Bloody Engagements: John R. Kelso's Civil War ed. by Christopher Grass (review)

With the overall acceptance of the importance of guerrilla warfare to our understanding of the Civil War, guerrilla scholars have turned the focus to specific individuals, events, and regions. Much of the academic literature focuses on Missouri, and for good reason—some of the harshest guerrilla fighting during the war occurred within the state. Bloody Engagements: John R. Kelso's Civil War offers a new point of view of the partisan warfare that occurred in southwest Missouri, showing it through the eyes of a Union soldier. Union guerrilla Kelso comes to life in this very first edited edition of his autobiography, ably edited by Christopher Grasso.

A former Methodist preacher and Missouri schoolteacher living in Dallas County, Kelso first enlisted in his county's home guard to aid the Union troops commanded by Capt. Nathaniel Lyon. Following the Federals' loss at Wilson's Creek in August 1861, Kelso joined the 24th Infantry Regiment as a private, by war's end ultimately serving as a cavalry officer and guerrilla fighter. Although he came from a proslavery family, Kelso considered himself an ardent patriot (who embraced the ideals of the American Revolution) and resented the institution and the wealthy men who perpetuated it. His natural talents and aptitude for military life were quickly recognized as he was sent into Confederate-occupied areas of Missouri as a spy. His introduction to guerrilla life came in late 1861 when the Union army retreated from southwest Missouri, where Kelso's family lived. Helping unionist families, including his own, escape the looting and pillaging by Confederate troops, Kelso vowed to get revenge. And revenge he got.

Through a beautifully written introduction and exhaustive footnotes, Grasso brings Kelso to life. While the exploits of fellow Missouri guerrillas and bushwhackers such as Jesse James, Bill Anderson, and William Quantrill are now well known, Kelso's autobiography adds a much-needed Union guerrilla voice to the historiography. In many ways, he seems incredibly similar to the men whom he found himself fighting, and he was described in a newspaper article published after the war as "brave to the point of recklessness" (xxiv). Kelso can pinpoint the moment he felt his "whole nature changing" with a vengeance reminiscent of other vicious Confederate guerrillas. "I found myself thirsting for blood," Kelso writes. "In my madness,—what else shall I call my condition?—I vowed to slay twenty five rebels before I cut my hair. If it was madness to make such a vow, what was it to keep it, as I did?" (52–53). Kelso's unionist views provide another framework by which to interpret the horrific fighting in the state's unconventional war. Like his pro-Confederate counterparts, Kelso relished his time as a guerrilla and believed the violence in which he took part was necessary in the storm of war.

While only the chapters written through 1863, written in Kelso's own hand, survived the test of time, Grasso makes sure to chart Kelso's postwar life, first as a representative to Congress and then again as a schoolteacher and writer. To this end, two of his political speeches from 1864 and 1865 are appended to the work. Kelso became quite disillusioned with the country he fought to protect, as he believed the ideals of the Declaration of Independence were not being realized, especially when it came to the fate of the newly freed African Americans. Voting with Radical Republicans in Congress, Kelso became a champion for "negro equality" (xxxi). Surrounded by the wealth and excess of the Gilded Age by the time of his death in 1891, the wizened Union guerrilla fighter once considered "a monster" who was "fanatical in his Unionism" grew to regret his wartime experience and became a self-proclaimed anarchist (xxiv).

Kelso's wartime experiences are riveting, and Grasso does a superb job of placing in historical context the many events the soldier only briefly discusses or embellishes...