Quantrill's Raiders
Quantrill's Raiders, led by William Quantrill, attacked Lawrence, Kansas in August 1863 and killed more than 180 civilians. They were the most notorious of the pro-Confederate partisan fighters, or bushwhackers, who fought through the American Civil War. Their ranks included two brothers named Jesse and Frank James. Missouri and Kansas sat under nominal Union control in the early years of the war. Yet both states were consumed by violence between Confederate bushwhackers and anti-slavery Jayhawkers competing for territory. The Confederate government had once given Quantrill an official field commission, then recoiled from him and withdrew its support. By 1864 he had lost his hold on the men entirely, and the group broke into smaller bands. Some raiders died in later fighting. Others survived to gather at reunions decades afterward, which is when the name Quantrill's Raiders came into common use. The James brothers went on to form their own gang, carrying out robberies for years as a continuing insurgency along the border. What turned a loose band of horsemen into the deadliest guerrilla force of the war? Why did the men who once rode beside Quantrill end up divided between reunion halls and outlaw legend?
Stephen A. Douglas' Kansas-Nebraska Bill opened Kansas as a territory in 1854. Historian Albert Castel wrote that for the next six years its prairies became a stage for 'political conventions, raids, massacres, pitched battles, and atrocities.' Free State and pro-slavery settlers fought for control of the territory.
In February 1861, Missouri voters chose convention delegates who rejected secession by a vote of 89-1. Unionist leaders Nathaniel Lyon, a US Army commander, and Frank Blair of the influential Blair family led the opposition. They faced pro-secession forces led by Governor Claiborne Jackson and Sterling Price, who later became a Confederate general. Open warfare between the two sides broke out by June. Guerrilla fighting spread across the state and grew worse in August, after Union troops lost the Battle of Wilson's Creek.
One historical account contrasted Missouri with the border conflicts in Maryland and Kentucky. It described local sniping, bushwhacking, and guerrilla fighting that marked the state during this period. The same account called the result 'a war of stealth and raid without a front, without formal organization, and with almost no division between the civilian and the warrior.' By August 1862, Union troops had won the Battle of Pea Ridge and pushed organized Confederate forces out of Missouri. Guerrilla violence continued regardless, and the most feared of the remaining fighters was led by William Clarke Quantrill.
Union patrols and supply convoys became routine targets for Quantrill and his men. They also seized mail shipments and occasionally struck towns on both sides of the Kansas-Missouri border. Quantrill was not the only Confederate guerrilla active in Missouri, but he gained the greatest notoriety of them all. Much of his effort went toward pro-Union civilians, whom he tried to drive out of the territory he controlled. His men also attacked Jayhawkers, the Missouri State Militia, and Union troops, relying mainly on ambush and raids rather than open combat.
Multiple .36-caliber Colt revolvers, carried by each rider, gave Quantrill's guerrillas extra firepower and better accuracy than the heavier .44-caliber standard. His men also perfected disguises, coordinated and synchronized attacks, and planned dispersal routes with relays of fresh horses waiting after each raid.
On the 15th of August 1862, the Confederate government granted Quantrill a field commission as a captain under the Partisan Ranger Act. His men elected their own junior officers, while Quantrill himself often went by the informal rank of colonel. Despite carrying that official commission, he acted largely on his own judgment, paying little attention to his government's policies or orders. That mix of firepower, disguise, and personal authority would soon be turned against a single Kansas town.
Newspapers nicknamed the border region 'Bleeding Kansas' during the unrest that ran from 1855 to 1861. Lawrence had long served as the main base for Kansas abolitionist and Jayhawker organizations, while pro-slavery forces also worked in the area to gain control. Jayhawkers kept raiding into western Missouri throughout the Civil War, targeting the Little Dixie region along the Missouri River, where slaveholding was concentrated. Robbery, arson, theft, and murder were carried out by fighters on both sides.
