Brian Dallas McKnight. Confederate Outlaw: Champ Ferguson and the Civil War in Appalachia. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011. 288 pp. $34.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8071-3769-7. Reviewed by Samuel B. McGuire Published on H-Appalachia (September, 2011) Commissioned by Steven Nash (Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of History, East Tennessee State University) For three decades historians have contributed because a “frontier culture remained strong in the significantly to our understanding of the Civil War isolated children and grandchildren of the origi‐ by assessing the multiple roles of unconventional nal settlers.”[2] Employing an array of archival warfare. Scholars--such as Michael Fellman, Clay sources--including newspaper editorials, manu‐ Montcastle, and Daniel Sutherland--not only re‐ script collections, and postwar trial testimony-- vealed the pervasiveness of irregular warfare on McKnight maintains that Cumberland high‐ the Confederate home front, but also examined landers’ war-induced paranoia and pragmatic the ways in which guerrilla activities shaped offi‐ survivor mentality inflamed the merciless guerril‐ cial war policies and the course of the broader la warfare. He also argues that Ferguson’s conventional conflict.[1] Augmenting this bur‐ Manichean outlook, in which he viewed the con‐ geoning scholarship on Civil War irregulars, Brian flict in stark terms of good versus evil with no McKnight’s biography explores the life of one of middle ground, was founded upon a rudimentary the most notorious pro-Confederate guerrillas, understanding of Old Testament scripture. Champ Ferguson, and sheds light on the chaotic Organized chronologically, McKnight’s study irregular war that wracked many mountain South initially provides insight into Ferguson’s prewar communities. background and demonstrates that often-ambigu‐ McKnight’s work comes on the heels of ous loyalties divided many Appalachian families Thomas D. Mays’s 2008 study on Ferguson. He and communities during the secession crisis. On places Ferguson within the broader regional and the eve of war, Ferguson was a middling Demo‐ national conflict and challenges Mays’s assertion crat who owned three slaves and more land than that the contest along the Kentucky-Tennessee the average resident of Clinton County, Kentucky. border degenerated into a vicious guerrilla war Whereas political, economic, and legal issues in‐ H-Net Reviews duced Ferguson to join the Rebel cause, his broth‐ tion of irregulars, McKnight asserts that Fergu‐ er and mother became outspoken Unionists. McK‐ son’s exploits under Morgan redefined “the na‐ night asserts that “throughout the deeply divided ture of his service: regular soldier when conve‐ Appalachian region, a pragmatic approach to nient, Confederate partisan when otherwise” (p. Union or Confederacy was often employed, with 90). Ferguson opportunistically served under vari‐ the focus solely on self-preservation,” and as war ous Confederate officers, including Colonel ensued “secession and union fevers quickly be‐ George Dibrell and General Joseph Wheeler, for came epidemic .. [and] turned friends against brief periods throughout the rest of the war. His friends and separated normally close families” relationship with conventional Confederate offi‐ (pp. 26, 31). Ferguson eventually embraced the cers brought him under General Felix Robertson’s black fag and carried out a personal campaign command at the Battle of Saltville in 1864. In the against many longtime comrades and rivals who wake of the mêlée, he massacred wounded black were Unionists. Union troops as they lay on the battlefield and lat‐ The author goes on to trace the bloody contest er killed the injured Elza Smith, a relative of Fer‐ between local Unionists and Confederates and de‐ guson's late frst wife, at a hospital set up on the tails how Ferguson gained notoriety as a ruthless campus of Emory and Henry College. guerrilla whose motley unit terrorized, pillaged, Although Confederate authorities had briefly and killed Union sympathizers. In particular, detained Ferguson after the Saltville Massacre, McKnight asserts, “Ferguson’s attack on William Union officials arrested and indicted him for mur‐ Frogg epitomizes the nature of warfare as under‐ dering ffty-three men more than a month after stood by Cumberland region guerrillas” (p. 44). On Confederate surrenders at Appomattox and Ben‐ November 1, 1861, Ferguson arrived at the home nett Place. McKnight chronicles the guerrilla's of William Frogg, a prewar friend who was sick much-publicized trial in Nashville, Tennessee, and and bedridden. Ferguson alleged that Frogg had details how Ferguson’s lack of a formal Confeder‐ enlisted in the Union Army and promptly killed ate commission and mercurial relationships with him. Exemplifying the ruthless mentality preva‐ conventional Rebel leaders formed the founda‐ lent among many Cumberland irregulars, the tion of the legal arguments. After he was found guerrilla later claimed, “‘Every man was in dan‐ guilty and hanged in October 1865, Ferguson ger of his life: if I hadn’t kill[ed] my neighbor, he joined Henry Wirz as the only Confederates exe‐ would have killed me ... it was regarded as legiti‐ cuted for war crimes. mate to kill them at any time, at any place, under McKnight concludes his work by examining any circumstances’” (p. 45). the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Besides detailing how the course of the broad‐ cultural development of legends surrounding Fer‐ er war shaped the conflict in the Cumberland re‐ guson. He explains that Lost Cause proponents gion, McKnight illustrates that like many Civil broadcast two primary myths, which couched Fer‐ War irregulars, Ferguson operated along the am‐ guson as a tragic hero and justified his wartime biguous line separating irregular and convention‐ brutality. Whereas one legend alleged that Fergu‐ al warfare. Ferguson acted outside the formal son undertook his bloody campaign after Federal Confederate Army throughout most of the war; soldiers sexually assaulted his wife and daughter, however, in the spring of 1862 Rebel cavalry the other story supposed that Union troops mur‐ raider John Hunt Morgan tapped Ferguson as a dered Ferguson’s son. McKnight disproves both guide for his foray into western Kentucky. Compli‐ myths and concludes that Confederate apologists cating historian Robert Mackey’s strict categoriza‐ created “a twisted form of moral justification for a 2 H-Net Reviews troublesome Confederate hero” by claiming “the defense of family as a primary motive for Fergu‐ son’s bloody career” (pp. 180,182). He also claims that elements of the Ferguson legend pervaded various late nineteenth-century Appalachian lo‐ cal-color publications, and even formed the foun‐ dation of Asa Carter’s ideal guerrilla character-- Josey Wales. Whereas many Civil War historians have fo‐ cused solely upon the brutal guerrilla warfare in Kansas and Missouri, McKnight brings the com‐ plex partisan war along the Kentucky-Tennessee border to the forefront. In particular, he provides a more nuanced examination of Ferguson’s vi‐ cious wartime career in the Cumberland high‐ lands and postwar legacy in the popular imagina‐ tion. Some readers may fnd McKnight’s assess‐ ment of Ferguson’s Old Testament mentality rather tenuous; however, most students of south‐ ern Appalachia and the Civil War era will certain‐ ly find this well-researched biography valuable. Notes [1]. Michael Fellman, Inside War: The Guerril‐ la Conflict in Missouri during the American Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Clay Montcastle, Punitive War: Confederate Guer‐ rillas and Union Reprisals (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009); and Daniel E. Sutherland, A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009). [2]. Thomas D. Mays, Cumberland Blood: Champ Ferguson’s Civil War (Carbondale: South‐ ern Illinois University Press, 2008), 7. If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at https://networks.h-net.org/h-appalachia Citation: Samuel B. McGuire. Review of McKnight, Brian Dallas. Confederate Outlaw: Champ Ferguson and the Civil War in Appalachia. H-Appalachia, H-Net Reviews. September, 2011. 3 H-Net Reviews URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=33032 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 4.