Girl Guerrillas

I mentioned in the preface or introduction of my 2016 book Bushwhacker Belles that the book's title was taken from a phrase in an 1891 newspaper article, Originally published on September 13, 1891, in the St. Louis Globe Democrat, the article was widely reprinted in cities across the country. 

Although the term "bushwhacker belles" has stuck as a sobriquet for the young women who aided guerrillas during the Civil War, the original newspaper article was, ironically enough, entitled "Girl Guerrillas." This week, I thought I might examine that newspaper article in more detail than I did when I cited it in my book.

The article was authored by a correspondent to the Globe-Democrat who called himself Burr Joyce. It's not clear whether that was his real name or a pseudonym, but he wrote fairly often for the Globe-Democrat during the late 1880s and early 1890s. The article's dateline was Chillicothe (MO), August 25 (1891). 

Joyce had something of a reputation for exaggeration, and the stories he told in "Girl Guerrillas" did nothing to counter that reputation.  He claimed, for instance, "There were twenty or more girls and women with Quantrill and Bill Anderson's slaughter of Gen. Blunt's escort...at Baxter Springs.... I have it from an ex-guerrilla who was present that half a dozen of these bushwhacker belles took part in the chase and massacre of Blunt's men--fired their pistols and as rapidly and deadly, rode as swiftly, and cheered as wildly as their masculine comrades." 

In truth, there is no evidence other than this hear-say testimony of one guerrilla who was supposedly present at Baxter Springs that even one woman accompanied Quantrill on his trip south to Texas in the fall of 1863. There were one or two women with Blunt, but none that I know of with Quantrill. 

One thing that I did discuss in Bushwhacker Belles was the exploits that Joyce's newspaper article credited to Sally Mayfield of Vernon County when Sally's sister Ella was, in fact, the one who performed these deeds of derring-do. One example was the feat that Sally, "a splendid horsewoman" supposedly undertook to save a man's life in Fort Scott, riding 120 miles back and forth between Fort Scott and her home near Montevallo "in twelve hours, across country, leaping ravines, scurrying through woodlands and half swimming creeks, without an hour's rest or a wink of sleep." 

According to the 1887 Vernon County History, it was Ella Mayfield who made the ride to Fort Scott to try to save the life of a southern-sympathizing doctor, although it took Ella 24 hours to cover 125 miles, twice as long as it supposedly took sister Sallie to cover 120. Both versions of the story are obvious exaggerations, but at least the county history identified the correct sister. 

There are other examples of exaggeration, if not outright fabrication, in the Joyce story, but these will suffice to show the type of yellow journalism that dominated the press in the late 1800s, especially if the topic was women involved in some sort of gender-defying role or activity.