THE CIVIL WARS 150 YEARS LATER
Flashback is commemorating the War Between the States by reprinting portions of the news coverage from significant battles and events.
William Quantrill, the Confederate guerrilla leader who terrorized the citizens of Kansas and Missouri during the Civil War, was described in the Tribune as a "cold blooded, heartless but intelligent villain." And that was well over a year before he cemented his notoriety by leading his gang of several hundred men into Lawrence, Kan., at dawn on Aug. 21, 1863. After ordering a perimeter guard to make sure nobody escaped, Quantrill and his men killed nearly 200 men and destroyed a large area of the town in a paroxysm of violence that shocked a war-torn nation that probably didn't realize it could still be shocked.
Although Quantrill (or Quantrel and Quantrell, as the Tribune spelled it then) may have claimed to be a soldier in the Southern cause, his violent crimes before and after the Lawrence attack made it clear he was truly just a criminal, a mass murderer who killed indiscriminately. A Tribune story after the war suggested his Lawrence attack actually spoiled a real Confederate plan after Union forces rushed into what had been a poorly defended area of Missouri and Kansas.
Lawrence's male residents were murdered in front of their wives and children, their mothers and sisters. In some cases the bandits had to pull the women off their loved ones to get at their intended targets. One story described a raider wedging his pistol between the bodies of a husband and wife in order to kill the man. The raiders burned and pillaged. And then fled.
Quantrill was shot by Union soldiers in Kentucky in May 1865 and died in June, though rumors persisted for years after that he survived. Indeed, it appears the news of the demise of this "human fiend" didn't appear in the Tribune until 1871.
Quantrill's other major legacy? Jesse and Frank James and the Younger brothers were members of his murderous band, and they did survive to spread terror through the Midwest after the war. Nobody called them guerrillas. They were just criminals.
— Stephan Benzkofer