim, Mary Ellen and Janie, his schoolmates recalled him as a reserved child. During his childhood, Anderson's family moved to Huntsville, where his father found employment on a farm and the family became well-respected. In 1857, they relocated to the Kansas Territory, traveling southwest on the Santa Fe Trail and settling 13 miles east of Council Grove; the Anderson family supported slavery. Their move to Kansas was for economic rather than political reasons. Kansas was at the time embroiled in an ideological conflict regarding its admission to the Union as a slave or free state, both pro-slavery activists and abolitionists had moved there in attempts to influence its ultimate status.
Animosity and violence between the two sides developed in what was called Bleeding Kansas, but there was little unrest in the Council Grove area. After settling there, the Anderson family became friends with A. I. Baker, a local judge, a Confederate sympathizer. By 1860, the young William T. Anderson was a joint owner of a 320-acre property, worth $500. On June 28, 1860, William's mother, Martha Anderson, died after being struck by lightning. In the late 1850s, Ellis Anderson fled to Iowa after killing an Indian. Around the same time, William T. Anderson fatally shot a member of the Kaw tribe outside of Council Grove, he joined the freight shipping operation for which his father worked and was given a position known as "second boss" for a wagon trip to New Mexico. The trip was not successful and he returned to Missouri without the shipment, stating that his horses had disappeared with the cargo. After he returned to Council Grove he began horse trading, taking horses from towns in Kansas, transporting them to Missouri and returning with more horses.
After the Civil War began in 1861, the demand for horses increased and Anderson transitioned from trading horses to stealing them, reselling them as far away as New Mexico. He worked with his brother Jim, their friend Lee Griffith and several accomplices strung along the Santa Fe Trail. In late 1861, Anderson traveled south with brother Jim and Judge Baker in an apparent attempt to join the Confederate Army. Anderson had stated to a neighbor that he sought to fight for financial reasons rather than out of loyalty to the Confederacy. However, the group was attacked by the Union's 6th Regiment Kansas Volunteer Cavalry in Vernon County, Missouri; the Anderson brothers escaped, but Baker was captured and spent four months in prison before returning to Kansas, professing loyalty to the Union. One way that he sought to prove that loyalty was by severing his ties with Anderson's sister Mary, his former lover. Upon his return to Kansas, Anderson continued horse trafficking, but ranchers in the area soon became aware of his operations.
In May 1862, Judge Baker issued an arrest warrant for Griffith. Some local citizens suspected that the Anderson family was assisting Griffith and traveled to their house to confront the elder William Anderson. After hearing their accusations a
William Quantrill
William Clarke Quantrill was a Confederate guerrilla leader during the American Civil War. Having endured a tempestuous childhood before becoming a schoolteacher, Quantrill joined a group of bandits who roamed the Missouri and Kansas countryside apprehending escaped slaves. On this group became Confederate soldiers, who were referred to as "Quantrill's Raiders"; this group was a pro-Confederate partisan ranger outfit best known for their brutal guerrilla tactics, which made use of effective Native American field skills. Notable, William's group included the infamous young Jesse James and his older brother Frank James. Quantrill is noted as influential in the minds of many bandits and hired guns of the Old West as it was being settled. In May 1865, Quantrill was mortally wounded by Union troops in Central Kentucky, in one of the last engagements of the Civil War. William Quantrill was born at Canal Dover, Ohio on July 31, 1837, his father was Thomas Henry Quantrill of Hagerstown and his mother, Caroline Cornelia Clark, was a native of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.
Quantrill was the oldest of twelve children, four of whom died in infancy. By the time he was sixteen, Quantrill was teaching school in Ohio. In 1854, his abusive father died of tuberculosis. Quantrill's mother had to turn her home into a boarding house in order to survive. During this time, Quantrill helped support the family by continuing to work as a schoolteacher, but he left home a year and headed to Mendota, Illinois. Here, Quantrill took up a job in the lumberyards. One night while working the late shift, he killed a man. Authorities arrested him, but Quantrill claimed that he had acted in self-defense. Since there were no eyewitnesses and the victim was a stranger who knew no one in town, William was set free; the police urged him to leave Mendota. Quantrill continued his career as a teacher, moving to Fort Wayne, Indiana in February 1856; the district was impressed with Quantrill's teaching abilities, but the wages remained meager. Quantrill journeyed back home to Canal Dover that fall, with no more money in his pockets than when he had left.
