On July 23, 1864, Bloody Bill Anderson led 65 men to Renick, Missouri, robbing stores and tearing down telegraph wires on the way. They had hoped to attack a train, but its conductor learned of their presence and turned back before reaching the town. The guerrillas then attacked Allen, Missouri. At least 40 members of the 17th Illinois Cavalry and the Missouri State Militia were in town and took shelter in a fort. The guerrillas were only able to shoot the Union horses before reinforcements arrived; three of Anderson’s men were killed in the confrontation. In late July, the Union military sent a force of 100 well-equipped soldiers and 650 other men after Anderson. On July 30, Anderson and his men kidnapped the elderly father of the local Union militia’s commanding officer. They tortured him until he was near death and sent word to the man’s son in an unsuccessful attempt to lure him into an ambush, before releasing the father with instructions to spread word of his mistreatment. On August 1, while searching for militia members, Anderson and some of his men stopped at a house full of women and requested food. While they rested at the house, a group of local men attacked. The guerrillas quickly forced the attackers to flee, and Anderson shot and injured one woman as she fled the house. This action angered his men, who saw themselves as the protectors of women, but Anderson dismissed their concerns, saying such things were inevitable. They chased the men who had attacked them, killing one and mutilating his body. By August 1864, they were regularly scalping the men they killed.
MILITARY HISTORY SOCIETY OF ROCHESTER
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