For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one: ). In August 1907, news articles appeared in Canada and the US that claimed that J.E. He arrived at the prison hospital on May 13, 1865. Various experiments in counter-insurgency strategies failed to drive the guerrillas from the field by the end of the war. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does. Quantrills executioner met a much more peaceful end, much later in life. This was a major factor in the guerrillas success in tying down large numbers of Union troops. In 1860, he joined a group of free-state activists, jayhawkers in Kansas, switching over later to lead a band of pro- Confederate guerrillas in Missouri to kill and maim Union soldiers and pro-North citizens. These rarely agree in detail and are usually colored by the perceived legal, political, or personal need for the veteran to present his story in a certain fashion, resulting in a variety of contradictory accounts. The residents of Lawrence, Kansas, would never forget what happened on August 21, 1863, if indeed they were lucky enough to survive. Their favorite long-arm was the breech-loading 1859 Sharps rifle, easy to handle on horseback, especially in its carbine version. He served the Confederacy and perhaps hoped to secure high rank and recognition from its leaders. And that is the terrible truth of the story of Bloody Bill Anderson. Published: (1923) The terrified men scrambled wildly for their horses, Connelley wrote, adding that those who were fortunate enough to mount, fled in a mad route. Sleeping in the barn loft, Quantrill was unable to secure his gun-shy mount and pursued his men on foot. Instead of dismissing Anderson and his wild bushwackers, Price, desperate for support, issued a written order to Captain Anderson to destroy the North Mississippi Railroad. The plan was to take St. Louis, but it was too heavily defended. Halleck issued an order in March 1862 that declared the Confederate guerrillas to be outlaws subject to summary execution. On August 14, the building collapsed, killing four young women and seriously injuring others. Bloody Bill, the guerrillas, and the bloodshed along the Missouri Kansas border all became fodder for novels and films in the 20th century. Quantrill and his followers decided that revenge would be had for the girls deaths, and the location would be the Kansas town of Lawrence, an abolitionist hotbed and home to Jayhawker Senator James Lane, who had led the raid on Osceola. This included Henry Torrey and Harmon Beeson, two local men hoping to build a large farm for their families out west. He was known for leading the most violent bushwhacker gang during the Border War. Coming in range, fire was opened and yells set up to terrify the Missourians.. Facebook Status Intelligence Action Advice Philosophy Religion Fashion Doing Your Best Right Art Self-knowledge Solution Literature Losing Self-esteem Possibility Happiness Questioning While it is possible that at least half the Missouri population were against secession, repressive measures by out-of-state Union forces turned many into reluctant supporters of the Southern cause. Ep. 143 - The strange ending to William Quantrill (Podcast Episode He worked for us. As bushwackers they had learned how easily banks and trains could be robbed and the hard life of a farmer held little appeal by comparison. Quantrill received a field commission as captain in the Confederate army in August 1862 under the Confederate Partisan Act, but he often referred to himself as Colonel. Unlike Quantrill, his band of raiders never was sanctioned by the Confederate government. The mild-mannered Langford did not consider the much-discussed event worthy of further dialogue and was said to be somewhat careful around regions where Quantrill loyalists still lived. Mayes enlisted and served as a private in Company A of the 1st Cherokee Regiment in the Confederate army. Anderson simply replied: Oh, string him up. In the Kansas City region, the name is largely associated with William Clarke Quantrill, the infamous Missouri guerrilla who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War and led a violent raid on the Unionist town of Lawrence, Kansas, on August 21, 1863.. Citizens on the front lines of the bloody Missouri-Kansas border war viewed Quantrill very differently. In May 1865, Quantrill was mortally wounded in combat by Union troops in Central Kentucky in one of the last engagements of the Civil War. As mounted fighters, the guerrillas shared General John Hunt Morgans opinion that sabers were as useless as a fence post. The guerillas weapon of choice was the Colt Navy .36 cal., either in the 1851 or 1861 pattern. . Although his relationship with Beeson was never the same, Quantrill remained friends with Torrey. When the Civil War erupted, pro-slavery guerilla warfare had already been going on for several years in "Bloody Kansas." He went onto to become a Confederate Captain in 1862. In his teens, Quantrill had short-term stints of employment as a teacher in Ohio, Illinois, and later, in Kansas. It was considered good sport to switch the decapitated heads to different bodies or impale them on fence posts. Many were illiterate farm boys who followed whoever could provide them with revenge, adventure, whiskey, and loot. When Quantrill executed one of Andersons men for robbing and murdering a farmer, that