A guerilla, a sharp-shooter.
1809. They were gallant bush-whackers and hunters of racoons by moonlight.—W. Irving, ‘Knickerbockers’ (1849), vi. 342. (N.E.D.)
1834. I belonged to Captain Williams’s troop, called the ‘Bush-Whackers.’—W. G. Simms, ‘Guy Rivers,’ i. 92 (1837).
1861. This department was left with less than fifteen thousand men to guard three hundred miles of railroad and three hundred miles of frontier, exposed to “bushwhackers,” and the forces of Generals Floyd, Wise and Jackson.—Speech of Gen. Rosecrans, Dec. 11: O. J. Victor, ‘The History … of the Southern Rebellion,’ ii. 461.
1862. The supposed object of the expedition is to drive up beeves, though some are of opinion that we are in search of “bushwhackers.”—‘Southern Hist. Soc. Papers,’ xii. 393.
1862. Of banditti, or bush-whackers, I need hardly say, we saw nothing.—Macmillan’s Mag., vi. p. 141/2. (N.E.D.)
1867. He lost his life by bushwhackers while on one of these expeditions near Alexandria.—J. M. Crawford, ‘Mosby and his Men,’ p. 77 (N.Y.).
1867. Three miles from the town, Montjoy, being far ahead of his men, was bushwhacked, and received a mortal wound in the head.—Id., p. 306.
1885. Think of being pursued day after day by a party of bushwhackers watching from behind trees a chance to pick you off!—Admiral D. D. Porter, ‘Incidents of the Civil War,’ p. 244–5.
1888. [In Texas, down to 1866,] jay-hawkers, bandits and bush-whackers had everything their own way for a time.—Mrs. Custer, ‘Tenting on the Plains,’ p. 260.
