Reviewed by: Bushwhackers: Guerrilla Warfare, Manhood, and the Household in Civil War Missouri by Joseph M. Beilein Jr. James N. McAllister (bio) Bushwhackers: Guerrilla Warfare, Manhood, and the Household in Civil War Missouri. By Joseph M. Beilein Jr. (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2016. Pp. 283. $34.95 cloth) The Civil War guerrilla remains an enigmatic figure. This is by design; in war, guerrillas did not want to be seen until the time and place of their choosing. After the Civil War was over, most guerrillas chose to remain hidden and returned to their previous lives. In this absence, historians have constructed two competing visions of bushwhackers: one a villainous killer, the other a Lost Cause fighter. Joseph Beilein cuts through the myth behind Missouri's Confederate guerrillas, using memoirs, census records, and previously unpublished material to resurrect the actual men who took to the bush to fight and the women who supported them. Bushwhackers reconstructs in detail the social and cultural life of guerrillas while examining how they constructed their ideal of masculinity. The book is divided into three sections, the first of which examines the motivations of guerrillas. Here, Beilein looks at the importance of kinship networks in forming and maintaining guerrilla bands. The importance of Confederate women's contributions to the war effort is highlighted throughout the book, but here it is most visible. Women were central to the kinship networks and provided important material support to the guerrilla fighters. These networks were integral to the guerrilla fighter's conception of masculinity as one of a free man who defended his own home by choice. Beilein takes the historiographical middle road, positing that these were neither unmoored killers nor moral patriots; instead, they were a predictable product of ideas of southern masculinity and a world of slavery that already knew disturbing violence. Civil War guerrillas were a unique looking bunch, and their identity was key to understanding the way they conceived of their masculinity. Many wore an embroidered shirt, a blue Union army jacket taken as a trophy, and long hair with a beard; many had a [End Page 118] strong preference for pistols and fighting while mounted. This unique appearance is the subject of the second section of the book in which Beilein argues that their costumes and tools identified them as neither civilian nor soldier, but as irregular. Their homemade accoutrement, in opposition to factory-made uniforms, provided a constant reminder of female family members and their home. Although Beilein provides some practical reasons for why guerrillas preferred to fight with pistols from horseback, he also highlights how their skill with horses and the difficulty of pistol mastery served to further enhance their identity as masters over the southern home. The brief final section examines how a guerrilla fought and died. Unlike men in the army, Beilein argues that guerrillas' construction of masculinity allowed them to flee from battle without harming their sense of manhood. In death, they appear to have the most in common with regular soldiers; all hoped to die at home in the arms of their loved ones. Overall, the work is a useful and well-constructed examination of the real bushwhackers and the realities of guerrilla warfare in Civil War Missouri. Despite the compelling evidence, it is not without some flaws. First, Beilein occasionally overgeneralizes about Missouri guerrillas, irregular by their very nature, as if they were instead rather uniform. Secondly, when discussing some tangential issues, Beilein appears to be overextending his evidence. A few more footnotes and a wider net of sources might have helped clear up these parts. Fortunately, none of these flaws are critical to the central argument, though they do invite a skeptical eye to an otherwise strong work. Bushwhackers is a solid beginning to Kent State's new book series, the Civil War Era in the South, and offers an enlightening glimpse into the lives of Missouri's Civil War bushwhackers. [End Page 119] James N. McAllister JAMES N. MCALLISTER is a PhD candidate at Florida State University, currently researching sexual assault in the Civil War. Copyright © 2018 Kentucky Historical Society