I can identify relatives in almost every "bushwhacker" regiment that operated in southeast and southcentral Missouri. I have not identified more than one who owned slaves. When Lyons and Frank Blair and their illegal militia attacked the legal militia at Fort Jackson my family and their friends thought Missouri was being attacked by Germans and Kansans, which they were. When the senators and representitives rushed home from Jefferson City and told the population what had occurred, they rose up like any group of patriot's should. Missouri, as a whole, did not want to leave the union. A little red headed peckerwood from Kansas with a Captain's commission and a millionaire, political boss as a mentor and backer, forced Missouri into a fight. True, Jackson wished to leave the union, but it wasn't going to happen until Lyons and Blair forced the issue.

I'm proud of my bushwhacker family. Should the same circumstances occur today that were in play then. I'd be just like Sam Hildebrand. If anybody thinks I wouldn't lay out in the brush and shoot yankees off their horses they are as crazy as a loon.