Confederados

In the Spring of 1861 Union soldiers invaded Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. The war was new there. But, in the volatile Trans Mississippi-West Theater the conflict was much older. Long before Fort Sumter, Unionist Jayhawkers and Confederate Bushwhackers killed with religious fervor along the Missouri-Kansas frontier and deep in the isolated Arkansas hills. Atrocities cloaked in partisan allegiance had made enemies of family and friends in a place like none other in the young nation. At war's end the wounds were deep. The blood-soaked ground was seeded with hate. The victor's anti-bellum harvest was swift and bitter: it was war by other means. Southerners left for the American West and Mexico. Some 20,000, known as Confederados, fled Reconstruction's excesses all the way to Brazil. All hated their righteous oppressors. Led by the powerful and clandestine Knights of the Golden Circle, they envisioned a new, slave-holding Southern Empire anchored in Cuba. Men from all walks of life, openly and secretly, pursued the goal. The James and Younger gangs - and others, prominent and unknown - poured stolen treasure into the cause. A new war had begun, fought until the dawn of the 20th Century by Northern victors, Southern patriots. From the Missouri Ozarks, across the American West to the jungles of Brazil, both hunted once and forever enemies to their graves. This is a story of that conflict.