Perhaps Leeper would have found a more receptive home under Jim Lane or one of the radical Kansans than under Conservative Unionista like Woodson, or his successors--but Leeper was in his element in southeast Missouri....

Regarding the Confederates operating in southeast Missouri in late 1864, they had long been separated from regular Confederate lines of supply. Many were not uniformed, nor did they have access to uniforms. Many of these guys were walking around barefoot, and in tattered clothing. The ones who were uniformed were wearing butternut uniforms, not Confederate grey (common movie blooper error).

In reading about Price's Raid in 1864 you will notice that one of the first things Confederates did upon coming across Federal prisoners or Federal dead, was to strip them of their uniforms and footwear, and to put them on themselves. Consequently some Confederates were later captured wearing Union uniforms, and were summarily shot.

It should be noted that they were not necessarily wearing Union clothing with an intent to deceive U.S. troops (ala Skorzeny's commandos during the WWII Battle of the Bulge), but instead because it was better to fight in clothes than in rags. As historians we should not judge them based upon what they were wearing and consider them to have been unlawful combatants in the sense that we would in the the present day, but instead look at why they were dressed the way they were, and the context of how they were operating and under what authority.

Some were regular soldiers, some were bushwhackers, and some were just plain old draft dodgers (aka "mossbacks") and thiefs, trying to stay out of the way of both armies and maybe make a buck in the process. A mossback was jokingly so-called because they had been hiding out in the wilderness so long that plant life had begun growing on them. These guys are also sometimes referred to as "neutrals" in modern-day southeast Missouri writing--call them what you will, during the war they were INTENSELY hated by both Federals and Confederates, and were subject to execution if they did not choose a side. The Federals killed them informally, while Confederate general Jo Shelby was so bold as to go on the record by issuing a series of orders telling his men to either get them to sign onto the Confderate cause, or to kill them where they were found. Don't be fooled by modern-day revisionist writings saying that one side or the other was intent on protecting the mossbacks--they were not.