William T. Anderson

Years before any of them became famous as bank and train robbers, Jesse, Frank, and the Youngers had been shaped by the violence surrounding the Civil War in Missouri.

They had fought as Confederate guerrillas and bushwhackers with William Quantrill, known as Quantrill's Raiders, and later with William T. Anderson, better known as Bloody Bill Anderson.

They operated in a style of warfare built around speed, surprise, and mobility.

Hit quickly, use horses to your advantage, and then disappear before a larger force could organize against you.

Harsh.

Bloody Bill Anderson.

Bloody Bill Anderson.

And William Quantrill.

Quantrill, yeah.

Of the twenty militia who were concerned in the murder of his sweetheart's father and indirectly in the murder of his sweetheart, he killed eighteen.

William Anderson was another of Quantrill's men who had a wrong to avenge.

He was a strange man.

If the waves of the Civil War had not cast him up as the avenger of one sister assassinated and another maimed, he would have lived through it peacefully, the devil that existed in him sleeping on and the terrible powers latent there remaining unaroused.

So in the case of True Grit or in the case of Paper Moon, the man is not... father material.

The man is usually a con man, or in the case of True Grit, the guy has worked for Bloody Bill Anderson, was a Confederate guerrilla.

Not really good guys.

And that's true of Miller, too, that he's doing things that are immoral, unethical, wrong.