When we think of war crimes, the Nazis and Stalin’s henchmen usually spring to mind. Yet the American Civil War was riddled with its own grisly violations of the accepted rules of wartime conduct. Below are ten of the most shocking war crimes that history class often skips.
10 Silas Gordon’s War Crimes in Platte County
Pro‑slavery agitator Silas Gordon’s relentless guerrilla campaign provoked Union forces to torch every town and farm in Platte County, Missouri, not once but twice. Fueled by a blind fury against the North, Gordon often executed men on mere suspicion, with no proof of wrongdoing. He is also suspected of the Platte Bridge Tragedy, where a sabotaged rail trestle collapsed under a passenger train, killing at least 17 men, women, and children.
In retaliation, Union Colonel James Morgan razed Platte City and captured three of Gordon’s associates—William Kuykendall, Black Triplett, and Gabriel Chase. After they begged for a proper trial, Morgan dragged them to Bee Creek Bridge. Triplett was shot by eight men with muskets, Chase was bayoneted through the throat after sinking waist‑deep in mud, and Kuykendall, who feigned ignorance, was spared.
9 Champ Ferguson at Saltville
Confederate guerrilla Champ Ferguson shared Gordon’s hatred for the Union, leading marauding bands through middle and eastern Tennessee. He showed no mercy, targeting anyone—women, children, even the elderly—who he believed supported the North. Legends claim he decapitated 80‑year‑old men and rolled their heads down hills.
After Lincoln’s assassination, Ferguson was arrested in Nashville, tried, and hanged on 20 October 1865 for 53 murders. He personally knifed and shot unarmed civilians for backing abolition. Notably, after the First Battle of Saltville, his men stormed a Union field hospital and slaughtered over two dozen soldiers of the 5th U.S. Colored Cavalry, including white officers.
8 Sherman’s March to the Sea
General William Tecumseh Sherman’s infamous campaign began on 15 November 1864, following General John Bell Hood’s accidental burning of Atlanta. Sherman ordered his 62,000‑strong army to march 300 miles southeast to Savannah, destroying everything in its path—rails, factories, towns, farms, banks, and courthouses.
While Sherman claimed he instructed his troops not to harm civilians unless they resisted, the sheer scale of destruction meant civilian casualties were inevitable. He later rationalized the devastation by stating, “War is Hell.” Unverified reports suggest a massacre of 200 civilians north of Columbia, South Carolina, and a shell that amputated a man’s legs and bisected his daughter’s body after Atlanta’s evacuation.
7 Shelton Laurel Massacre
In January 1863, Lieutenant Colonel James Keith led the 64th North Carolina Regiment to Marshall, Madison County, after pro‑Union civilians raided Colonel Lawrence Allen’s home and a salt storehouse. Enraged, Keith hunted down the Shelton Laurel Valley insurgents, killing 12 and capturing seven.
Keith then tortured the families of the captured men—breaking fingers to force revelations—before executing all 15 prisoners by firing squad, despite Governor Zebulon Vance’s order to hold them for trial. He received a two‑year sentence but escaped, never to be seen again.
6 Sacking of Osceola, Missouri
On 23 September 1863, abolitionist Senator James Lane led a raid on Osceola, Missouri, chasing Confederate General Sterling Price’s forces. After routing a small Union detachment, Lane’s 1,100 men torched 797 of the town’s 800 buildings, sparing civilians’ lives but forcing them from their homes and looting every possession, even the church. Lane pilfered a piano for himself.
He then tried nine men of military age—one a 16‑year‑old sobbing over his dead horse—on suspicion of aiding the Confederacy and executed them on the spot.
5 Bloody Bill Anderson’s Centralia Massacre
On 27 September 1864, William “Bloody Bill” Anderson and his 80‑man guerrilla band, including the notorious Jesse James, stormed Centralia, Missouri. After abandoning a plan to destroy the North Nissouri Railroad, they seized a train, stripped the 23 Union soldiers aboard, and demanded identification of officers. Only one stepped forward; the remaining 22 were shot, then scalped, skinned, and dismembered.
Sergeant Thomas Goodman escaped, but later that day, 155 Union mounted infantry attacked Anderson’s group, routing them within minutes. Anderson survived until an October battle later that year.
4 Fort Pillow Massacre
On 12 April 1864, Confederate cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest, who would later become the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, besieged Fort Pillow on the Tennessee River. After demanding surrender and being refused, Forrest’s men overran the fort, shooting many fleeing defenders.
Accounts indicate that after the garrison—comprising primarily Black soldiers—surrendered and were disarmed, Confederate troops bayoneted, knifed, and clubbed roughly 250 men to death in a brutal spree. Over two dozen were reportedly castrated and lynched. Forrest maintained the fight was fair, claiming the defenders were armed to the teeth.
3 Quantrill’s Lawrence Raid
In retaliation for the Osceola sacking, Confederate guerrilla leader William Clarke Quantrill led a raid on Lawrence, Kansas, on 21 August 1863. A hotbed of anti‑slavery sentiment, Lawrence was targeted to eliminate Union sympathizer James Lane, who escaped into a cornfield.
Quantrill’s Raiders descended at dawn, torching every business and municipal building. While homes were spared from fire, families were forced outside, and husbands, fathers, and sons were shot on porches, streets, and even in bed. Women were raped, children shot or trampled. At least 185 men and boys, some as young as 11, were executed solely for being able‑bodied.
2 Camp Douglas Prison Conditions
Camp Douglas in Chicago served as a Union training depot before becoming a prison for captured Confederates in March 1862. Within its first month, one in eight inmates died from exposure or pneumonia due to inadequate shelter, medicine, and nutrition.
Over the war’s span, the camp saw 15 different wardens, none able to manage the facility effectively. Prisoners endured torture on a “wooden horse”—a sharp wooden beam placed against the tailbone—while weighted ankles forced them to sit for hours in rain or snow. By war’s end, the death toll ranged from 4,454 to possibly 6,000, primarily from disease and malnutrition, representing about 17 % of the 26,000 prisoners sent there.
1 Andersonville (Camp Sumter) Atrocities
Camp Sumter, better known as Andersonville, was a Confederate POW camp in Georgia that operated from February 1864 until May 1865. Enclosed by double log palisades and an inner “dead line,” any attempt to cross the fence resulted in immediate execution.
Designed to hold about 100 men, the camp swelled to 45,000 prisoners. Overcrowded tents, scorching summer heat, and a devastating hookworm epidemic led to 13,000 deaths within seven months from sunstroke, starvation, or disease. Inmates suffered severe vitamin C deficiency, causing scurvy, tooth loss, and bloody diarrhea. The commandant, Henry Wirz, was later tried, court‑martialed, and hanged for murder.
The sheer scale of suffering—3,000 deaths per month, roughly 100 per day—makes Andersonville one of the most infamous prison atrocities of the Civil War.
These ten episodes reveal that the American Civil War was far from the noble struggle often portrayed in textbooks; it was also a theater of brutal war crimes that scarred a nation.