After the morning’s slaughter, it did not take much for a small detachment of guerrillas to lure Johnston and his mounted infantry into an open field on the outskirts of Centralia. Johnston and his 39th Missouri Infantry (Mounted) in a lethal trap.
Later that afternoon, Anderson and a much larger assemblage of guerrillas (estimates vary between 300 and 700) caught Major A. Civilian passengers were subsequently relieved of their valuables and allowed to exit the train which was then set ablaze. Anderson then had nearly all of them executed on the spot. The outnumbered federals were disarmed and removed from the train. Aboard the train, which belonged to the North Missouri Railroad, Anderson and company discovered a group of approximately 20 to 30 Union soldiers. Soon after, they overtook a passenger train destined for the rail depot in Centralia.
On the morning of September 27, 1864, Anderson and a sizable group of bushwhackers (perhaps 60-70) helped themselves to local liquor, looted the town, and robbed stagecoach passengers of their money and jewelry. The pinnacle of Bill Anderson’s career as a guerrilla commander unfolded the next day in Centralia, Missouri. They killed soldiers and civilians, burnt railway property, stole money and military supplies. Throughout the summer of 1864 Anderson’s band ambushed, raided and scalped its way across central Missouri. In the spring of 1864 Anderson and his most loyal followers left Quantrill’s band and set up his own guerrilla company. He was with Quantrill when Quantrill’s force attacked Lawrence Kansas killing between 150 and 200 men and boys in the Lawrence Massacre. In 1863 Anderson and his bushwhackers joined William Quantrill’s band. Starting a career as a horse thief before the outbreak of the war, by 1862 Anderson had formed a band of guerrillas and began terrorizing civilians along the Kansas-Missouri border. The guerrilla war in Missouri was a distinct conflict, separate from the rest of the war and highly personalized but in trying to understand Anderson, readers should beware not to instinctively assume his environment as a moral justification for his behavior. Along with the likes of Quantrill, the Youngers, Frank James, Anderson’s brand of warfare involved ambush, rape, espionage, arson, infighting, scalping, beheading, torture, theft, ethnic vendetta, and even outright massacre. Bloody Bill Anderson was a prominent Confederate guerrilla chieftain in the conflict that engulfed Missouri during the war.
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