Summary

Irregular and guerrilla warfare decisively shaped the course, consequences, and nature of the American Civil War. As Confederate irregular efforts intensified, so deepened the level and tenacity of the US war against increasingly large portions of the Confederate South. While never fully committed, supported, or thorough, the Confederacy waged an irregular war in pockets of the South that ultimately backfired. The irregular war forced a harder, and, in some places, total war upon the Confederate civilian population, which brought the war to an end faster and indelibly shaped the nature of the larger conflict. Supporters of the United States—Unionists—lived throughout the South, and they formed something of a fourth theater of war by foisting upon the Confederacy their own internal civil war from Texas to North Carolina, one that was intricately connected to the larger irregular war. Civilians rapidly became a significant focus of the guerrilla war, and those living in the wartime South found themselves in a years-long fight for survival. In a manner of speaking, they became combatants. In the end, the irregular war alone might not have decided the Civil War’s outcome, but it helped redefine the course and consequences of the larger conflict.