was the last straw for Bloody Bill. Chapter 7 Quotes Despite their gain in notoriety and expansion in numbers, accompanied by increasing expertise in the American Indian style of guerrilla fighting, the group was considered undisciplined and dangerous. Historians view him as an opportunistic, bloodthirsty outlaw; James M. McPherson, one of the most prominent experts on the American Civil War, calls him and Anderson "pathological killers" who "murdered and burned out Missouri Unionists". After killing their captives execution-style but shots to the head, the guerrillas brought out their Bowie knives and tomahawks and spent the coming hours in what a witness described as a carnival of blood, dismembering, scalping, mutilating and decapitating their near-naked victims. The Kansas City Journal proposed that the bushwackers should be decently treated, decently tried, decently convicted and decently hung.. By the summer of 1863, it was obvious the war in the West was lost. After being repelled, Quantrill surprised and destroyed a Union relief column under General James G. Blunt, who escaped, but almost 100 Union soldiers were killed. He taught school briefly in Ohio and Illinois; in 1857 he moved to Kansas, and in . It would be this group of "scouts," under the command of a young officer of the worst imaginable reputation, that would hunt down William Quantrill and end his life. Senator Jim Lane, for example, led his Jayhawkers into Missouri in September 1861. He was wounded nine times before his death and was described as a maniac in battle. Todd wrested control of Quantrills band in the spring of 1864 before allying himself with Anderson. William Clarke Quantrill was born at Canal Dover, Ohio, on July 31, 1837, the eldest of eight children. His father, a high school principal, was less supportive. Archives, A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday does not know where it is today., The Heritage Post -Preserving American History, Columbus: Sailor, Mariner, Providential Pathfinder, Letter from SC Commissioners to President Buchanan Asking Him to Withdraw Federal Troops from Charleston Harbor, 28 December 1860, https://www.scribd.com/doc/267011623/doug-scott-report?secret_password=JA9mGQDVbs3Yvzd6ENoX#fullscreen&from_embed. If we assess their significance in the conduct and the outcome of the war, the best we can say is that they drew off large numbers of troops that might have been used elsewhere. Instant downloads of all 1725 LitChart PDFs In January 1864, Union authorities recognized that the actions of the Jayhawkers were ineffective in countering the guerrillas but exceptional in turning the people against the Union by their murder, looting, and arson. William Quantrill was born at Canal Dover, Ohio, on July 31, 1837. William Clarke Quantrill: [to Jesse] Napoleon made the profound Shortly afterwards, Quantrill accompanied a large group of hometown friends in their quest to start a settlement on Tuscarora Lake. In 1858, he moved to Utah where he was a gambler. After leading a Confederate bushwhacker unit along the Missouri-Kansas border in the early 1860s, which included the infamous raid and sacking of Lawrence, Kansas in 1863, Quantrill eventually ended up in Kentucky where he was killed in a Union ambush in 1865, aged 27 . After the Civil War, he drifted to Illinois and on to southwest Iowa. William Clarke Quantrill (1837-65) earned infamy during the Civil War for his atrocities against citizens and guerrilla warfare against Union soldiers. Since there were no eyewitnesses and the victim was a stranger who knew no one in town, William was set free. Some of the outlaws were relaxing, shedding tension with a sham battle of hurled corncobs and taking naps in a hayloft. He was very, very good to me. Some, like the veterans attending the bushwacker reunions under Quantrills vacant gaze, managed to adjust to post-war life. Detailed quotes explanations with page numbers for every important quote on the site. At a very young age, he had joined the Kentucky Confederate troops. By wars end, the guerrilla war in Missouri had descended into a kind of Confederate version of the Lord of the Flies in which teenagers and young men used revenge as justification for operating outside the laws of war and conventional morality. From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. Complete your free account to request a guide. Perhaps showing some detachment from reality, Bloody Bill rode up to Price and Governor Reynolds with scalps hanging from his saddle. The guerrillas responded with a policy of no quarter, and black flags began to appear in the rebel ranks. Frank James later claimed his brother Jesse was the one to kill Major Johnston, but this is questionable Jesse may not have even been there. For shelter, they would dig or find a cave in an inaccessible spot deep in the woods and conceal the entrance. Explorers Bills 16, 14, and 12-year-old sisters were imprisoned upstairs in a 3-story building in Kansas City. morning, April 9th of tuberculosis of the bone, lamented yet another article in the The Albany Ledger, on Friday, April 15, 1910. Cox put Bloody Bills body on display in Richmond Missouri. He died from his wounds on June 6, 1865, at the age of 27. Cutting the telegraph led to one captured guerrilla executed and the torching of every home within a ten-mile radius of the cut. Most of the bands