Quantrill spent the winter in his family's diminutive shack in the impoverished town, he soon grew rather restless. Concurrently at this time, many Ohioans were migrating to the Kansas Territory in search of cheap land and opportunity; this included Henry Torrey and Harmon Beeson, two local men hoping to build a large farm for their families out west. Although they didn't trust the 19-year-old William, Bill's mother's pleadings persuaded them to let her son accompany them in an effort to get him to turn his life around; the party of three departed in late February 1857. Torrey and Beeson agreed to pay for Quantrill's land in exchange for a couple of months' worth of work, they settled at Marais des Cygnes. After about two months, Quantrill began to slack off when it came to working the land, he spent most days wandering aimlessly about the wilderness with a rifle. A dispute arose over the claim, he went to court with Torrey and Beeson; the court awarded the men what was owed to them, but Quantrill only paid half of what the court had mandated.
While his relationship with Beeson was never the same, Quantrill remained friends with Torrey. Shortly afterwards, Quantrill accompanied a large group of hometown friends in their quest to start a settlement on Tuscarora Lake, but soon neighbors began to notice Bill stealing goods out of other people's cabins, so they banished him from the community in January 1858. Soon thereafter, he signed on as a teamster with the U. S. Army expedition heading to Salt Lake City, Utah in the spring of 1858. Little is known of Quantrill's journey out west, he racked up piles of winnings by playing the game against his comrades at Fort Bridger but flushed it all on one hand the next day, leaving him dead broke. Quantrill joined a group of Missouri ruffians and became somewhat of a drifter; the group helped protect Missouri farmers from the Jayhawkers for pay and slept wherever they could find lodging. Quantrill traveled back to Utah and to Colorado, but returned in less than a year to Lawrence, Kansas, in 1859.
Before 1860, Quantrill appeared to support the anti-slavery side. For instance, he wrote to his good friend W. W. Scott in January 1858 that the Lecompton Constitution was a "swindle" and that James H. Lane, a Northern sympathizer, was "as good a man as we have here." He called the Democrats "the worst men we have for they are all rascals, for no one can be a democrat here without being one." However, in February 1860, Quantrill wrote a letter to his mother expressing his views on the anti-slavery supporters. He told her that he now detested Jim Lane, he said that the hanging of John Brown had been too good for him and that, "the devil has got unlimited sway over this territory, will hold it until we have a better set of man and society generally."In 1859, he was back in Lawrence, Kansas where he taught at a schoolhouse until it closed in 1860. He took up with brigands and turned to cattle rustling and anything else that could earn him money, he learned the profitability of capturing runaway slaves and devised plans to use free black men as bait for runaway slaves, whom he subsequently captured and returned to their masters in exchange for reward money.
In 1861, Quantrill went to Texas with a slaveholder named Marcus Gill. There they met Joel B. Mayes and joined the Cherokee Nations. Mayes was a half Scots-Irish, half Cherokee Indian Confederat
Lawrence massacre
The Lawrence massacre was an attack during the American Civil War by the Quantrill's Raiders, a Confederate guerilla group led by William Quantrill, on the Unionist town of Lawrence, Kansas. The attack on August 21, 1863 targeted Lawrence due to the town's long support of abolition and its reputation as a center for the Jayhawkers, which were free-state militia and vigilante groups known for attacking plantations in pro-slavery Missouri's western counties. By 1863, Kansas had long been the center of strife and warfare over the admission of slave versus free states. In the summer of 1856, the first sacking of Lawrence sparked a guerrilla war in Kansas that lasted for years. John Brown might be the best known participant in the violence of the late 1850s participating on the abolitionist or Jayhawker side, but numerous groups fought for each side during the "Bleeding Kansas" period. By the beginning of the American Civil War, Lawrence was a target for pro-slavery ire, having been seen as the anti-slavery stronghold in the state and, more a staging area for Union and Jayhawker incursions into Missouri.
