Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri During the American Civil War
"Most important....Imaginatively using the abundant civilian and military sources available, Fellman constructs a compelling analysis of the impact of Missouri's irregualr warfare on the federl military, the guerillas, and the civilian population....Engrossing."--Georgia Historical Quarterly"A detailed and well-written narrative account of the guerilla fighting in Civil War Missouri....Fellman deserves enormous praise for this insightful look into the complicated nature of guerilla warfare among ordinary Americans."--The Maryland Historian"The best account I know of this 'inside' war--in Missouri or in any of the other border regions where it flared with lesser but still powerful intensity."--James M. McPherson, The New York Review of Books"A powerful book, filled with some of the most immediate and unforgettable first-hand testimony available from nineteenth-century America.  It brings the Civil War home front to life in a way no other book does, and does so with sophistication and subtlety."--Edward L. Ayers, University of Virginia"If war is hell, Fellman here opens to us one of its innermost rings: a conflict breaking beyond limits, one in which Confederate guerrillas become brigands and executioners, Union soldiers become purveyors of an identical violence and civilians become helpless victims of all armed men.  He depicts with power and persuasiveness an aspect of the American Civil War about which we do not ordinarily wish to think."--Gerald F. Linderman, author of Embattled Courage: The Experience of Combat in the American Civil War"An original and significant contribution to the study of American history and culture.  It fills in the factual background of a neglected aspect of the Civil War, the guerrilla struggle in Missouri.  But in so doing it also illuminates the origins of one of our major myths, the legend of social banditry associated with Jesse James."--Richard Slotkin, Wesleyan University"Fellman takes readers within the war itself....Inside War strips away the romantic nostalgia that surrounds the Missouri guerrillas on both sides."--The Kansas City Star"Fellman takes readers within the war itself....Inside War strips away the romantic nostalgia that surrounds the Missouri guerrillas on both sides....A solidly researched, well-written book that gives a balanced account of the most traumatic, terrible years in Missouri history."--The Kansas City Star"The author provides a model that other historians could profitably emulate in studying other areas and aspects of the Civil War....Inside War makes an original and significant contribution, not only to its field of study, but to an understanding of the consequences paid when law and order give way to anarchy, and civilization yields to barbarism, as they did in Civil War Missouri."--Civil War Times Illustrated"Fellman...has a both a vivid narrative gift and a respect for firsthand documentation."--The New Yorker