Cumberland Blood: Champ Ferguson's Civil War

by Thomas D. Mays

Overview

By the end of the Civil War, Champ Ferguson had become a notorious criminal whose likeness covered the front pages of Harper’s Weekly, Leslie’s Illustrated, and other newspapers across the country. His crime? Using the war as an excuse to steal, plunder, and murder Union civilians and soldiers.

Cumberland Blood: Champ Ferguson’s Civil War offers insights into Ferguson's lawless brutality and a lesser-known aspect of the Civil War, the bitter guerrilla conflict in the Appalachian highlands, extending from the Carolinas through Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. This compelling volume delves into the violent story of Champ Ferguson, who acted independently of the Confederate army in a personal war that eventually garnered the censure of Confederate officials.

Author Thomas D. Mays traces Ferguson's life in the Cumberland highlands of southern Kentucky, where—even before the Civil War began—he had a reputation as a vicious killer.

Ferguson, a rising slave owner, sided with the Confederacy while many of his neighbors and family members took up arms for the Union. For Ferguson and others in the highlands, the war would not be decided on the distant fields of Shiloh or Gettysburg: it would be local—and personal.

Cumberland Blood describes how Unionists drove Ferguson from his home in Kentucky into Tennessee, where he banded together with other like-minded Southerners to drive the Unionists from the region. Northern sympathizers responded, and a full-scale guerrilla war erupted along the border in 1862. Mays notes that Ferguson's status in the army was never clear, and he skillfully details how raiders picked up Ferguson's gang to work as guides and scouts. In 1864, Ferguson and his gang were incorporated into the Confederate army, but the rogue soldier continued operating as an outlaw, murdering captured Union prisoners after the Battle of Saltville, Virginia.

Cumberland Blood, enhanced by twenty-one illustrations, is an illuminating assessment of one of the Civil War's most ruthless men.

Ferguson's arrest, trial, and execution after the war captured the attention of the nation in

1865, but his story has been largely forgotten. Cumberland Blood: Champ Ferguson's Civil War returns the story of Ferguson's private civil war to its place in history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780809387038
Publisher:	Southern Illinois University Press
Publication date:	08/13/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	216
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Thomas D. Mays, an assistant professor of history at Humboldt State University, is the author of The Saltville Massacre and the editor of Let Us Meet in Heaven: The Civil War Letters of James Michael Barr, 5th South Carolina Cavalry.

Table of Contents

Contents List of Illustrations 000 Acknowledgments 000 Introduction 000 1. ¿A terror to peaceable citizens¿ 000 2. ¿The day for discussion had passed¿ 000 3. ¿Don¿t you beg and don¿t you dodge¿ 000 4. ¿Clean as you go, you aught to have shot them¿ 000 5. ¿I ain¿t killed but thirty-two men since this war commenced¿ 000 6. ¿A damned good christian!¿and I dont reckon he minds dying¿ 000 7. ¿All are Southern but opposed to Champ¿ 000 8. ¿I have a begrudge against Smith¿ 000 9. ¿The Mosby of the West is now on trial in Nashville¿ 000 Conclusion 000 Appendix 000 Notes 000 Bibliography 000 Index 000

Editorial Reviews

Ask a Civil War buff to name a Confederate guerrilla and you’ll probably hear the names of Trans-Mississippi warriors William Clarke Quantrill, William “Bloody Bill” Anderson or Frank and Jesse James. But, as historian and author Thomas Mays correctly notes, Kentucky native Champ Ferguson “needs to be added to this bloody pantheon of America’s outlaws.”

Ironically, Ferguson was practically a household name at the time of his death in 1865. He faded into obscurity as more famous “western” figures like Quantrill and Anderson took center stage. Now, Thomas Mays has once again brought Ferguson to national attention in his fascinating study of Champ’s bloody, brutal and private civil war.

The Cumberland Highlands (specifically the Kentucky-Tennessee border just west of Cumberland Gap) became an area where foraging raids and reprisals against civilians became commonplace during the Civil War. The region split not along the lines of antebellum feuds, but largely due to prewar political and economic alliances.

Some of Ferguson’s prewar enemies became his allies and long-time friends became adversaries. Even families were divided — Champ Ferguson, a Democrat and slaveholder, went to war against his brother James, a debt-ridden Whig.

Ferguson actually began his bloody career in this region when he killed a man in an altercation in 1858. Still facing that murder charge when the war began, the pro-Southern Ferguson did not become a guerrilla fighter until he was apprehended by and escaped from a party of Union Home Guards.

He then began targeting Union sympathizers in the region, arguing that he needed to eliminate pro-Northern friends, acquaintances and relatives before they came for him. By the time of his arrest in May 1865, Ferguson was suspected of killing 53 men. After a lengthy trial, he was convicted of most of the charges against him and was sentenced to death. He stoically went to the gallows in October 1865.

Mays does an excellent job of documenting Ferguson’s brutal reign of terror. He does his best both to explain Ferguson’s motives and place him in a larger regional context. Champ was not a stereotypical guerrilla. He had a habit of attacking non-military “targets of opportunity,” which did little to aid the Confederacy, and may in fact helped weaken support for the cause.

