Jayhawkers

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Jayhawkers were guerrilla units of the Union during the Civil War . They fought mainly in Kansas against sympathizers of the Confederation and against the guerrillas of the Confederate Army from Missouri , the so-called Bushwhackers .

Jayhawk is a contraction of two English bird names: the jay ( jay ) and the hawk ( hawk ). Jayhawk was used both as a positively ironic self-designation by the guerrillas and as a derogatory foreign designation by the war opponent. A verbatim translation into German is not possible, but “weird” or “colorful bird” is a free interpretation that works in a similarly ambiguous way.

General

Senator James H. Lane, notorious leader of the Jayhawker

The Jayhawkers cannot be described as loyal to the Union from the start, as many of these groups fought on both sides in the 1850s before the Civil War . It was precisely at this time that the name Jayhawkers, which was used for the militias of the Free Staters, came up. The Free-Staters were the group that opposed the introduction of slavery in Kansas. But there were also some groups that advocated slavery. It was only with the outbreak of the civil war that the Jayhawkers sympathized with the north and the abolitionists . The Jayhawkers formed primarily to prevent the Bushwhackers from infiltrating Kansas. A leading figure among the Jayhawkers was the senator and abolitionist James Henry Lane . Lane and his group wore red gaiters at the time, which earned them the nickname "Redlegs" (red legs). This name was often used for irregular troops who refused to join regular Union troops and were therefore sanctioned by the US Army.

On both sides of the Missouri-Kansas border there were some guerrilla units that were not recognized or sanctioned by either the Union or the Confederate. These gangs and groups were often ordinary outlaws who, left to their own devices, terrorized the farmers in the border areas with raids, horse thefts and pillage .

Jayhawker guerrillas made numerous incursions into the state of Missouri and committed some of the worst atrocities of the civil war. An example of this is the looting and pillage of the city of Osceola , Missouri, carried out by Lane on September 21, 1861 , in which nine male residents were executed after a court martial was carried out. The Jayhawkers have also been accused of deliberately collapsing an improvised Kansas City prison that held mostly female relatives of the Bushwhackers. Four women died in this event. As an act of revenge, the Bushwackers committed the Lawrence massacre .

Others

  • The Sports Team at the University of Kansas at Lawrence is known as the Kansas Jayhawks. The Jayhawk is a mystical bird that is a cross between a blue jay and a hawk.
  • Items stolen during the Missouri campaigns were called "jayhawked" in the vernacular.
  • In the film Der Texaner (The Outlaw Josey Wales) with Clint Eastwood , Jayhawkers appear who burn down the farm of the title hero, kill his family and thus seal Josey Wales' decision to join the Bushwhacker units.
  • Jayhawkers can also be seen in the film " Ride with the Devil " by director Ang Lee and in the film The Tall Men  (1955) with Clark Gable and Jane Russell .

literature