Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri During the American Civil War [Paperback]

Michael Fellman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195064712 | ISBN-13: 978-0195064711 | Publication Date: April 19, 1990

During the Civil War, the state of Missouri witnessed the most widespread, prolonged, and destructive guerrilla fighting in American history. With its horrific combination of robbery, arson, torture, murder, and swift and bloody raids on farms and settlements, the conflict approached total war, engulfing the whole populace and challenging any notion of civility. Michael Fellman's Inside War captures the conflict from "inside," drawing on a wealth of first-hand evidence, including letters, diaries, military reports, court-martial transcripts, depositions, and newspaper accounts. He gives us a clear picture of the ideological, social, and economic forces that divided the people and launched the conflict. Along with depicting how both Confederate and Union officials used the guerrilla fighters and their tactics to their own advantage, Fellman describes how ordinary civilian men and women struggled to survive amidst the random terror perpetuated by both sides; what drove the combatants themselves to commit atrocities and vicious acts of vengeance; and how the legend of Jesse James arose from this brutal episode in the American Civil War.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Most important....Imaginatively using the abundant civilian and military sources available, Fellman constructs a compelling analysis of the impact of Missouri's irregualr warfare on the federl military, the guerillas, and the civilian population....Engrossing."--Georgia Historical Quarterly

"A detailed and well-written narrative account of the guerilla fighting in Civil War Missouri....Fellman deserves enormous praise for this insightful look into the complicated nature of guerilla warfare among ordinary Americans."--The Maryland Historian

"The best account I know of this 'inside' war--in Missouri or in any of the other border regions where it flared with lesser but still powerful intensity."--James M. McPherson, The New York Review of Books

"A powerful book, filled with some of the most immediate and unforgettable first-hand testimony available from nineteenth-century America. It brings the Civil War home front to life in a way no other book does, and does so with sophistication and subtlety."--Edward L. Ayers, University of Virginia

"If war is hell, Fellman here opens to us one of its innermost rings: a conflict breaking beyond limits, one in which Confederate guerrillas become brigands and executioners, Union soldiers become purveyors of an identical violence and civilians become helpless victims of all armed men. He depicts with power and persuasiveness an aspect of the American Civil War about which we do not ordinarily wish to think."--Gerald F. Linderman, author of Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War

"An original and significant contribution to the study of American history and culture. It fills in the factual background of a neglected aspect of the Civil War, the guerrilla struggle in Missouri. But in so doing it also illuminates the origins of one of our major myths, the legend of social banditry associated with Jesse James."--Richard Slotkin, Wesleyan University

"Fellman takes readers within the war itself....Inside War strips away the romantic nostalgia that surrounds the Missouri guerrillas on both sides."--The Kansas City Star

"Fellman takes readers within the war itself....Inside War strips away the romantic nostalgia that surrounds the Missouri guerrillas on both sides....A solidly researched, well-written book that gives a balanced account of the most traumatic, terrible years in Missouri history."--The Kansas City Star

"The author provides a model that other historians could profitably emulate in studying other areas and aspects of the Civil War....Inside War makes an original and significant contribution, not only to its field of study, but to an understanding of the consequences paid when law and order give way to anarchy, and civilization yields to barbarism, as they did in Civil War Missouri."--Civil War Times Illustrated

"Fellman...has a both a vivid narrative gift and a respect for firsthand documentation."--The New Yorker

About the Author

Michael Fellman is Professor of History at Simon Fraser University in Canada. He is the author of three previous books on nineteenth-century American history.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 19, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195064712
• ISBN-13: 978-0195064711
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #300,625 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Inside War, May 28, 2002

By 

K. Freeman (Apple Valley, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri During the American Civil War (Hardcover)

This is a very interesting, useful study of mentalities in Civil War Missouri. It covers guerrillas (by which Fellman generally means Confederate guerrillas rather than Jayhawkers), civilians, and Union troops in all their various permutations.

I found Fellman's scholarship to be generally well-founded, though he is sometimes a little credulous of sources -- there's one case where he quotes an unsigned letter to a hostile newspaper as if it were good evidence for an event -- and he makes some mistakes with events outside his purview (misidentifying Early's raid on Washington as cavalry only). In general, though, I found the research credible.

What disappointed me here was the lack of conclusions. We have description, and some analysis, but the book seems short on results. Particularly in his analysis of the combatants' regular army and governmental reaction to guerrillas, Fellman seems to contradict himself: on the one hand he chastises the Confederates as elitist, perhaps prudish, for disapproving of guerrilla warfare, and on the other hand he makes every effort to show just how horrible such warfare really was. At times, he overanalyzes; I didn't find the characterization of Civil War Americans as "Manichaean" convincing. You don't need to be a Manichaean to dehumanize your enemies in a war.

Despite these quibbles, I found the book valuable, certainly worth looking at for the study of mentalities in a region where war was literally at every door.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Draws you into a whole new aspect of the civil war., December 15, 1999

By 

Christopher Morris - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri During the American Civil War (Paperback)

Dr. Fellman has shown his expertise in the history field with this book. The author has done an excellent job of bringing to light the guerrilla conflict in Missouri. He has taken a previously unstudied event in history and made it available to all to study and become aware of. Backed up with innumerable quotes and primary documents, Dr. Fellman has provided the reader with undeniable evidence of his arguments and conclusions. "Inside War" is an excellent reference book concerning a specific aspect of the Civil War and can be read and understood by any college level student.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I'm glad I read this anyway, March 4, 2000

By 

Charles Chaffin (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri During the American Civil War (Paperback)

This was a rather difficult book to read; not so much from any fault of the author, but rather resulting from an effort to comprehensivly cover a topic for which relatively little is known. I found this book provactive from an emotional point of view; the primary sources certainly make the reader appreciate the devastation that must have occured to the (not so?) innocent by-stander. However, the book suffers from a whopping lack of focus in areas, and becomes somewhat repetitive. In addition, the theses of particular sections are often obscure, as are the conclusions. Despite this, "Inside War" is a wonderful book to read, although I felt that it was stuck in a nether region between a descriptive listing of primary sources and a thesis driven examination.