On the afternoon of 27 September, 1864, guerilla leader, William ‘Bill’ Anderson, who took great pride in the epiteth ‘bloody’, led his band into the small Missouri town of  Centralia, primarily to forage for supplies and to disrupt the railway system. As his men went about their business brutally dispossessing the local populace, he noticed a railway timetable that indicated a train was due. So he decided to remain longer than had been originally anticipated in order to rob it. On board were 25 unarmed Union soldiers returning home on furlough. The officer commanding, Lieutenant Peters, recognized Anderson standing on the Station platform as the train pulled up. Without thinking, and certainly without regard for his men, he threw a blanket over himself and as soon as the train stopped he leapt off and hid underneath it. Alas, for the unfortunate Peters, he was spotted. Anderson’s men pulled him out from under the railway carriage, laughing and jeering as they did so. Yelling and struggling furiously, Peters managed to break free. Now he was running for his life. Anderson called his men off from the pursuit and taking careful aim pumped six bullets into the back of the desperate, terrified, fleeing Peters.

It was a portent of what was to come. Boarding the train, Anderson could hardly contain his delight. The Union soldiers were bundled off the train, made to line up, and forced to strip. Anderson then walked over to where his horse was tethered, remarking as he did so, ” Don’t you know boys, this is our country; this is good Southern soil.” He then removed a rifle and a bag of pistols from his saddlebag, and proceeded to stroll up and down the line of prisoners randomly shooting each one between the eyes. The soldiers panicked, some fell to their knees and begged for the lives, some made supplications to their God, others merely cursed. But it was all to no avail. Even before the killings had ceased the mutilations had begun. One young man was a particularly avid participant and wielded his knife with great relish. Jesse James was present, along with his brother

Frank, and the Younger brothers, who were to make up his gang after the war.

Following Centralia, Anderson set an ambush for the troops sent to pursue him. In the ensuing fight he killed more than 150 of them, scalping, decapitating, and disemboweling the dead and dying. It was described by the survivors as a carnival of blood.

Bloody Bill Anderson, was the most feared guerilla leader of the Civil War after his former leader, William Clark Quantrill. He kept a knotted silk scarf, it was said, with each knot accounting for a dead federal. Throwing it away with a flourish he remarked, ” I’ve killed so many I’m sick of killing ‘em.” It had 54 knots by the time he dispensed with it. But he never dispensed with the scalps of the dead federals he carried on his belt.

Anderson was reputedly killed near Orrick, Missouri, on 27 October, 1864. Surrounded by superior forces he ordered his men to charge straight at the enemy. At one point it seemed that he would make his escape, but then his horse was seen to slow. He paused for a moment, then bent double, fell slowly from his horse. Seeing their leader dead his men made their escape as best they could.

Anderson’s body was photographed and put on display before being decapitated with a knife. His head was then placed on a telegraph pole as a warning to others. His torso they then urinated upon before attaching it to the tail of a horse and dragging it through the streets of Orrick.

Centralia is an example of the vicious, fratricidal, internecine warfare that scarred the American mid-West. It would be wrong, therefore, for us to think of the American Civil War as a contest fought solely between great competing armies. It was also a war that was fought between friends, set neighbour on neighbour, destroyed communities, and divided families. It also, as all civil wars do, provided the opportunity to pursue grudges, avenge sleights, and right perceived wrongs.

Bill Anderson’s father, a pro-slavery man, had been shot to death by a pro-abolitionist neighbour. His sister was killed when the building she had been imprisoned in by the Federal Authorities collapsed, his other sister was maimed in the same incident. Anderson, it was said, was enraged to the point of madness. They had, he believed, been deliberately hurt to get at him. He had no doubt that they had been punished for his sins, and he would have his revenge over and over again.

Rumours persist, however, that Anderson survived Orrick. That he may in fact have escaped to and settled in Salt Creek, Texas. A man fitting Anderson’s description died there on 2 September, 1927. On his bedside table was a photograph of three young women, later identified to be Anderson’s sisters. And it is true that he had previously married a woman from Texas in March of 1864.