Missouri and Kansas

I agree with you both! My only issue was their calling "Quantrill" Quantrell.

As I am sure you know, the mispelling & sometimes mispronounciation comes from the black flag, created by that young lady, wereon she spelled it "Quantrell" and the old gents, in old-timers gatherings had their ribbons printed with the wrong spelling in honor of the original black flag!

I have not seen Cold Mountain yet, but from the adverts, the southern accents seem poorly affected.

I did have a difficult time finding the dvd, but I did and sometimes I pop it in and leave it on repeat...

I'm sure y'all noticed that the actors rode correctly too! That is something not often seen in films. (I mean having the reins at the proper height and not at chest level or under their chin... the getting off from the left side of the horse... and the nearly always heels down!) I read that Tobey was nearly de-horsed in that scene where he is leading another horse behind him and he is holding his reins at nearly chin level.

I love this film!

My one complaint is that movies like this never cover all sides completely. The raid on Lawrence is covered, and covered very well, but there's no connection to the aftermath west of the border.

I've always read that Quantrill's men really did pronounce his name "Quantrell" for the most part. It's clear that's how the men believed it was spelled, since they used the "e" on all the ribbons and paraphernalia for the Bushwhacker reunions after the war.

"Are we on Cops, Harold? Harold, are we on Cops?"

I will take issue with you on your point of contention. First I will acknowledge your superior sense of the history of the war on the border.

Part of the reason Missourians bushwhacked was indeed that the regular Confederate army was gone and was not there to join up with. But the vast majority of Missourians took to the bush due to the heavy-handedness of the Federal Occupation. Many of the bushwhackers had already been in the regular Confederate Army or the Missouri State Guard, which later became Confederate. These men had come home for a variety of reasons. Some had been paroled after being captured. Others did not believe in the cause of the Confederacy but had been answering the call to arms from their governor Thomas Jackson and their State Militia Commander, former governor, Gen. Sterling Price. Others had been wounded in early battles such as Carthage, Wilson Creek and Lexington. The harassment of these men along with others who would not join the Union army by troops, mainly from outside the state is what formed the guerrilla movement early-on. A case-in-point is the sacking of Osceola, the most important town and farthest steamport of western Missouri (south of Westport) by General James Lane and his Kansas Militiamen. These were mainly free-staters who had Jayhawked in Missouri during the Border War years of 1855-1858. Ironically, the core of the resistance in and around the Kansas City area, and the most famous bushwhackers of all, were former Kansans, Col. William Quantrill and Capt. William Anderson.

Union-men in Missouri mainly came into play after the Federals tried to hand the local anti-guerrilla operations over to them with the creation of the Union Missouri State Militia (as opposed to the original State Guard). These units were organized of men forced into the Union service with the only alternatives being banishment, jail or hanging with hanging always "hanging" in the balance. PTP. They were highly ineffective and many of them were suspected of being in league with the Confederates.

Basically, after 1861 there was no way to remain neutral and continue to live in Missouri if you were a male old enough to bare a gun. Union troops would typcially go on missions to seek out hostiles and would end up robbing the local populace and many times, killing or jailing any male who wouldn't join up with them. The guerrillas later adopted this tactic. The Federal government exacerbated the situation when one of the many in the succession of military commanders of the Union in Missouri gave the order that guerrillas were to be summarily executed. This was the infamous "black flag" order which insured that the guerrillas would fight like mad dogs, unto the death. Other incidents which further galvanized resistance were the ungentlemanly jailing of the southern women in Kansas City and the subsequent collapse of the building being used to warehouse them, resulting in several deaths and injuries and the General Order Number 11, which depopulated the Border of western Missouri.

Missouri, at the outbreak of hostilities, had many ties both agriculturally and economically, with the North. The Southern atmosphere which pervaded Missouri, especially along the Missouri river and in the western part of the state, was due to the population as opposed to the economy. Many of these people, even southern people, were opposed to the war because it would upset their business' which were more tied to the North than much of the rest of the Confederacy. This is shown in the reluctance the Missouri legislature showed in seceding-vacillating until they were literally run out of the capitol by Gen. Nathanial Lyon-a former Capt. of Artillery at Fort Riley who had been elevated by the war to the highest Union commander in Missouri. He was an abolitionist who typified the heavy-handedness of the Union in this most delicate of areas. Lyon practically caused the secession of Missouri. At the onset of the war, Missouri was almost equally divided politically, by thirds between Union, neutral and Confederate. Due to the Union occupation and attitude during it, by the end of the war almost ALL the neutral people had gone over to the Confederate side. The actions of the Kansas troops, both regular and irregular, along with troops from other states who participated in the Kansan's revenge, early-on in the war, simply cannot be overestimated in the making of guerrillas such as Thrailkill, Todd, Hunter and many others who recruited untold thousands of Missouri men, many of whom fought a vicious war to the knife with regular and irregular Unionists, and many of whom went south to the regular Confederate forces.

