William Quantrill
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William Clarke Quantrill (July 31, 1837 – June 6, 1865), was a pro-Confederate guerrilla fighter during the American Civil War whose actions, particularly a bloody raid on Lawrence, Kansas, remain controversial to this day.
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[edit] Early life
William Clarke Quantrill, the oldest of 8 children, was born at Canal Dover (now just Dover), Ohio, on July 31, 1837. His father was Thomas Quantrill, of Hagerstown, Maryland. His mother, Caroline Cornelia Clark, was a native of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. They were married October 11, 1836, and moved to Canal Dover in the following December. Thomas Quantrill died December 7, 1854 apparently of tuberculosis. [1].
Little is known of Quantrill’s early life in Dover, though it appears that he grew up in a Unionist family and initially espoused Free-Soil beliefs. After several years working as a school teacher, Quantrill traveled to Utah with the Federal Army as a teamster in 1858, but left the army there to try his hand at professional gambling. In 1859, he returned to Lawrence, Kansas, and again taught school, but after charges were brought against him for murder and horse theft, fled to Missouri.
[edit] Marriage
During the Civil War, Quantrill met fourteen-year-old Sarah Katherine King at her parents' farm in Blue Springs, Missouri. They soon married and she lived in camp with Quantrill and his men. At the time of his death, she was seventeen years old.[2]
[edit] Guerrilla leader
When the war began, Quantrill was claiming to be a native of Maryland and may have joined the Missouri State Guards. However, his dislike of the discipline of army life would cause him to form an independent guerrilla band by the end of 1861. This bushwhacker group began as a force of no more than a dozen men who staged raids into Kansas from Missouri, harassed Union soldiers, raided towns, robbed mail coaches, and attacked Unionist civilians. On occasion they skirmished with the Jayhawkers, Union militia from Kansas who raided Missouri. The Union command declared Quantrill an outlaw, though he apparently did manage to secure a Confederate commission as a captain of partisan rangers. After the Union Army ordered all captured guerrillas to be shot, Quantrill started doing the same. He quickly became known to his opponents as a notoriously bloody raider, and to his supporters as a dashing, free-spirited hero.
[edit] Battle of Lawrence
The most significant event of Quantrill's guerrilla career occurred on August 21, 1863. Lawrence had been seen for years as the bastion of anti-slavery forces in Kansas; it was also the home of James H. Lane, a Senator infamous in Missouri for his anti-slavery views. In the weeks immediately preceding the raid, Union General Thomas Ewing, Jr., had ordered the detention of any citizens giving aid to Quantrill's raiders. Several female relatives of the raiders were detained in a jail in Kansas City, Missouri, which collapsed on August 14, killing four women. Quantrill's supporters alleged the collapse to be a deliberate attack, and the event fanned them into a fury. Many historians, however, believe that Quantrill had planned the raid in advance of the building's collapse.
In the early morning of August 21, Quantrill descended from atop Mount Oread and attacked Lawrence with a force estimated at anywhere from 200 to 450 raiders. Though Senator Lane, a prime target of the raid, managed to escape through a cornfield in his nightshirt, the bushwhackers killed an estimated 200 men and boys, dragging many from their homes to kill them before their families. When Quantrill rode out at 9 a.m., most of Lawrence's buildings had been burned, including all but two businesses; his raiders looted indiscriminately and also robbed the town's bank. The raid would become notorious in the North as one of the most vicious atrocities of the Civil War.
On August 25, in retaliation for the raid, General Ewing authorized General Order No. 11 (not to be confused with General Ulysses S. Grant's General Order of the same name). The edict forced the depopulation of three and a half Missouri counties along the Kansas border (with the exception of a few designated towns), forcing tens of thousands of civilians to abandon their homes. Union troops marched through, burning buildings and fields and killing livestock in an effort to deprive the guerrillas of food, fodder, and support. The region was so thoroughly destroyed it became known as the "Burnt District." Quantrill and his fellow guerrillas, however, successfully escaped to Texas, where they passed the winter with conventional Confederate forces.
