By the end of the Civil War, Champ Ferguson had become a notorious criminal whose likeness covered the front pages of Harper’s Weekly , Leslie’s Illustrated , and other newspapers across the country. His crime? Using the war as an excuse to steal, plunder, and murder Union civilians and soldiers. Cumberland Blood: Champ Ferguson’s Civil War offers insights into Ferguson's lawless brutality and a lesser-known aspect of the Civil War, the bitter guerrilla conflict in the Appalachian highlands, extending from the Carolinas through Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. This compelling volume delves into the violent story of Champ Ferguson, who acted independently of the Confederate army in a personal war that eventually garnered the censure of Confederate officials. Author Thomas D. Mays traces Ferguson's life in the Cumberland highlands of southern Kentucky, where—even before the Civil War began—he had a reputation as a vicious killer. Ferguson, a rising slave owner, sided with the Confederacy while many of his neighbors and family members took up arms for the Union. For Ferguson and others in the highlands, the war would not be decided on the distant fields of Shiloh or Gettysburg: it would be local—and personal. Cumberland Blood describes how Unionists drove Ferguson from his home in Kentucky into Tennessee, where he banded together with other like-minded Southerners to drive the Unionists from the region. Northern sympathizers responded, and a full-scale guerrilla war erupted along the border in 1862. Mays notes that Ferguson's status in the army was never clear, and he skillfully details how raiders picked up Ferguson's gang to work as guides and scouts. In 1864, Ferguson and his gang were incorporated into the Confederate army, but the rogue soldier continued operating as an outlaw, murdering captured Union prisoners after the Battle of Saltville, Virginia. Cumberland Blood, enhanced by twenty-one illustrations, is an illuminating assessment of one of the Civil War's most ruthless men. Ferguson's arrest, trial, and execution after the war captured the attention of the nation in 1865, but his story has been largely forgotten. Cumberland Blood: Champ Ferguson's Civil War returns the story of Ferguson's private civil war to its place in history. “In this lean, crisply written yet thorough exploration of Champ Ferguson’s life, Thomas D. Mays helps us better understand both the man and the terrible nature of guerrilla warfare.” —Daniel E. Sutherland, editor of Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence on the Confederate Home Front " Cumberland Blood is riveting reading--a fascinating study of an important and often overlooked facet of the Civil War. It's a must-read book for anyone who wants to understand the conflict in the border states." —Steven E. Woodworth, author of Decision in the Heartland: The Civil War in the West “ Cumberland Blood is a thorough and unvarnished account of the atrocities committed by Champ Ferguson, one of the most infamous pro-Confederate guerrilla fighters of the Civil War. Thomas Mays recounts Ferguson’s bloody exploits and debunks the myths that others have used to justify Ferguson’s crimes. In the process, Mays provides a valuable and unromanticized view of the bushwhacking violence that plagued the Cumberland region.” —Michael A. Ross, author of Justice of Shattered Dreams: Samuel Freeman Miller and the Supreme Court during the Civil War Era “Few figures exhibit the bitterness and hatred that the American Civil War could generate as well as the notorious Tennessee guerrilla Champ Ferguson. Thomas D. Mays neither glorifies nor vilifies his subject; rather, he shows that to Ferguson scouting for Confederate cavalry, carrying off Federal stock, killing Union supporters, and shooting captured Federal troops were all part of the same war. Cumberland Blood reveals the American Civil War in its most personal, raw, and disturbing form.” —Noel C. Fisher, author of War at Every Door: Partisan Politics and Guerrilla Violence in East Tennessee, 1860–1869 Ask a Civil War buff to name a Confederate guerrilla and you’ll probably hear the names of Trans-Mississippi warriors William Clarke Quantrill, William “Bloody Bill” Anderson or Frank and Jesse James. But, as historian and author Thomas Mays correctly notes, Kentucky native Champ Ferguson “needs to be added to this bloody pantheon of America’s outlaws.” Ironically, Ferguson was practically a household name at the time of his death in 1865. He faded into obscurity as more famous “western” figures like Quantrill and Anderson took center stage. Now, Thomas Mays has once again brought Ferguson to national attention in his fascinating study of Champ’s bloody, brutal and private civil war. The Cumberland Highlands (specifically the Kentucky-Tennessee border just west of Cumberland Gap) became an area where foraging raids and reprisals against civilians became commonplace