Jamie Bottoms (1844-1865) was a Confederate States Army bushwhacker who served under William T. Anderson during the American Civil War. He and Josey Wales were the only survivors of the Gower massacre at the end of the war, but Bottoms was mortally wounded in the shootout with the Redlegs and died of his wounds just before he and Wales could reach the Indian Territory.
Biography[]
Bottoms in 1865
Jamie Bottoms was born in Missouri in 1844, and he was raised on a farm by his single father. He joined the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, harboring a hatred for the "bluebellies" of the Union Army; he fought alongside the older Josey Wales, whom he looked up to. He reluctantly decided to follow Captain John V. Fletcher's advice to surrender to the Union Army at the end of the war in May 1865, but he walked out of the Union camp rather than agree to take an insulting oath of allegiance to the United States government. He was wounded when the irregular Redlegs began to fire on the surrendering Confederate soldiers, but he was rescued by Wales, who attacked the Union soldiers after witnessing their duplicity. He and an unrepentant Wales decided to flee to Mexico via the Indian Territory and Texas, with Captain Bill Terrill's Redlegs chasing them down as they ran; Fletcher was hired by the US Senator James Henry Lane to accompany them. A severely wounded Bottoms later helped Wales kill the bounty hunters Abe Fairfield and Lige Kelrey after they ambushed their campsite, but a mortally wounded Bottoms ultimately came to terms with his coming death and passed away during a rainstorm, just before he and Wales were about to cross into the Indian Territory. To throw off the army, Wales mounted Bottoms' body on his horse and sent it through a nearby Union camp, distracting the Union troops as he escaped into the wild frontier.