[edit] Later life
In Texas, Quantrill and his 400 men quarreled, and his once-large band broke up into several smaller units. One such was led by his vicious lieutenant, William "Bloody Bill" Anderson, who tied the scalps of his victims to his saddle. Quantrill joined them briefly in the fall of 1864 during fighting north of the Missouri River. In 1865, now leading only a few dozen men, he staged a series of raids in Kentucky. In a Union ambush on May 10 near Taylorsville, Kentucky, Quantrill received a gunshot wound to the chest, from which he died on June 6 at the age of 27.[1]
As was often the case with notorious and elusive figures, however, fanciful stories of his survival proliferated. One apocryphal story from the Canadian province of British Columbia tells of a recluse living in an isolated cabin on Quatsino Sound on northern Vancouver Island later in the 19th Century. Inquiries after this recluse made in Victoria by unidentified Americans led to their killing of the recluse, who they claimed was no less than William Quantrill and whom they sought out to avenge the deaths of fellow Union soldiers.
[edit] Legacy
Quantrill’s actions remain controversial to this day. Some historians remember him as an opportunistic, bloodthirsty outlaw, while others continue to view him as a daring soldier and local folk hero. Something of this celebrity later rubbed off on several ex-Raiders—Jesse and Frank James, and Cole and Jim Younger—who went on in the late 1860s to apply Quantrill's hit-and-run tactics to bank and train robbery. The William Clarke Quantrill Society continues to research and celebrate his life and deeds.
Major League Baseball relief pitcher Paul Quantrill is a distant relative of William.
According to Lost Treasure magazine and similar related (and not very accurate) magazines, Quantrill allegedly cached treasure worth millions of U.S. dollars all over the area he has operated from. Just where he is supposed to have obtained this amount is not made clear.
[edit] In fiction
- In 1968's "Bandolero!", Dean Martin plays Dee Bishop, a former Quantrill Raider who admits to participating in the attack on Lawrence. His brother Mace, played by James Stewart, was a member of the Union Army under General William Tecumseh Sherman.
- Dark Command (1940), in which John Wayne opposes former schoolteacher turned guerrilla fighter "William Cantrell" in the early days of the Civil War. William Cantrell is a thinly veiled portrayal of William Quantrill.
- Renegade Girl (1946) deals with tension between Unionists and Confederates in Missouri.
- Kansas Raiders (1950), in which Jesse James (played by Audie Murphy) falls under the influence of Quantrill.
- Woman They Almost Lynched (1953), featuring Quantrill's wife Kate as a female gunslinger.
- The Stranger Wore a Gun (1953), in which a former Quantrill Raider becomes bank robber until his old comrades catch up to him.
- Quantrill's Raiders (1958), focusing on the raid on Lawrence.
- A 1959 episode of the TV show The Rough Riders entitled "The Plot to Assassinate President Johnson", as the title suggests, involves Quantrill in a plot to assassinate President Andrew Johnson.
- Young Jesse James (1960), also depicts Quantrill's influence on Jesse James.
- Arizona Raiders (1965), in which Audie Murphy plays an ex-Quantrill Raider who is assigned the task of tracking down his former comrades.
- The TV series Hondo featured both Quantrill and Jesse James in the 1967 episode "Hondo and the Judas".
- The Legend of the Golden Gun (1979), in which two men attempt to track down and kill Quantrill.
- Lawrence: Free State Fortress (1998), depicts the attack on Lawrence.
- Ride with the Devil (1999) stars Tobey Maguire and includes Quantrill's raid on Lawrence, KS.
- The 2000 episode entitled "The Ballad of Steeley Joe" on the series The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne depicted both Jesse James and William Quantrill.
- The USA Network's television show Psych, in an episode entitled "Weekend Warriors", featured a Civil War reenactment that included William Quantrill. The episode spoke about Quantrill's actions in Lawrence, but the reenactment featured his death at the hands of a fictional nurse Jenny Winslow, whose family was killed at Lawrence.
- Quantrill's Lawrence Massacre of 1863 is depicted in Spielberg's mini-series "Into the West" (2005)
[edit] Notes
- ^ William G. Cutler's History of the State of Kansas, Miami County Part 2
- ^ Sarah King Head at Find a Grave
[edit] External links
- William Clark Quantrill Society
- Official website for the Family of Frank & Jesse James: Stray Leaves, A James Family in America Since 1650
- T.J. Stiles, Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War
- Guerrilla raiders in an 1862 Harper's Weekly story, with illustration
- Quantrill's Guerrillas Members In The Civil War