On the other side of it, Missouri did supply many troops for the Union BUT most of these troops went east to the more important portion of the war. To be sure, the War along the border (1861-1866) was seperate from Bleeding Kansas (1855-1858), but they both were similiar and had many of the same players. A case can be made for their overlapping one another and being indistinct also. I tend to think of it as one long war, however I will admit to there being a lag in the most violent hostilities.

I would go as far as to say Stiles' biography is flawed. I think he's operating on a faulty premise. I would have to go back and re-read portions of it to speak further on this issue though. He is writing about only one portion of the guerrilla war and is mainly writing about the James brothers. Books such as War to the Knife, Civil War on the Western Border, Border Warfare and The Devil Knows How to Ride will give a more complete picture of this portion of the War Between the States.

I have come to chew bubblegum and kick asss...and I'm all out of bubblegum.

Kansas is almost universally viewed as part of the Midwest, while it seems Missouri has many identities. Illinois, Indiana, most of Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Nebraska, maybe Minnesota - all of these are considered Midwest, yet Missouri rarely is.

Maybe it's because Missouri was a state well before any of those on its south, west, or north, and thus has a unique identity. It was also the only slave state among those mentioned in my first paragraph. Geographically, with the Ozarks and the high percentage of caves, it is also distinct from its surroundings (except Arkansas.) But ultimately, perhaps it is its role as a historical crossroads - St. Louis being the original gateway to the trans-Mississippi west, while the K.C. area was the start of the Santa Fe Trail and St. Joseph that of the Oregon Trail - that keeps it distinct.

This musing was brought to mind by perhaps THE definitive statement on the subject, which comes from William Least Heat Moon in his book "Blue Highways":

"A Missourian gets used to Southerners thinking him a Yankee, a Northerner considering him a cracker, a Westerner sneering at his effete Easternness, and the Easterner taking him for a cowhand."

As one who had two relatives that fought for the north, one of whom must have spent a significant amount of time chasing guerillas like these (he was in the Missouri State Militia Cavalry), I enjoyed this film and was glad to see a little-known aspect of the war portrayed. (And they did a far better staging of Quantrill's Lawrence raid than the generally-well-done-but-periodically-flawed "Into the West" just did. The ITW presentation of Lawrence was slanted, even more so than the actual situation, and inaccurate.) The Rebel viewpoint didn't bother me one bit.

But the Southern perspective has been anything but forgotten. More books are written about the Army of Northern Virginia than any other unit of any size in the war. Among serious, reputable historical works concerning the war, the Confederate side of things is well represented. (And it is over-represented in crackpot works like "The South was right" and "The Politically Incorrect Guide to History.") Historical art prints by Kunstler, Troiani et al are Confederate-themed more often than not. There are more Condeferate re-enactors, AFAIK< than Union.

As for Hollywood, "Gods and Generals" went out of its way to avoid showing ANYTHING negative about the Confederacy, which certainly had its negatives (as did the Union.) "Gettysburg" was essentially neutral. "Cold Mountain" was more about a war-weary soldier who happened to be Confederate than about the Confederacy itself, but it certainly wasn't anti-Confederate (the Union troops who attack Natalie Portman are just as bad as the Rebel home guards.) Overall, I don't think the Confederacy has been under-represented or over-negatively portrayed in recent film history.

I understand, to a point, your comment about "PC History" - there are times when well-intentioned but misguided souls go TOO far in presenting our nation's history with its appropriate warts - but, in general, the PC label is a hackneyed, over-used term that is usually used to characterize anything the user diagrees with. In particular it is often used as a defense mechanism to downplay ugly truths about our past - the role of slavery in our nation's history (especially in bringing about the Civil War), the mistreatment of the indigenous population during the conquering of the continent, etc. I sincerely hope your comment was not intended along those lines. Speaking as one who's personal history library (especially 19th Century U.S.) is extensive, it is not PC to admit either of the preceding truths - just accurate.

"It's OK to believe in Cinderella, but you've got to believe in midnight too." -- Bill James