His relatively small number of men rarely operated under the authority of a Confederate commander. Ferguson’s actions did not keep substantial numbers of Federal troops tied to the area.

He was not averse to killing noncombatants, the unarmed, sick and wounded, white and black. But May argues that Champ was not simply a psychopathic killer — he was rather “a product of the highland frontier culture” that advocated a concept of total war against soldiers and noncombatants.

This study of Champ Ferguson is a shocking read, even if you’re well-schooled in the literature of Civil War guerrillas.  But once I started, I found myself unable to stop following Champ and his neighbors as they carried on their ruthless killing spree.

If you’re tired of hearing about dashing and romantic Civil War figures, or even the famous Missouri partisans, have a look at the well-written and -researched tale of Cumberland Blood.

Civil War News - Jeff Patrick

In this lean, crisply written yet thorough exploration of Champ Ferguson’s life, Thomas D. Mays helps us better understand both the man and the terrible nature of guerrilla warfare.”

—Daniel E. Sutherland, editor of Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence on the Confederate Home Front

"Cumberland Blood is riveting reading—a fascinating study of an important and often overlooked facet of the Civil War. It's a must-read book for anyone who wants to understand the conflict in the border states."

—Steven E. Woodworth, author of Decision in the Heartland: The Civil War in the West

“Cumberland Blood is a thorough and unvarnished account of the atrocities committed by Champ Ferguson, one of the most infamous pro-Confederate guerrilla fighters of the Civil War. Thomas Mays recounts Ferguson’s bloody exploits and debunks the myths that others have used to justify Ferguson’s crimes. In the process, Mays provides a valuable and unromanticized view of the bushwhacking violence that plagued the Cumberland region.”

—Michael A. Ross, author of Justice of Shattered Dreams: Samuel Freeman Miller and the Supreme Court during the Civil War Era

“Few figures exhibit the bitterness and hatred that the American Civil War could generate as well as the notorious Tennessee guerrilla Champ Ferguson. Thomas D. Mays neither glorifies nor vilifies his subject; rather, he shows that to Ferguson scouting for Confederate cavalry, carrying off Federal stock, killing Union supporters, and shooting captured Federal troops were all part of the same war. Cumberland Blood reveals the American Civil War in its most personal, raw, and disturbing form.”

—Noel C. Fisher, author of War at Every Door: Partisan Politics and

Guerrilla Violence in East Tennessee, 1860–1869

From the Publisher

Ask a Civil War buff to name a Confederate guerrilla and you'll probably hear the names of Trans-Mississippi warriors William Clarke Quantrill, William "Bloody Bill" Anderson or Frank and Jesse James. But, as historian and author Thomas Mays correctly notes, Kentucky native Champ Ferguson "needs to be added to this bloody pantheon of America's outlaws."
Ironically, Ferguson was practically a household name at the time of his death in 1865. He faded into obscurity as more famous "western" figures like Quantrill and Anderson took center stage. Now, Thomas Mays has once again brought Ferguson to national attention in his fascinating study of Champ's bloody, brutal and private civil war.
The Cumberland Highlands (specifically the Kentucky-Tennessee border just west of Cumberland Gap) became an area where foraging raids and reprisals against civilians became commonplace during the Civil War. The region split not along the lines of antebellum feuds, but largely due to prewar political and economic alliances.
Some of Ferguson's prewar enemies became his allies and long-time friends became adversaries. Even families were divided - Champ Ferguson, a Democrat and slaveholder, went to war against his brother James, a debt-ridden Whig.
Ferguson actually began his bloody career in this region when he killed a man in an altercation in 1858. Still facing that murder charge when the war began, the pro-Southern Ferguson did not become a guerrilla fighter until he was apprehended by and escaped from a party of Union Home Guards.
He then began targeting Union sympathizers in the region, arguing that he needed to eliminate pro-Northern friends, acquaintances and relatives before they came for him. By the time of his arrest in May 1865, Ferguson was suspected of killing 53 men. After a lengthy trial, he was convicted of most of the charges against him and was sentenced to death. He stoically went to the gallows in October 1865.
Mays does an excellent job of documenting Ferguson's brutal reign of terror. He does his best both to explain Ferguson's motives and place him in a larger regional context. Champ was not a stereotypical guerrilla. He had a habit of attacking non-military "targets of opportunity," which did little to aid the Confederacy, and may in fact helped weaken support for the cause.
His relatively small number of men rarely operated under the authority of a Confederate commander. Ferguson's actions did not keep substantial numbers of Federal troops tied to the area.
He was not averse to killing noncombatants, the unarmed, sick and wounded, white and black. But May argues that Champ was not simply a psychopathic killer - he was rather "a product of the highland frontier culture" that advocated a concept of total war against soldiers and noncombatants.
This study of Champ Ferguson is a shocking read, even if you're well-schooled in the literature of Civil War guerrillas. But once I started, I found myself unable to stop following Champ and his neighbors as they carried on their ruthless killing spree.
If you're tired of hearing about dashing and romantic Civil War figures, or even the famous Missouri partisans, have a look at the well-written and -researched tale of Cumberland Blood.

— Jeff Patrick

Civil War News