Quantrill’s Raiders

William Clarke Quantrill was the most famous and the most feared of the Confederate guerrilla leaders to emerge from the American Civil War. Born in Canal Dover, Ohio, on 31 July, 1837, he was neither born a Southerner nor raised in a slave- owning family. He fought for the South as a matter of choice.

Captain Quantrill

As a child he had, what can only be described as, behavioural problems. As a teenager he displayed a quick and violent temper, and early in life had a conviction for murder overturned on appeal. As a young man he worked as a teacher for the United States Army in Utah, and later tried to make ends meet as a professional gambler. In this he failed and returned to teaching, moving to Lawrence, Kansas. It wasn’t long before he was forced to flee the town after being accused of horse-theft and murder. Lawrence was an abolitionist town and Quantrill had no doubt that it was his outspoken pro-slavery views that had led to his being charged. It was something he was not to forget.

Quantrill was violently pro-slavery and he hated free-soilers (those who wanted the border states of Kansas and Missouri to be slave free). At the outbreak of the war he joined the Missouri State Militia but army discipline was not for him. So he left to form his own guerrilla band of Bushwhackers. Though he was a leader of irregular forces he did, in fact, acquire a commission in the Confederate States Army as a Captain of Partisan Rangers.

Whilst recruiting his guerrilla band he claimed to be a native of Maryland so as to bolster his Southern credentials; and what he created was to be the most ruthless and effective guerrilla army of the entire war. He operated mainly in the Kansas-Missouri border region. He perfected standard military tactics and adapted them to guerrilla warfare. He meticulously pre-planned, organised and synchronised his attacks. He adopted the tactic of dispersal of forces, mapped out his routes in advance and established relays of horses for a quick getaway. He also armed his men with long-barrelled revolvers and used concentrated fire for greater effectiveness. He took no prisoners and focused his attacks on mainly civilian targets. He robbed trains and stage coaches, fire-bombed homes and pillaged towns. His intention was to drive all pro-Union supporters from Kansas and Missouri. However, at Baxter Springs, Kansas, in early 1863, he ambushed 100 Union troops killing 65, including those already wounded. He then stripped and mutilated the bodies.

Lawrence

Lawrence was the home of the anti-slavery movement in Kansas. It had become rich on Southern plunder and pro-Union Jayhawkers operated from within its environs. It was also the home of Senator James H Lane, a singular Southern hate figure reviled for his anti-slavery views and support for the burning of Southern farms, the confiscation of their land and other Jayhawker activities. For Southern supporters and Quantrill in particular, who had his own personal beef with Lawrence, the town was a Sodom, a bottomless pit of festering bile.

Earlier in the year a makeshift prison in Kansas City built to house known Confederate women collapsed. A number of these women were killed and maimed including the sisters of Bloody Bill Anderson, at the time a commander in Quantrill’s Raiders. It was believed that the building collapse was a deliberate act of revenge on the part of the Union forces. It wasn’t difficult for Quantrill to whip his men into a frenzy of vengeance; though it is difficult to believe that Quantrill hadn’t already made his plans well in advance of these events. After all, he still had that personal score to settle.

In the early hours of 21 August, 1863, Quantrill led 450 men in a well co-ordinated attack on Lawrence. The defenders were taken completely by surprise and the town was quickly overrun. Any black men found in the town were summarily shot. On the orders of Quantrill all the men and boys in the town were rounded up. He then gave the order for them to be executed, as their womenfolk were forced to look on. In total 183 were killed in cold blood, the youngest being a boy of 7. No women were killed though some may well have been raped and many were beaten as they defended their men folk. The town was then pillaged, the bank robbed, shops and homes looted. The town was then torched, two-thirds of it being razed to the ground. Senator Lane, one of the principal targets of the attack escaped, fleeing in his nightshirt and hiding in a cornfield.

In response to the attack on Lawrence, General Ewing, the local Union Commander, issued General Order No 11, which allowed for the forced deportation of all those living in the 4 border counties. Tens of thousands were forced to abandon their homes which were then burned, their crops were destroyed and their livestock slaughtered. Depriving Quantrill and his men of all their means of sustenance and support they were forced to flee to Texas.

This marked the end of Quantrill’s Raiders as an effective fighting force as they now splintered into smaller groups. He fought on, however; First with Anderson, and then leaving to form another small band of his own. In the Spring of 1865, he led 35 men into western Kentucky where he carried out a number of raids. On 10 May, 1865, he was ambushed just outside Taylorsville. In a fierce fire fight he was wounded in the chest. He never recovered, dying of gunshot wounds on 6 June,1865, he was 27 years of age.

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