She sat on horseback waiting for her husband holding the reins to his mount. Then, ever so furtively, Maddox met his wife, Nancy, behind the courthouse. It was reported that following the reading of the verdict, he shook the hands of his attorney and a handful of unnamed friends who sat behind him at trial. Indicted for murder during the war for killing a man named John Zane Evans during Quantrill’s infamous 1863 raid on Lawrence, Maddox was arrested nearly two years later and transported to Kansas for trial. During the Civil War, Maddox served as a guerrilla under William Clarke Quantrill. This book takes readers behind the legend and provides a closer look at the man - and at the face of terror.Just after seven o’clock on the night of April, 2 1867, George Maddox slipped out the backdoor of the Ottawa, Kansas, courthouse, hopped on his horse, and rode for Missouri.

Only 26 when he was killed charging an ambush, Bloody Bill Anderson had already become a legend. The authors' disagreements on many aspects of Anderson's gruesome career add a fascinating dimension to the book. They examine his prewar life, explain how he became a guerrilla, then describe the war that he and his men waged against Union soldiers and defenseless civilians alike. More than compiling a chronicle of horrors, Castel and Goodrich have produced the first full-fledged account of Anderson's career. Then he led the brutal Centralia Massacre, a blood-soaked nightmare recounted here hour-by-hour from firsthand accounts. He rode with Quantrill in the infamous sack of Lawrence and killed more victims than any other raider. In telling this story of bitter bloodshed, historians Castel and Goodrich track Bloody Bill's reign of terror over increasingly violent raids. Wherever Bloody Bill rode, the Grim Reaper rode alongside. Sometimes he decapitated them and rearranged their heads. Sometimes he left the bodies of dead Federal soldiers scalped, skinned, and castrated. A former horse thief turned bushwhacker, he became the scourge of Kansas and Missouri with a reputation for unspeakable atrocities.

A name associated with William Quantrill and Jesse James, Bloody Bill Anderson was known for never taking prisoners. For a brief but dramatic period, ''Bloody Bill'' played the leading role in the most violent arena of the entire war - and did so with a vicious abandon that spread fear throughout the land. Nowhere was the Civil War as savage as it was in Missouri - and nowhere did it produce a killer more savage than William Anderson. This book talks about the short, savage life of a civil war guerrilla.

Bloody Bill Anderson by Thomas Goodrich