OCTOBER 26, 1864:
“Bloody Bill” Anderson is killed in a Union raid on Albany,
Missouri. According to reports, the Union commander, Lieutenant Colonel Samuel
P. Cox shot Anderson in the head, though whether Anderson was a prisoner or
still fighting at the time is unclear. Cox ordered Anderson’s body placed on
display. Also on display was a leather lanyard belonging to Anderson that
sported 54 knots --- the number of lives he’d personally taken. (In fact,
Anderson had been responsible, directly and indirectly, for the loss of hundreds
of lives.)
“Bloody Bill’s” guerrilla band splintered apart soon after
his death, and most of his men became notorious outlaws, including the Younger
Brothers and the James Brothers, who often rode together. In 1869, during a
bank robbery in Gallatin, Missouri, Jesse and Frank James tried to kill Samuel
P. Cox in revenge for the death of Anderson, but were unsuccessful.
Sometime after the war, Cole Younger found the location of
“Bloody Bill’s” unmarked grave and had his body reinterred in a churchyard in
Richmond, Missouri.
In a signal occurrence illustrating the deep divisions within
Missouri even after the war (and even to this day) an anonymous citizen had a
grave marker erected for Anderson, and flowers began to appear regularly on his
grave. In 1967, a new grave marker was installed by the town’s historical
society. In 1988, a memorial to the “Confederate Partisan Rangers” killed at
Albany was erected at the spot where Anderson was killed.