The town and surrounding area were vigilant and reacted to any rumors that enemy forces might be advancing on the town. However, by the summer of 1863, none of the threats had materialized, so citizen fears had declined and defense preparations were relaxed. Lawrence was a headquarters for a band of Jayhawkers, who had initiated a campaign in late March 1863 with the purported objective to eliminate civilian support for the Confederate guerillas. In describing the activities of these soldiers, Union General Blunt stated, "A reign of terror was inaugurated, no man's property was safe, nor was his life worth much if he opposed them in their schemes of plunder and robbery." Indeed, many Jayhawker leaders like Charles "Doc" Jennison, James Montgomery, George Henry Hoyt terrorized Western Missouri, angering both pro-southern and pro-Union civilians and politicians alike. The historian Albert Castel thus concludes that revenge was the primary motive, followed by a desire to plunder; the retaliatory nature of the attack on Lawrence was confirmed by the survivors.
According to Albert Castel, "The universal testimony of all the ladies and others who talked with the butchers of the 21st ult. is that these demons claimed they were here to revenge the wrongs done their families by our men under Lane, Anthony and Co." Charles L. Robinson, the first Governor of Kansas and an eyewitness to the raid characterized the attack as an act of vengeance: "Before this raid the entire border counties of Missouri had experienced more terrible outrages than the Quantrill raid at Lawrence... There was no burning of feet and torture by hanging in Lawrence as there was in Missouri, neither were women and children outraged." Robinson explained that Quantrill targeted Lawrence because Jayhawkers had attacked Missouri "as soon as war broke out" and Lawrence was "headquarters for the thieves and their plunder."Quantrill himself said that his motivation for the attack was "to plunder, destroy the town in retaliation for Osceola." That was a reference to the Union's attack on Osceola, Missouri in September 1861, led by Senator James H. Lane.
Osceola was plundered and nine men were given a drumhead court-martial trial and executed. The collapse of the Women's Prison in Kansas City is often believed to have inspired some to join in on the attack. In a bid to put down the Missouri guerrilla raiders operating in Kansas, General Thomas Ewing, Jr. issued in April 1863 "General Order No. 10," which ordered the arrest of anyone giving aid or comfort to Confederate guerrillas. This meant chiefly girls who were relatives of the guerrillas. Ewing confined those arrested in a series of makeshift prisons in Kansas City; the women were sequentially housed in two buildings which were considered either too small or too unsanitary, before being moved to an empty property at 1425 Grand. This structure was part of the estate of the deceased Robert S. Thomas, George Caleb Bingham's father-in-law. In 1861 Bingham and his family were living in the structure, but in early 1862 after being appointed treasurer of the state of Missouri, he and his family relocated to Jefferson City.
Bingham had added a third story to the existing structure to use as a studio. At least ten women or girls, all under the age of 20, were incarcerated in the building when it collapsed August 13, 1863, killing four: Charity McCorkle Kerr, Susan Crawford Vandever, Armenia Crawford Selvey, Josephine Anderson—the 15-year-old sister of William T. "Bloody Bill" Anderson. A few days Nannie Harris died from her wounds. Survivors of the collapse included: Jenny Anderson, Susan Anne Mundy Womacks, Martha "Mattie" Mundy, Lucinda "Lou" Mundy Gray, Elizabeth Harris, Mollie Grindstaff. Anderson's 13-year-old sister, shackled to a ball-and-chain inside the jail, suffered multiple injuries including two broken legs. Rumors circulated. However, a 1995 study of the events and affidavits surrounding the collapse concludes this is "the least plausible of the theories." Instead, testimony indicated that alterations to the first floor of the adjoining Cockrell structure for use as a barracks caused the common wall to buckle.
The weight of the third story on the former Bingham residence contributed to the resultant collapse. Before the collapse of the jail, the arrest and planned deportation of the girls had enraged Quantrill's guerillas.
Slavery in the United States
Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of human chattel enslavement of Africans and African Americans, that existed in the United States of America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Slavery had been practiced in British America from early colonial days, was legal in all Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, it lasted in about half the states until 1865, when it was prohibited nationally by the Thirteenth Amendment. As an economic system, slavery was replaced by sharecropping. By the time of the American Revolution, the status of slave had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry; when the United States Constitution was ratified in 1789, a small number of free people of color were among the voting citizens. During and following the Revolutionary War, abolitionist laws were passed in most Northern states and a movement developed to abolish slavery. Northern states depended on free labor and all had abolished slavery by 1805.
