Dunbar's Guerillas

Dunbar's Guerillas
Active	1861–1865
Country	Confederate States of America
Allegiance	CSA
Branch	Forrest's Cavalry/Independents
Type	Cavalry
Engagements	Battle of Fort Donelson Battle of Shiloh Raid on Muffreesboro Kentucky Campaign Forrest's West Tennessee Campaign Battle of Saltville Battle of Greeneville

Dunbar's Guerrillas was an independent company of Confederate cavalrymen during the American Civil War. They were raised by Captain William Dunbar, who was from Russell County, Kentucky and lived on the Cumberland River.

Dunbar raised men from family and friends in southeastern Kentucky. They rode into Tennessee to fight for the South. Dunbar himself was regularly commissioned in Nashville, as well as his nephew, Lieutenant Silas Dunbar. They joined Nathan Bedford Forrest and served under Colonel Lawton who commanded a battalion of likewise independent companies.

Dunbar's men served at Shiloh and at the raid on Murfreesboro. At Murfreesboro they played a role in freeing the town from the Union occupation. At some point between just before the Kentucky Campaign or just after Dunbar's men disbanded, they were the element of attack that rode through the town to attack the union camps while Forrest sprung the townspeople from the city jail.

After the disbandment

Many of Dunbar's men stayed with Forrest. Some joined Morgan, a fellow Kentuckian, while others went home or continued as guerrillas in their own personal wars.

Reorganization

William and Silas Dunbar arranged to gather up parts of the old company along with new recruits to work behind Union lines as partisan rangers along the Cumberland Plateau and in southeastern Kentucky and northeastern Tennessee. They fought in the desperate, bloody, neighbor-against-neighbor fights of the hills, sometimes collaborating with Champ Ferguson and his men. Dunbar's men fought from southwestern Virginia all across the mountains and down into Middle Tennessee. They fought in every battle or skirmish and also bushwhacked many a Federal garrison. Upon hearing that Forrest was coming into Tennessee, they went west and fought alongside him once more. They raised many new recruits from Southern-sympathizing eastern Tennesseans who wanted to break the Union occupation of their state. However, their efforts were futile, and on August 20, 1864 Dunbar's men were ambushed and slaughtered in Greene County, Tennessee. They were coming home from western Tennessee; many of the men had family in that area and they were probably visiting when the ambush came up. William Dunbar was killed in the ambush; the other names of those killed are lost to history.

After the war

Lt. Silas Dunbar survived the war. He later made his living sharecropping with a comrade named Sabre Wooldridge, a former slave on Alexander Wooldridge's tobacco plantation. Wooldridge was a member of both Dunbar's Guerrilla's and Forrest's Scouts. Sabre had been a faithful servant all through the war for Wooldridge.

Partial roster

Names	Notes
William Dunbar	Captain
Silas Dunbar	Lieutenant and Enrolling Officer
Jasper Dunbar	2nd Kentucky Cavalry (Woodward's)
Alexander Wooldridge	Forrest's Scouts
Sabre Wooldridge	Forrest's Scouts w/ Alex
William T. Kelsey	8th Kentucky Cavalry (Cluke's)
Robert Long	Forrest's Scouts
Carroll Wooldridge	3rd Tennessee Cavalry (Forrest's)

References

• Partisan Rangers Units and Guerrilla Commands. Online. July 4, 2008
• Tennessee Civil War Sourcebook. Online. July 4, 2008