VP Beast Butler?

[Wild Bill]

If I remember correctly, TJ Stiles, Jesse James, the Last Rebel of the Civil War, make a point of how Missouri was about 75% for the Union in 1865 but 75% for the Democrats (the heirs of secession) by 1876, which he in large part attributes to James' propaganda letters and rationales printed and encouraged by Kansas City newspapers, particularly Major John Edwards (he was an adjutant for JO Shelby's Missouri Cavalry Brigade [CSA]) and the Kansas City Times (he was the editor).

This gets into the whole realm of social banditry and the viciousness of the CW in Missouri, which I suspect Don1946 would reject. To show how horrible we Southerners truly are, or at least I am, my mother came from Missouri's Little Dixie, and we always saw Jesse and the boys as heroes, fighting Yankee banks and railroads, the Pinkertons, and Carpetbag and Scalawag government, and Jennison's Kansas Redlegs. Although Hollywood tends to ruin every story, the beginning of Clint Eastwood's, The outlaw Josey Wales, actually portrays the war in Missouri rather well.

For those of you who wish to avoid the good, the bad, and the ugly approach, see Jan Monaghan, Civil War on the Western Border; Michael Fellman, Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri; any book or article by Albert Castle (especially his special issue on Guerrilla War in Civil War Times Illustrated, 13 (October 1974); or any book or article by Daniel E. Sutherland. Hodding Carter III, The Angry Scar: The Story of Reconstruction, p. 145, has an excellent tale told by his grandmother about how the white South viewed, and many still view, Reconstruction. Most typical of the Southern view is the last half of Margaret Mitchell's, Gone With the Wind, which shops what a difficult time Reconstruction really was through the machinations of her heroins, Scarlett O'Hara. But that brings us back to Eastwood, again.