Which is my point. So the adjective "bloody" began being bandied about in a sensationalistic fashion in regard to Bill Anderson in 1890. And in August 1891 it was specifically attached to his name as a proper noun--Bloody Bill Anderson--for the very first time in the midst of the Yellow Press era. But the name Bloody Bill Anderson didn't exist during the Civil War. Nor did it exist in the post-war era. The phrase was invented in an entirely different era long long long after Bill Anderson died and after the end of the war. And historians have embraced it, even though it was an invention of the sensationalizing press and is not at all historically applicable.

I suppose it would be similar to the National Enquirer in 2024 inventing the term "Sadist Saddam Hussein," it then being adopted by mainstream author/historians, and then it being used hundreds of times in each scholarly book published on the Iraq War.