22. Guerilla fighting
Following the Second Battle of Cabin Creek in 1864, the war in the Indian Territory became largely one fought by roving guerilla bands. William Quantrill’s famous raiders conducted numerous raids against the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, and other bands which had remained loyal to the Union, or which had failed to support the Confederacy. Among the men who rode with Quantrill’s Raiders were Frank and Jesse James. Their tactics were brutal. Originally endorsed by the Confederate government as “partisan rangers”, their tactics and numerous atrocities attributed to them eventually caused the government in Richmond to denounce them. The Lawrence Massacre of 1863, the most notorious of all the raids into Union Kansas, was the last straw for Jefferson Davis and his government, and Quantrill was declared an outlaw.
Guerilla fighting continued in the Indian Territory and the Trans-Mississippi long after Lee surrendered at Appomattox, and the Indian Nations were devastated by internecine warfare, hunger, disease, and homelessness. Following Union attempts to regain control of the Indian Territory in 1864, reprisals against the Cherokee and other tribes which had fought for the Confederacy became common. The fighting in the Indian Territory diverted troops and resources from the main Union Armies in the summer of 1864; Sherman’s army in Tennessee and Georgia, and Grant’s slugging its way south to Richmond and Petersburg.