Partisan warfare during the U.S. Civil War

RIDE WITH THE DEVIL is an underrated movie that did not receive the theater distribution it deserved back in 1999. It was shown only in the independant theaters that year, along with an excellent science fiction movie, ExistenZ, that also received but limited theater distribution.

Almost every American alive today would consider strange and alien, the concept of irregular, partisan, and guerrilla warfare right inside our own country, much less within our own states and communities. But partisan warfare in its most grueling and meanest, at times comparable to within the Soviet Union during World War II. I'm not talking about militia warfare. During the Civil War, the state militias integrated with the Union and Confederate armies. What is meant here is groups of armed, civilian men from assorted farming communities, villages, and towns, banding together into partisan bands and taking to the countryside to wage armed conflict against opposing partisan bands and communities that sided with one side or another. Today Americans would consider this an aberration of our history. We don't celebrate a detailed written history of partisan warfare. Americans restrict our best tradition of guerrilla warfare against the British redcoat troops in our Revolutionary War. We'd rather not think about ugly partisan warfare among and between fellow Americans way back when.