The rapid expansion of the cotton industry in the Deep South after the invention of the cotton gin increased demand for slave labor to pick cotton when it all ripened at once, the Southern states continued as slave societies. Those states attempted to extend slavery into the new Western territories to keep their share of political power in the nation. Southern leaders wanted to annex Cuba as a slave territory; the United States became polarized over the issue of slavery, split into slave and free states, in effect divided by the Mason–Dixon line which delineated Pennsylvania from Maryland and Delaware. During the Jefferson administration, Congress prohibited the importation of slaves, effective 1808, although smuggling via Spanish Florida was not unusual. Domestic slave trading, continued at a rapid pace, driven by labor demands from the development of cotton plantations in the Deep South. More than one million slaves were sold from the Upper South, which had a surplus of labor, taken to the Deep South in a forced migration, splitting up many families.
New communities of African-American culture were developed in the Deep South, the total slave population in the South reached 4 million before liberation. As the West was developed for settlement, the Southern state governments wanted to keep a balance between the number of slave and free states to maintain a political balance of power in Congress; the new territories acquired from Britain and Mexico were the subject of major political compromises. By 1850, the newly rich cotton-growing South was threatening to secede from the Union, tensions continued to rise. Many white Southern Christians, including church ministers, attempted to justify their support for slavery as modified by Christian paternalism; the largest denominations—the Baptist and Presbyterian churches—split over the slavery issue into regional organizations of the North and South. When Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election on a platform of halting the expansion of slavery, seven states broke away to form the Confederacy; the first six states to secede held the greatest number of slaves in the South.
Shortly after, the Civil War began. Four additional slave states seceded after Lincoln requested arms in order to make a retaliatory strike. Due to Union measures such as the Confiscation Acts and Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the war ended slavery before ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865 formally ended the legal institution throughout the United States. Africans first came to the New World with Christopher Columbus in 1492. Juan Las Canaries was a crewman on the Santa Maria. Not much longer after, the first enslavement occurred in what would be the United States. In 1508, Ponce de Leon established the first settlement near present-day San Juan and began enslaving the indigenous Tainos. In 1513, to supplement the dwindling Tainos population, the first African slaves were imported to Puerto Rico; the first African slaves within the continental United States arrived via Santo Domingo to the San Miguel de Gualdape colony, founded by Spanish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón in 1526.
The ill-fated colony was immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De Ayllón and many of the colonists died shortly afterwards of an epidemic and the colony was abandoned; the settlers and the slaves who had not escaped returned to Haiti, whence. On August 28, 1565, St. Augustine, Florida was founded by the Spanish conquistador Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles and he brought three African slaves with him. During the 16th and 17th centuries, St. Augustine was the hub of the slave trade in Spanish colonial Florida and the first permanent settlement in the continental United States to include African slaves.60 years in the early years of the Chesapeake Bay settlements, colonial officials found it difficult to attract and retain laborers under the harsh frontier conditions, there was a high mortality rate. Most laborers came from Britain as indentured laborers, signing contracts of indenture to pay with work for their passage, their upkeep and training on a farm.
The colonies had agricultural economies. These indentured laborers were young people who intended to become permanent residents. In some cases, convicted criminals were transported to the colonies as indentured laborers, rather than being imprisoned; the indentured laborers were not slaves, but were required to work
Guerrilla warfare in the American Civil War
Guerrilla warfare in the American Civil War followed the same general patterns of irregular warfare conducted in 19th century Europe. Structurally, they can be divided into three different types of operations—the so-called'People's War','partisan warfare', and'raiding warfare'; each has distinct characteristics. The concept of a'People's war,' first described by von Clausewitz in his classic treatise On War, was the closest example of a mass guerrilla movement in the era. In general during the Civil War, this type of irregular warfare was conducted in the hinterland of the Border States, it was marked by a vicious neighbor-against-neighbor quality. It was frequent for residents of one part of a single county to take up arms against their counterparts in the rest of the vicinity. Bushwhacking, murder and terrorism were characteristics of this kind of fighting. Few participants were formally mustered into the actual armies. In many cases, it was civilian against opposing enemy troops. One such example was the opposing irregular forces operating in Missouri and northern Arkansas from 1862 to 1865, most of which were pro-Confederate or pro-Union in name only.
