teacher. Intelligent and well-educated, he ven-
tured west as a young man and accepted sev-
eral teaching positions in Indiana and Illinois
before finally settling down in Kansas around
- There was nothing in his prior upbring-
ing to even hint at the notoriety that followed.
Eventually, Quantrill opted for a more exciting
life, and as a teamster he joined an army expe-
dition destined for Utah. He spent several
years drifting and prospecting before return-
ing to Lawrence, Kansas, under the alias of
“Charlie Hart,” a professional gambler and
horse thief. The territory at that time was
being torn asunder by political tensions aris-
ing out of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854,
which allowed inhabitants to decide if their
state should enter the Union as a slave state or
a free state. This triggered a series of bloody
confrontations between pro- and antislave fac-
tions, with a good deal of banditry thrown in
for good measure. Quantrill wasted no time af-
filiating himself with antislavery “Jayhawkers”
and participated in several raids against
proslavery camps and settlements. However,
he also freelanced in his spare time and was
eventually charged with horse stealing from
his own men. Unperturbed, Quantrill simply
changed sides and passed himself off as a
proslavery “Bushwhacker” from Maryland.
Like many border ruffians of his ilk, he aligned
himself with whatever faction afforded him
the greatest prospects for plunder.
The Kansas-Missouri border thus pos-
sessed a brief but bloody tradition of frontier
violence, and the onset of civil war in April
1861 simply exacerbated old hatreds.
Quantrill quickly emerged as a leader of vari-
ous guerrilla bands and had no difficulty at-
tracting ruthless, likeminded criminals to his
banner. Fast-moving and hard-hitting, his des-
perados acquired a reputation for skill in rob-
bery and utter mercilessness toward prison-
ers. Invariably, anybody taken captive was
killed in cold blood. Quantrill initially offered
his services to Gen. Sterling Price and
fought alongside him at the victories of Wil-
son’s Creek and Lexington in 1861. But when
Price was forced to retreat with his soldiers,
Quantrill remained behind with his irregulars,
killing and robbing at will. His depredations
so angered Union authorities that in Decem-
ber 1861 Gen. Henry W. Halleck issued Gen-
eral Order No. 32, which stipulated that any
marauders apprehended would be summarily
executed. Such decrees proved little more
than amusement to Quantrill’s band; they
were experts at elusive hit-and-run tactics
and were never caught.
In August 1862, Quantrill was commis-
sioned a captain in the Confederate Partisan
Rangers, which lent official veneer to his
malevolent misdeeds. In fact, many Confeder-
ate authorities were left aghast by his murder-
ous disposition but were unable—or unwill-
ing—to curtail him. By this time his command
had expanded to nearly 450 men, including
such desperate figures as William Anderson,
Cole Younger, and Frank and Jesse James.
After he raided and killed with near impunity,
authorities responded by clamping down on
Confederate sympathizers, including the
womenfolk of many raiders, who where se-
questered at a derelict prison in Kansas City.
When this building collapsed, killing several
prisoners—including a sister of “Bloody Bill”
Anderson—Quantrill brooked no delay in or-
ganizing a terrible retribution.
On August 21, 1863, Quantrill’s band en-
tered Lawrence, Kansas, a known proaboli-
tionist center. It was also home to U.S. Sena-
tor James Lane, an active Jayhawker who had
burned the proslavery enclave of Osceola two
years previously. For three hours, the guerril-
las methodically ransacked banks and burned
180 buildings. Worse, they lined up and sys-
tematically murdered nearly 200 men and
boys. This single atrocity established
Quantrill as the most reviled guerrilla of the
entire Civil War. “No fiend in human shape
could have acted with more barbarity,” de-
clared Kansas Governor Thomas Carney. The
destruction of Lawrence also spurred Union
Gen. Thomas E. Ewing to issue General Order
No. 11, which deported the entire population
of three Confederate-leaning counties in
western Missouri. Nonetheless, QuantrillQUANTRILL, WILLIAMCLARKE