Who Were the Bushwackers? Age, Class, Kin, and Western Virginia's Confederate Guerrillas, 1861-1862

Abstract

On March 23, 1862, a detachment of the 23rd Ohio Infantry located and captured a band of fifteen pro-Confederate guerrilla fighters in Fayette County, Virginia, the mountainous section of the state destined to become the future West Virginia. Federal officers identified one of the prisoners, twenty-two-year-old E. D. Thomison, as the guerrillas's "lieutenant." Six more prisoners, ranging in age from twenty-one to forty-three, went down on the rolls as "militia organizers" as well as guerrillas. Among the eight additional men jailed was Samuel Fox, at fifty-two years old a substantial Greenbrier County landowner. Allen Gartner and James H. Ridle of Raleigh County, both in their thirties, were not youths; neither was Fox the sole landowner. Indeed, four of the fifteen prisoners were landowners, and five more were the dependents of landed men. That is to say, a majority of E. D. Thomison's guerrilla band came from landed rather than landless families. 1