They isolated military forces of both sides with little regard for politics. From these semi-organized guerrillas, several groups formed and were given some measure of legitimacy by their governments. Quantrill's Raiders, who terrorized pro-Union civilians and fought Federal troops in large areas of Missouri and Kansas, was one such unit. Another notorious unit, with debatable ties to the Confederate military, was led by Champ Ferguson along the Kentucky-Tennessee border. Ferguson became one of the few figures of the Confederate cause to be executed after the war. Dozens of other small, localized bands terrorized the countryside throughout the border region during the war, bringing total war to the area that lasted until the end of the Civil War and, in some areas, beyond. Partisan warfare, in contrast, more resembled commando operations of the 20th century. Partisans were small units of conventional forces and organized by a military force for operations behind enemy lines; the 1862 Partisan Ranger Act passed by the Confederate Congress authorized the formation of these units and gave them legitimacy, which placed them in a different category than the common'bushwhacker' or'guerrilla'.
John Singleton Mosby formed a partisan unit, effective in tying down Federal forces behind Union lines in northern Virginia in the last two years of the war. Groups such as Blazer's Scouts, White's Comanches, the Loudoun Rangers, McNeill's Rangers, other similar forces at times served in the formal armies, but were loosely organized and operated more as partisans than as cavalry early in the war. Lastly, deep raids by conventional cavalry forces were considered'irregular' in nature; the "Partisan Brigades" of Nathan Bedford Forrest and John Hunt Morgan operated as part of the cavalry forces of the Confederate Army of Tennessee in 1862 and 1863. They were given specific missions to destroy logistical hubs, railroad bridges, other strategic targets to support the greater mission of the Army of Tennessee. Morgan led raids into Kentucky as well. In his last raid, he violated orders by going across the Ohio River and raiding in Ohio and Indiana as well, as he wanted to bring the war to the northern states.
This long raid diverted thousands of Union troops. He captured and paroled nearly 6,000 troops, destroyed bridges and fortifications, ran off livestock. By mid-1863, Morgan's Raiders had been destroyed in the late days of the Great Raid of 1863; some of his followers continued under their own direction, such as M. Jerome Clarke, who kept on with raids in Kentucky; the Confederacy conducted few deep cavalry raids in the latter years of the war because of the losses in experienced horsemen and the offensive operations of the Union army. Federal cavalry conducted several successful raids during the war but in general used their cavalry forces in a more conventional role. A good exception was the 1863 Grierson's Raid, which did much to set the stage for General Ulysses S. Grant's victory during the Vicksburg Campaign. Federal counter-guerrilla operations were successful in reducing the impact of Confederate guerrilla warfare. In Arkansas, Federal forces used a wide variety of strategies to defeat irregulars.
These included the use of Arkansas Unionist forces as anti-guerrilla troops, the use of riverine forces such as gunboats to control the waterways, the provost marshal's military law enforcement system to spy on suspected guerrillas and to imprison those captured. Against Confederate raiders, the Federal army developed an effective cavalry themselves and reinforced that system by numerous blockhouses and fortification to defend strategic targets. However, Federal attempts to defeat Mosby's Partisan Rangers fell short of success because of Mosby's use of small units operating in areas considered friendly to the Rebel cause. Another regiment known as the "Thomas Legion", consisting of white and anti-Union Cherokee Indians, morphed into a guerrilla force and continued fighting in the remote mountain back-country of western North Carolina for a month after Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House; that unit was never suppressed by Union forces, but voluntarily ceased hostilities after capturing the town of Waynesville, North Carolina, on May 10, 1865.
