In 1877, Edwards published Noted Guerrillas, an account of Confederate partisan warfare during Civil War in western Missouri and border Kansas. Edwards grew concerned by the early-1870s that Missouri, a divided state which ultimately remained in the Union, would be isolated from the mainstream Lost Cause movement.
So more than just a chronicle of the guerrilla war in the western borderlands, "Noted Guerrillas" also functioned as the basis of an "irregular Lost Cause" that Edwards specially constructed for Missouri. William Clarke Quantrill, "Bloody Bill" Anderson, and the James brothers, Frank and Jesse, were among the bushwhackers deified as Confederate heroes in place of standard Lost Cause icons like Robert E. Lee, J.E.B.