By August 1863, Union authorities in the so-called District of the Border had grown frustrated with Quantrill's hit-and-run tactics. Confederate sympathizers in Missouri's border counties were giving his men aid, which angered the authorities further. They began imprisoning female relatives of known guerrillas, intending to banish them from the region. Some of the women, a few of them teenagers, were held in makeshift jails in Kansas City, Missouri. One jail was a house on Grand Street that doubled as the studio of local artist George Caleb Bingham. Union soldiers had removed supporting beams to enlarge the first floor, and the building collapsed, killing and maiming several of the women held inside. Because the dead were close relatives of Quantrill and his men, their deaths enraged the guerrillas.
Quantrill organized a unified partisan raid in response, though some evidence suggests the attack had been planned even before the jail collapsed. Small bands of his men rode across 50 miles of open prairie, converging in the early morning hours at a rendezvous point on Mount Oread. Quantrill's raiders then burned a quarter of the town's buildings and killed at least 150 men and boys. Abolitionist U.S. Senator Jim Lane, one of the raid's main targets, avoided capture by dashing into open corn fields. Word of the killing would soon travel to the Confederate government, whose reaction would change Quantrill's standing for good.
Fort Baxter in Kansas was the first target as Quantrill led his men south toward Texas, retreating behind Confederate lines. Near 100 Union troops were then killed in an ambush at the Battle of Baxter Springs along the way. The group wintered in Sherman, Texas, during 1863-1864, but their lawless habits kept embarrassing the Confederate command even there.
Two of Quantrill's Raiders, the Calhoun brothers, were killed in Texas in 1864 during a gunfight with Collin County Sheriff Captain James L. Read. Read managed to escape Quantrill's anger by going into hiding. But Quantrill's supporters eventually caught up with him. They lynched him in Tyler, Texas, on the 18th of May 1864.
General Joseph O. Shelby was among the Confederate officers who valued these irregular fighters, since Union forces rarely gained the upper hand over Quantrill's men. Rather than surrender when the war ended, Shelby rode south into Mexico with his own troops. His command became remembered simply as 'The Undefeated.'
John Noland rode among Quantrill's men, but unlike them, he was enslaved, owned by a man named Francis Asbury Noland. No record survives showing that he was freed either before or during the war. Decades later, the 1999 film Ride with the Devil told a fictionalized story of Missouri bushwhackers. Its character Daniel Holt was inspired directly by Noland's life.
In the late winter of 1863, Quantrill began losing his hold over his own men. Early in 1864, the guerrillas made their way back from Texas to Missouri, splitting into separate bands with no single leader among them.
That winter, Quantrill had taken his men to Cedar Mills, Texas, offering their services to the Confederacy there. Their assignments ranged from attacking Union supply teamsters to repelling Jayhawker raids into northern Texas. They also guarded against Indian attacks and rounded up deserters scattered across Texas and Oklahoma. The guerrillas proved rowdy, undisciplined, and dangerous during their time in Texas.
The group split into bands led by Lieutenants 'Bloody Bill' Anderson and George M. Todd, then returned to Missouri early in 1864. Quantrill took several of his remaining loyal men east toward Kentucky. There, pro-Union soldiers and hired killers hunted them down, cornering the group in a barn where a shootout broke out. Quantrill was shot in the spine and left unable to move. He was arrested, and he reportedly died a week later from his wounds.
Anderson's splinter group was assigned in 1864 to operate north of the Missouri River during General Sterling Price's raid. Their goal was to disrupt Union operations and pull troops toward Anderson's own cavalry command. Anderson was reportedly shot dead north of Orrick, and his body was dragged through the streets of Richmond, Missouri. His gravemarker still stands in the old Mormon Pioneer cemetery, in its extreme southwest corner behind some pine trees near the road.
Todd's splinter group joined Major General Sterling Price's raid south of the Missouri River, serving as cavalry scouts. Todd was shot out of his saddle by a Union sniper north of Independence, Missouri, a day before the Battle of Westport. Captain William H. 'Bill' Stewart of Quantrill's Raiders was shot and killed in November 1864 in Howard County, Missouri. He died while trying to rob a Union cattle drover.
