The guerrilla war began almost spontaneously, as befits a people's war. American colonists had fought as "partizans" —the common name for guerrillas in the eighteenth century—in every theater of their war for independence but nowhere with more success or deadly effect than in the South. Guerrilla service appealed to Confederates in several ways at a very personal level. Border warfare in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia became such a brutal business because Rebel guerrillas, in addition to disrupting Union communications and bushwhacking enemy troops, preyed on Lincolnite noncombatant neighbors. Conflicting notions of democracy loomed large in all this, from the popular enthusiasm for guerrilla warfare to the leadership's scorn for it. Historians of the Confederacy have long agreed that leaders in both the government and the army were, at the very least, ambivalent about the benefits of democracy. The Confederate government allowed enlisted men to elect company officers, a practice that alarmed professional soldiers.