now consisted of reckless and ruthless teenagers with lots of violent energy but little judgment. Quantrills last battle occurred in a pasture and wooded draw and barn lot near Taylorville in Spencer County, Kentucky, on May 10, 1865. Of Raiders and Reunions: A KC Q Answered - Kansas City Public Library At other times the guerrillas could make ferocious frontal attacks on Union infantry, the rapid-fire of their revolvers dealing death and panic among troops armed only with slow-firing muskets and bayonets. He also learned the profitability of capturing runaway slaves and devised plans to use free black men as bait for runaway slaves, whom he subsequently captured and returned to their masters in exchange for reward money[citation needed]. Unknown to the twenty-seven-year-old chieftain of Quantrills Raiders, the final hour was near. John Langford rests in peace near his Missouri farm and friends in a beautiful country cemetery south of Albany. Preservation Kentucky was a bushwackers paradise. Compared to most soldiers, renegades, and border ruffians with whom he fought, Langfords life was long and fruitful, full of his family and friends. Following the old adage, It takes a thief to catch a thief, federal authorities commissioned Union Captain Edwin Terrell, a leader of federal guerrillas in Spencer County, Kentucky, to hunt down the handful of men still in Quantrills band. All were killed, save one sergeant, who spent several unhappy weeks as Andersons prisoner, the only one Bloody Bill was ever known to have taken. Civil War Guerilla Leaders - History [citation needed]. Matthew Christopher Hulbert, "The Rise and Fall of Edwin Terrell, Guerrilla Hunter, U.S.A.", Shadow of the Outlaw: Quantrill's Initiation, "The Plot to Assassinate President Johnson" (1959, Accessed on 09-08-2009 Three Years With Quantrill, In Kansas, Confederate guerrillas attack and burn Shawneetown for the second time, Civil War raid on Lamar to be re-enacted for 150th anniversary, A hard history lesson: A Civil War Tragedy details 1864 lynching of Collin County judge, sheriff and sheriffs brother-in-law, "Replica Head of Confederate Raider Quantrill", "The Great Quantrill - Crocker Mystery in Augusta, Arkansas", Harper Encyclopedia of Military Biography, Official website for the Family of Frank & Jesse James: Stray Leaves, A James Family in America Since 1650, Guerrilla raiders in an 1862 Harper's Weekly story, with illustration, Quantrill's Guerrillas Members In The Civil War, Quantrill flag at Kansas Museum of History, Charles W. Quantrell: A True Report of his Guerrilla Warfare on the Missouri and Kansas Border, List of Union Civil War monuments and memorials, List of memorials to the Grand Army of the Republic, Confederate artworks in the United States Capitol, List of Confederate monuments and memorials, Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials. William Quantrill Quotes Free Daily Quotes . William Quantrill's Leadership During The Civil War | AntiEssays "My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." Complete your free account to access notes and highlights. Many witnesses described the guerrillas charging with reins between their teeth to enable revolver fire with both hands, but Frank James dismissed this in 1897 as dime novel stuff It was as important to hold the horse as it was to hold the pistol., The bushwackers never missed a chance to enrich themselves through the war, robbing stagecoaches, trains, shops, storehouses, and riverboats alike. Many books and articles have attempted to tell an accurate story of Quantrills last battle, but only someone who was present would have the final information. The Union responded to the Lawrence massacre by driving away from the population of three Missouri counties and allowing Jennisons Redlegs to torch everything left. Just able barely to mount a . After what became known as the First Battle of Independence, the Confederate government decided to secure the loyalty of Quantrill by issuing him a "formal army commission" to the rank of captain. [5], Quantrill spent the winter in his family's diminutive shack in the impoverished town, and he soon grew rather restless. Posing as Captain Clarke, Quantrill continued to use the effective guise of his command as a Missouri unit detached to the Bluegrass State to track down secessionist guerrillas. Here they are: 1. The general was chased into Indian Territory, and by the time he returned to Arkansas he had only half the 12,000 men he had started with. I suggest you fortify yours if you hope to be of any use to us. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses Grant on April 9, and General Joseph E. Johnston surrendered most of the rest of the Confederate Army to General Sherman on April 26. Considered guerillas and not recognized as legitimate soldiers, Quantrills men were denied the general amnesty offered to the Confederate army upon Lees surrender. His name is Tom Chaney. The garrison commander did not appreciate their humor but added their names to the roles as required and ordered them out of town. . William Clarke Quantrill was a Civil War guerrilla leader along the western border of Missouri and Kansas. The police were unable to solve the murder. Quantrill's raiders later added about 50 more men at the "Massey Creek rendezvous" in western Cass County.
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