In the late 20th century, several historians focused on the Confederate government's decision to not use guerrilla
Kentucky in the American Civil War
Kentucky was a border state of key importance in the American Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln recognized the importance of the Commonwealth when, in a September 1861 letter to Orville Browning, he wrote: I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game. Kentucky gone, we can not hold Maryland; these all against us, the job on our hands is too large for us. We would as well consent to separation including the surrender of this capitol. Kentucky, being a border state, was among the chief places where the "Brother against brother" scenario was prevalent. Kentucky declared its neutrality at the beginning of the war, but after a failed attempt by Confederate General Leonidas Polk to take the state of Kentucky for the Confederacy, the legislature petitioned the Union Army for assistance. After early 1862 Kentucky came under Union control. Kentucky was the site of several fierce battles, including Perryville, it was host to such military leaders as Ulysses S. Grant on the Union side, who first encountered serious Confederate gunfire coming from Columbus and Confederate cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Forrest proved to be a scourge to the Union Army in western Kentucky making an attack on Paducah. Kentuckian John Hunt Morgan further challenged Union control, as he conducted numerous cavalry raids through the state. Kentucky was the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, his wife Mary Todd, his southern counterpart, Confederate President Jefferson Davis. In the historiography of the Civil War, Kentucky is treated as a border state, with special attention to the social divisions during the secession crisis and raids, internal violence, sporadic guerrilla warfare, federal-state relations, the ending of slavery, the return of Confederate veterans.35,000 Kentuckians served as Confederate soldiers. Kentucky's citizens were split regarding the issues central to the Civil War. In 1860, slaves composed 19.5% of the Commonwealth's population, many Unionist Kentuckians saw nothing wrong with the "peculiar institution". The Commonwealth was further bound to the South by the Mississippi River and its tributaries, which were the main commercial outlet for her surplus produce, although railroad connections to the North were beginning to diminish the importance of this tie.
The ancestors of many Kentuckians hailed from Southern states like Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, but many Kentucky children were beginning to migrate toward the North. Kentucky, along with North Carolina boasted the best educational systems in the South. Transylvania University had long been one of the most respected institutions of higher learning in the nation, while its reputation had begun to fade by 1860, other Kentucky schools like Centre College and Georgetown College were gaining prominence. Politically, the Commonwealth had produced some of the country's best known leaders. Former Vice-Presidents John C. Breckinridge and Richard M. Johnson both hailed from the state, as did Henry Clay, John J. Crittenden, U. S. President Abraham Lincoln, Confederate President Jefferson Davis. However, by the time of the Civil War, Kentucky was in a politically confused state; the decline of the Whig Party, which Clay had founded, had left many politicians looking for an identity. Many joined the Democratic Party, a few joined the newly formed Republican Party, while still others associated with one of numerous minor parties such as the Know Nothing Party.
In the 1860 presidential election, the Constitutional Union Party, with Tennessee-native John Bell as its presidential candidate and Massachusetts-native Edward Everett as its vice-presidential candidate, won the state. The party was composed of former Whigs and Know-Nothings. Kentucky was strategically important to both the South; the Commonwealth ranked ninth in population by 1860, was a major producer of such agricultural commodities as tobacco, wheat and flax. Geographically, Kentucky was important to the South because the Ohio River would provide a defensible boundary along the entire length of the state. Kentucky governor Beriah Magoffin believed that the rights of the Southern states had been violated and favored the right of secession, but sought all possible avenues to avoid it. On December 9, 1860, he sent a letter to the other slave state governors suggesting that they come to an agreement with the North that would include strict enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, a division of common territories at the 37th parallel, a guarantee of free use of the Mississippi River, a Southern veto over slave legislation.
Magoffin proposed a conference of slave states, followed by a conference of all the states to secure these concessions. Due to the escalating pace of events, neither conference was held. Magoffin called a special session of the Kentucky General Assembly on December 27, 1860, asked legislators for a convention of Kentuckians to decide the Commonwealth's course regarding secession; the majority of the General Assembly had Unionist sympathies and declined the governor's request, fearing that the state's voters would favor secession. The Assembly did, send six delegates to a February 4 Peace Conference in Washington, D. C. and asked Congress to call a national convention to consider potential resolutions to the secession crisis, including the Crittenden Compromise, authored by Kentuckian John J. Crittenden; when the General Assembly convened again on March 20, it called for a convention of the border states in the Kentucky capital of Frankfort on May 27, 1861. Again, the call went unheeded. Legislators passed a proposed Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution that would have guaranteed slavery in states w
