WILLIAM QUANTRILL

'William Clarke Quantrill' (July 31 1837 – June 6 1865), was a Confederate guerrilla leader during the American Civil War.

Contents

Early life

Guerrilla leader

Lawrence Massacre

Last years

Marriage

Legacy

In fiction

Notes

External links

Early life

Quantrill, the oldest of 8 children, was born at Canal Dover (now just Dover), Ohio, on July 31, 1837. His father was Thomas Quantrill, formerly of Hagerstown, Maryland. His mother, Caroline Cornelia Clark, was a native of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. They were married on October 11 1836, and moved to Canal Dover the following December. Thomas Quantrill died December 7, 1854, apparently of tuberculosis. ^[1].
Little is known of Quantrill’s early years in Dover, though it appears that he was raised by his mother 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 moved to Lawrence, Kansas, and again taught school. When charges were brought against him for murder and horse theft, he fled to Missouri.

Guerrilla leader

When the Civil War began in 1861, Quantrill claimed he was a native of Maryland and may have joined the Missouri State Guard. However, his dislike of army discipline led him to form an independent guerrilla band by the end of that year. This bushwhacker company began as a force of no more than a dozen men who staged raids into Kansas, harassed Union soldiers, raided pro-Union towns, robbed mail coaches, and attacked Unionist civilians. At times they skirmished with the Jayhawkers, undisciplined Union militia from Kansas who raided into Missouri. The Union commanders declared him to be an outlaw, even though Quantrill apparently did secure a Confederate commission as a captain of partisan rangers. When the Union Army ordered all captured guerrillas to be shot, Quantrill ceased taking prisoners and started doing the same. He quickly became known to his opponents as a feared Rebel raider, and to his supporters as a dashing, free-spirited hero.

Lawrence Massacre

Main articles: Lawrence Massacre

The most significant event in Quantrill's guerrilla career took place on August 21 1863. Lawrence had been seen for years as the stronghold of the anti-slavery forces in Kansas. It was also the home of James H. Lane, a Senator infamous in Missouri for his rabid anti-slavery views and also a leader of the Jayhawkers. In the weeks immediately preceding the raid, Union General Thomas Ewing, Jr., had ordered the detention of any civilians giving aid to Quantrill's Raiders. Several female relatives of the guerrillas were imprisoned in a makeshift jail in Kansas City, Missouri. On August 14, the building collapsed, killing four young women and seriously injuring others. Quantrill's men believed the collapse was a deliberate, and the event fanned them into a fury. Many historians, however, believe that Quantrill had actually planned to raid Lawrence in advance of the building's collapse, in retaliation for the earlier Jayhawker attack and burning of Osceola, Missouri.
Early on the morning of August 21, Quantrill descended from Mount Oread and attacked Lawrence with a force estimated at between 200 to 450 guerrillas. Senator Lane, a prime target of the raid, managed to escape through a cornfield in his nightshirt, but the bushwhackers killed about 200 men and boys, dragging many from their homes to execute them before their families. When Quantrill's men rode out at 9 a.m., most of Lawrence's buildings were burning, including all but two businesses. His raiders looted indiscriminately and robbed the town's bank. The Lawrence raid was considered one of the most vicious atrocities of the Civil War by northerners, who ignored or denied their own depredations on Confederate civilians, and left these out of the standard historical accounts of the 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 ordered 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 behind them, burning buildings, torching planted fields and shooting down livestock to deprive the guerrillas of food, fodder, and support. The area was so thoroughly devastated that it became known thereafter as the "Burnt District." However, Quantrill and his men rode south to Texas, where they passed the winter with the Confederate forces.

Last years

While in Texas, Quantrill and his 400 men quarreled. His once-large band broke up into several smaller guerrilla companies. One was led by his notable lieutenant, William "Bloody Bill" Anderson, whose men came to be known for tying the scalps of slain unionists to the saddles and bridles of their horses. Quantrill joined them briefly in the fall of 1864 during fighting north of the Missouri River.
In the spring of 1865, now leading only a few dozen men, Quantrill staged a series of raids in western Kentucky. He rode into a Union ambush on May 10 near Taylorsville, Kentucky, and received a gunshot wound to the chest. He died from it on June 6 at the age of 27.[1]
As is often the case with famous figures, fanciful stories of his survival spread. One apocryphal story from British Columbia in Canada involves a recluse living in an isolated cabin on Quatsino Sound on northern Vancouver Island late in the 19th Century. Inquiries after the recluse allegedly were made in Victoria by unidentified Americans. The men claimed the recluse was Quantrill and later said they had killed him to avenge the deaths of fellow Union soldiers.

Marriage

During the war, Quantrill met fourteen-year-old Sarah Katherine King at her parents' farm in Blue Springs, Missouri. They married and she lived in camp with Quantrill and his men. At the time of his death, she was seventeen.^[2]

Legacy

Quantrill’s actions remain controversial to this day. Some historians view him as an opportunistic, bloodthirsty outlaw, while others continue to regard him as a daring horse soldier and a local folk hero. Some of Quantrill's celebrity later rubbed off on other ex-Raiders—Jesse and Frank James, and Cole and Jim Younger—who went on in after the war 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'' and similar related (and not very accurate) magazines, Quantrill allegedly cached treasure worth millions of U.S. dollars all over the area he operated in. Just where he is supposed to have obtained this fortune is never made clear.

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. Ironically, in the movie ''True Grit'' (1969), it is strongly implied that Wayne's character Rooster Cogburn rode with Quantrill during the the Civil War.

★ ''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 with 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)

Notes

1. William G. Cutler's History of the State of Kansas, Miami County Part 2
2. Sarah King Head at Find a Grave

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