Civil War
During the American Civil War, savage guerrilla warfare wracked Missouri. Younger fought as a guerrilla under William Clarke Quantrill. The fighting in Missouri during the Civil War was largely between pro-Union and pro-Confederate Missourians, though the bushwhackers held special hatred for the Union troops from Kansas who frequently crossed the border and earned a reputation for ruthlessness. Younger joined the Confederate guerrilla leader Quantrill in a raid on August 21, 1863, taking part in the killing of some 200 men and boys at Lawrence, Kansas, which the guerrillas looted and burned.
Younger later claimed he left the bushwhacker ranks to enlist in the Confederate Army, and was sent to California on a recruiting mission. He returned after the Southern defeat to find Missouri under the rule of a militant faction of Unionists, the Radicals, who soon took over the regular Republican Party in the state. In the closing days of the war, the Radicals pushed through a new state constitution that barred Confederate sympathizers from voting, serving on juries, holding public office, preaching the gospel, or carrying out any number of public roles. The constitution also freed the slaves ahead of the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It enacted a number of reforms, but the restrictions on former Confederates created disunity.
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Famous quotes related to civil war:
“I wish to see, in process of disappearing, that only thing which ever could bring this nation to civil war.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“One of the greatest difficulties in civil war is, that more art is required to know what should be concealed from our friends, than what ought to be done against our enemies.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“They have been waiting for us in a foetor
Of vegetable sweat since civil war days,
Since the gravel-crunching, interminable departure
Of the expropriated mycologist.”
—Derek Mahon (b. 1941)