"If a man masquerades as a redleg, says he is a redleg, and his victim believed he was a redleg, does that make him a redleg? Seems there was more than one kind of redleg."

Actually, no. The point to all of my years of research is that the "Red Legs" were a specific body of men, working under George H. Hoyt, and identifiable as such.

A man claims he is a "Red Leg," and commits a crime in Missouri during the war. Does the fact that the person identified himself as a "Red Leg" make him one? Ummm, no. During the period that the "Red Legs" worked under the provost marshal of Leavenworth (summer 1862-spring 1863), There was only ONE group of "Red Legs": Hoyt and his band. The "real" "Red Legs" who served under Hoyt long maintained that most of the crimes "alleged" to have been committed by them were done by men pretending to be "Red Legs." If you had been a genuine "Red Leg," wouldn't you resent people claiming to have been a member of your band, and blackening your reputation with misdeeds in which you had no part? (Especially when you had plenty of your own, real misdeeds to protest your innocence of?)

But by the time of the Lawrence raid "Red Leg" had indeed morphed into a kind of generic term for a Kansas terrorist in Missouri's lexicon. From the (very limited) references to the group from the partisan ranger side, it is clear that the actual "Red Legs" were as myserious to them as to just about everybody else. Rumor had it that the Johnson House in Lawrence was where they staid when in town. And Jack Bridges was living in Lawrence at the time. But Lawrence was too far "inland" for use as a base for launching operations into Missouri. Which is why Leavenworth, Wyandotte and Kansas City were the places where the "Red Legs" actually operated from. But truth almost never trumps rumor, and the raiders were determined to find "Red Legs" in Lawrence.

I, also, would very much like to know the source of the report that the eight men killed at Lawrence were "Red Legs." Especially as contemporary reports state that there was only one "Red Leg" in Lawrence at the time of the raid (Bridges), and no member of the group was reported killed. If any one or all of those eight men had been "Red Legs," I think the people of Lawrence would have known it.

Regards, JIM