The rebel attack on the Stemmons home was intended to terrorize and diffuse but essentially had the opposite effect, infuriating the townsmen and altering the defensive efforts to offensive as everyone in Avilla took up arms. The Union Army gained possession of Missouri in 1862, but the terrain encompassing Avilla remained plagued with bushwhackers and occasionally small bands of Confederate regulars or guerrilla raiders on horseback. The town militia inherently became the earliest county militia for a period, headquartered in Avilla (this was before the formation of the Missouri County Militias in 1864). The patrol areas were then extended within eastern Jasper and western Lawrence Counties. Patrols of mounted militiamen were augmented by a few Union soldiers of the US Cavalry and continued to protect the town and countryside in several local skirmishes. Many bushwackers were tracked down and shot, and within a short time the rest of them grew to fear the deadly Avilla "pioneer marksmen". In one account a rebel’s skeleton was found just south of town with a bullet hole in the skull and his name was never identified. He had apparently been killed during a previous skirmish with militiamen, but his remains were not found until they were in an advanced state of decomposition. The skull was then hung from the "Death Tree" in Avilla, suspended from a tree limb for over a year near the road at the Dunlap apple orchard "as a warning to all other bushwhackers".