By: Robert S. Davis (Blue and Gray Education Society)
In early 1864, the notorious John P. Gatewood and his band—called partisans or bandidts, depending on whom you asked—captured 2,000 head of cattle and horses at Rossville, Georgia. The guards were left behind with their throats slit.
Federal authorities believed Gatewood was a deserter from the Fourth Kentucky Volunteer Infantry Regiment of the United States Army. Some Southern sympathizers claimed he sought revenge for Union soldiers raping and killing his sister.
In reality, Gatewood had deserted from the Fourth Tennessee (Murray's) Confederate Cavalry Regiment in 1863.
Born around 1846 in Fentress County, Tennessee, Gatewood came of age in a region bitterly divided by the Civil War. As Dave Tabler wrote for AppalachianHistory.net:
“Before the war the county had been sharply divided politically, and with few exceptions that alignment held. Those who were Union sympathizers went north into Kentucky and joined the Federal forces, and those on the side of the South went for enlistment in the armies of the Confederacy. No section of the great Civil War suffered so enduringly as that which was the boundary line between the sections, and no part of the boundary suffered more from devastations of war in the passing to and fro of armed forces and from the raids of marauding bands, than did Fentress County."
Out of that hostile and fractured landscape rose men like Gatewood, Champ Ferguson, and Tinker Beatty. Gatewood served under Ferguson before eventually relocatng south in the later years of the war.
By 1863, Gatewood had established his headquarters in Gaylesville, Cherokee County, Alabama. Leading a band of 60 to 70 men—some reportedly Union deserters—he raided across Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia. His targets included Union supply depots, isolated parties of Sherman's bummers, railroad guards, and even trains.
One wartime account, shared by Dale Welch, recalls Gatewood chasing five Union soldiers up a hill, pistols in both hands. When he ordered them to surrender, they complied, believing he wasn’t alone. But when two of the men realized he was acting alone and tried to escape. Gatewood shot them. According to Welch, the remaining three soldiers were killed by having their heads bashed with stones, receiving “no quarter,” exactly as threatened.
Gatewood became so feared that Confederate newspapers reported his raids kept Union troops in Dalton, Georga, confined to their railroad blockhouses. By February 1865, he even held federal soldiers hostage in exchange for the safe return of Confederate civilians.
But civilians, too, became Gatewood’s victims. His men sometimes wore blue uniforms while robbing, pinning the blame on Union forces. To some, Gatewood was an indiscrimate and sadistic killer. Eyewitnesses described this red-haired "beast" as a man who murdered without hesitation.
Yet not all Southerners saw him that way. In North Georgia, some regarded Getewood as a Confederate "Robin Hood" who warned locals of approaching federal foragers and robbed Union forces to help suffering families. The reputation was so persuasive that when Confederate general Joseph Wheeler's cavalry captured Gatewood, local Georgians convinced Wheeler to set him free.
After the war, Gatewood moved to Texas—though some folks claimed he moved to California. He may have married, maybe twice.
And then he disappeared.
Marais massacre
Public Domain
