Like the nightmarish and depraved world of the Kid in Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian, Hildebrand’s world is truly ruthless and his story is brutally descriptive in its coolly detached rendering of one man’s personal war. The historical significance of Hildebrand’s story is substantial, but his bloody tale is eminently readable and stands quite well on its own as a cold-blooded portrait of a violent time in American history. Over seven years of fighting he and his men killed dozens of soldiers and civilians, whites and blacks he claimed to have killed nearly one hundred himself. The Uncivil War: Irregular Warfare in the Upper South, 1861-1865 (Campaigns and Commanders, 5) Robert R. I sought revenge and I found it the key of hell was not suffered to rust in the lock while I was on the war path.” -Sam Hildebrand Hildebrand’s reign of terror gave the Union army fits and kept much of the Trans-Mississippi, especially Missouri, roiling in the 1860s. Mackey wrote The Uncivil War: Irregular Warfare in the Upper South, 1861-1865 (Campaigns and Commanders, 5), which can be purchased at a lower price at. “I make no apology to mankind for my acts of retaliation I make no whining appeal to the world for sympathy. Shortly after this he was killed in a barroom brawl. Illiterate Sam Hildebrand, one of Missouri’s most notorious guerrillas-often compared to “Rob Roy,” and the subject of dime novels-was one of the few to survive the war and have his story taken down and published. Some of these “bushwhackers”-Nathan Bedford Forrest, William Clarke Quantrill, John Singleton Mosby-have become quite infamous. Mackey maintains that Civil War scholars need to bring that wider perspective to the war and specifically to the topic usually referred to in the literature as 'guerrilla warfare. Most Civil War historians now agree that the guerrilla conflict shaped the entire war in significant ways. To fully understand the Civil War, in other words, one must know more about war in general.1 Like Grimsley, Robert R.

The Uncivil War by Robert R. Mackey