Archie Clement led some of the guerrillas who carried on after the war ended. His group harassed the Missouri state government through 1866. In December of that year, state militiamen killed Clement in Lexington. Several of his remaining men later became outlaws, forming what became known as the James-Younger Gang. The last living survivor of Quantrill's Raiders died in 1940.
Jesse James Under the Black Flag, a silent film from 1921, featured both Quantrill and Jesse James on screen for the first time. Dark Command followed in 1940, though it renamed the group 'William Cantrell's Raiders' for its fictionalized story. Kansas Raiders arrived in 1950 with Audie Murphy portraying one of the guerrillas in the years after the war.
Randolph Scott played two different men connected to the Raiders across the decade. One of them was a former Quantrill spy in The Stranger Wore a Gun, released in 1953. True Grit gave the connection its most memorable touch. Rooster Cogburn, played by John Wayne in 1969 and later by Jeff Bridges in 2010, took pride in having ridden with Quantrill. He even named his pet cat General Sterling Price.
Warren Zevon's 1976 song 'Frank and Jesse James' describes the two brothers joining Quantrill just as war broke out between the states. The 2000 novel Wildwood Boys, a biography of 'Bloody Bill' Anderson by James Carlos Blake, treats the Raiders as a major part of its story. The 2018 video game Red Dead Redemption 2 features a group called the Lemoyne Raiders, modeled on Quantrill's men. The game even mentions Lawrence in a letter describing ongoing fights with the Jayhawkers. As recently as its 36th album, the Belgian comic series Les Tuniques Bleues titled an entire volume 'Quantrill.' The story centers on its Union Army characters crossing paths with Quantrill and his raiders.
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Common questions
Who led Quantrill's Raiders during the American Civil War?
William Quantrill led Quantrill's Raiders, the best known pro-Confederate partisan guerrilla band of the Civil War. His men included Jesse and Frank James, who later formed their own outlaw gang and continued robberies for years.
What happened during Quantrill's Raiders' attack on Lawrence, Kansas?
In August 1863, Quantrill led his Raiders in an attack on Lawrence, Kansas that killed more than 180 civilians and burned a quarter of the town's buildings. Abolitionist U.S. Senator Jim Lane, one of the main targets, escaped by fleeing into corn fields.
When did William Quantrill of Quantrill's Raiders receive a Confederate Army commission?
Quantrill was granted a field commission as a captain in the Confederate army on the 15th of August 1862, under the Partisan Ranger Act. The Confederate government later withdrew its support after the Lawrence massacre.
Where did Quantrill's Raiders go after the Lawrence massacre?
After the raid, Quantrill led his men south to Texas, where they wintered in 1863-1864 while continuing to raid along the way. Their retreat included the Battle of Baxter Springs, where they killed near 100 Union troops.
Why did the Confederate government withdraw support from Quantrill's Raiders?
The Confederate government was outraged by the brutality of the Lawrence massacre and withdrew even tacit support for the bushwhackers. By 1864, Quantrill had lost control of his men, and the group splintered into smaller bands.
How did Quantrill's Raiders come to an end?
Quantrill lost control of his men over the winter of 1863-1864, and the group split into bands led by figures such as 'Bloody Bill' Anderson and George M. Todd. Quantrill himself was later cornered in Kentucky and reportedly died from his wounds within a week, while the last surviving member of the Raiders lived until 1940.
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11 references cited across the entry
- 3BookStark Mad Abolitionists: Lawrence, Kansas, and the Battle over Slavery in the Civil War EraRobert K. Sutton et al. — Skyhorse — 2017
- 6BookSouthern communities : identity, conflict, and memory in the American South2019
- 7BookThe ghosts of guerrilla memory : how bushwhackers became gunslingers in the American westMatthew C. Hulbert — The University of Georgia Press — 2016
- 8BookSearching for black Confederates : the Civil War's most persistent mythKevin M. Levin — 2019