Great stuff, Kirby. Thanks for weighing in. Your theory about Rollins being the key figure behind the scenes of the Tigers militia unit strikes me as well reasoned and likely the case.

Another remarkable thing about that chapter is that the author concludes the notion of the Missouri-Kansas athletic rivalry being rooted in the Border War is a recently concocted story with no historical basis, and she does that with absolutely no analysis of the reaction western Missourians would have had to the University of Kansas adopting the jayhawker moniker, which would seem to me a highly pertinent consideration.

There is another great article in the Missouri Alumnus that talks about former Missouri governor Bill Stone giving a pep talk to the 1910 football team, in which he roused “his Missouri bushwhackers that date to violence, incendiarism and death.” “I have known these Jayhawkers all my life, and I knew their daddies before them. We licked them during the war and you’ve got to lick them today. I never took my hat off to a Jayhawker in my life. I am an old man, but my heavens above! If a boy of you from ol’ Missouri gives up ground out there today I will myself go out there and drag him off the field.”