The Radicalization of "Bloody-Handed" Bill Davison: How a Union Soldier Became a Pro-Confederate Bushwhacker

By the time William H. Davison was shot and killed at the end of the Civil War, he had been marked as a notorious pro-Confederate guerrilla. Saddled with a $5,000 bounty on his head and called "the bloody-handed Davison," the Louisville Daily Journal judged him to be "one of the most corrupt scoundrels unhung." While this was an apt description, Davison's reputation as a Confederate bushwhacker was somewhat surprising; three years earlier, he had been recognized for gallantry at the battles of Fort Donelson and Shiloh while serving as a captain in the Union army. Having resigned from the Federal service over the Emancipation Proclamation, his anti-authoritarian streak, deep personal flaws, and anger toward the policies of President Abraham Lincoln's administration ultimately radicalized Bill Davison.¹

Although Davison was a turncoat, period accounts failed to condemn him as the Bluegrass State's Benedict Arnold. Instead, writers focused on Davison's ruthless acts: ears lopped from heads, burned courthouses, robberies, and murder. His service as a Union officer was sometimes mentioned offhandly; his contemporaries, however, understood that, for Davison, the conflict had changed from a struggle for the Union to a war for emancipation. With Lincoln intent on freeing slaves and arming black troops, Davison's radicalization from Union soldier to outlaw did not surprise many Kentuckians. Emancipation and Federal policies pertaining to slaves were at the heart of his brutal transformation.

Davison was born on November 1, 1839, at the corner of Clay and Water streets in Hawesville, Kentucky. Davison's hometown—the county seat of Hancock County, which borders the Ohio River west of Louisville—faced episodes of political violence during the late 1850s, and it was in this crucible of conflict that Bill Davison reached adulthood. His father, Dr. Hardin A. Davison, was a controversial figure in his own right. Called "a notorious, bad, and blood-thirsty man," Dr. Davison, convinced that his political enemies were going to kill him, died after trying to blow them up with a makeshift bomb at a local general store in February 1860. Educated locally and known to be a good student, Bill worked in a store before becoming deputy county clerk in nearby Hartford. Standing five feet, eight inches tall and weighing 135 pounds, Davison had olive skin, shoulder-length black hair, brown eyes, and a thin moustache. Known as a violent man, he was once described as having "a very bad expression of countenance—sinister … and when he smiles he reminds you of a dog which would like you if he was certain he would not get a kick."²

Aerial view of Hawesville, Ronald Morgan Postcard Collection, KHS Collections.

At the beginning of the Civil War, the twenty-two-year-old Davison was teaching school near Hawesville. In September 1861, he enrolled in the Seventeenth Kentucky Infantry Regiment (U.S.) at Hartford. His motives for enlisting are unknown. From his later actions, however, one can assume that Davison fought to save the Union because he thought that slavery would be safest under the United States Constitution.³ Four months later, he mustered in as captain of Company B at Calhoun, Kentucky. Colonel John Hardin McHenry, a West Pointer and attorney, organized and led the Seventeenth Kentucky. When the unit fought at Fort Donelson in Tennessee in February 1862, it suffered eighty-eight casualties. There, McHenry reported, Davison and two other captains "were in the thickest of the fight, cheering their men." Less than two months later, Davison led his company at the Battle of Shiloh, where he was again lauded. Davison, McHenry wrote, "behaved with his usual coolness and courage … executing all orders upon the field with zeal and devotion to the cause." The Louisville Daily Journal remarked that Davison "was always considered a brave man—in fact, recklessly so." But, Kentuckians soon learned, as the newspaper described him, he was also "turbulent, troublesome, and treacherous."⁴

Although official reports paint Davison as an up-and-coming...