A typical jayhawker action was a cross-border raid into Missouri.

The meaning of the jayhawker term evolved in the opening year of the Civil War.

A newspaper reporter traveling through Kansas in 1863 provided definitions of jayhawker and associated terms:

Osawatomie played a key role throughout the Civil War, serving as a center for Jayhawker activity.

The origin of the term "Jayhawk" (short for "Jayhawker") is uncertain.

A Jayhawker is a Unionist who professes to rob, burn out and murder only rebels in arms against the government.

Near Jayhawker Canyon, Freeman claimed he found an ox shoe, a significant discovery in itself.

A Red Leg is a Jayhawker originally distinguished by the uniform of red leggings.

Renowned Jayhawker Silas Soule was among them.

Later, Freeman tried to find the trail the "Jayhawker" company had used to escape Death Valley in January 1850.

You're a heap wuss Jayhawker than Gineral Banks!"

He was captured by Jayhawker militia and sold to the Union Army before being exchanged and returned to the South following Sherman's intervention.

Over time, proud of their state's contributions to the end of slavery and the preservation of the Union, Kansans embraced the "Jayhawker" term.

It may also have been coined from the existing American word Jayhawker, being a term for American guerillas in Missouri in the 19th century.

Jayhawker raids against perceived civilian "Confederate sympathizers" alienated Missourians and made maintaining the peace even harder for the Unionist provisional government.

A forthcoming book, "Jayhawker," the story of a young abolitionist during the Civil War, is to be published by Morrow Junior Books in October.

Added to this were raids by Missouarians against northern settlers in Kansas and Kansas Jayhawker raids into Missouri.

Throughout 1863 and part of 1864, Montgomery practiced his Jayhawker brand of irregular warfare in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

He declined to direct a staged version of Dodsworth by Sinclair Lewis, which led Lewis to offer him his first work written for the stage, Jayhawker.

Montgomery was a "Jayhawker" from Kansas who had fought in numerous clashes between pro- and anti-slavery forces in Kansas and Missouri prior to the war.

James H. Lane (Senator) was to launch a Jayhawker offensive behind Price from Fort Scott that led to the Sacking of Osceola.

Jayhawker Colonel James Montgomery was portrayed in the 1989 film Glory, where he is referred to as "a real Jayhawker from Kansas."

Historians have suggested that Quantrill had actually planned to raid Lawrence in advance of the building's collapse, in retaliation for earlier Jayhawker attacks as well as the burning of Osceola, Missouri.

As the war continued, the "jayhawker" term came to be used by Confederates as a derogatory term for any troops from Kansas, but the term also had different meanings in different parts of the country.

"If you're not in a huge rush, you're going to go through New Orleans," said J. Stephen Lucas, president of Jayhawker Consulting, a commodities consulting company in Trumbull, Conn.