A history of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas: being an account of the early settlements, the Civil War, the Ku-Klux, and times of peace

Abstract

A History of Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas: Being an Account of the Early Settlements, the Civil War, the Ku-Klux, and Times of Peace. By William Monks; edited and with an introduction by John F. Bradbury Jr. and Lou Wehmer. (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2003. Pp. lxvii, 194. Series editor's preface by Daniel E. Sutherland, introduction, notes, map, illustrations, index. $29.95.) Guerrilla. Any Civil War scholar or buff can tell you what it means. With the notable exception of John Mosby's Virginians, guerrilla are usually understood to be irregular Confederate troops fighting under their own auspices, usually in less important areas of the war, like the transMississippi theater. Notable western guerrilla leaders included such men as William Quantrill, whose sack of Lawrence, Kansas, became the classic brutal attack on enemy civilians; George Todd, whose terrible revolver fighters used multiple, rapid-firing six-shooters to butcher Union soldiers armed with single-shot rifles; Bloody Bill Anderson, whose band staged the infamous Centralia Massacre, murdering unarmed Union soldiers going home on leave. Arch Clements, Jesse and Frank James, Cole Younger and his numerous brothers, the list goes on and on. These men made life in Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, and the Indian nations a true horror to pro-Union civilians and soldiers alike. But William Monks' memoir is about pro-Union guerrillas, and therein lies its importance and uniqueness. Part of the series Civil War in the West, compiled by the eminent regional historian Daniel Sutherland, Monks' book is a reprint of a 1907 volume. Edited and annotated masterfully by John F. Bradbury Jr. and Lou Wehmer, experts in the Civil War in Arkansas and Missouri, Monks' tale is one of a very few extant about a different type of guerrilla fighter, one who fought to keep the Union whole. His secessionist neighbors dismissed him as an ally of the lop-eared Dutch and nigger-lovers out of pro-Union St. Louis (p. 39). As with most memoirs written late in life, Monks steps lightly over many events that might harm his image, while treating those that reveal his opponents for what he thought them to be with more precision. One of the more fascinating sections of the book involves Monks' description of life in the Arkansas-Missouri border region before the Civil War. The emphasis on subsistence agriculture, herding and droving of wild hogs and cattle, and the abundance of wild game for hunting corresponds to the picture painted by local writers (John Wolf, Silas Turnbo, Theodore Russell) and to later descriptions of the nonslaveholding South in general by such historians as Grady McWhiney and Forrest McDonald. Also of interest is the roundabout way in which the Monks family arrived in the Ozark region from Alabama, circulating through Kentucky, Illinois, and Missouri, roughly paralleling the Cherokees' Trail of Tears. …