| Guerilla Warfare: Quantrell, Bloody Bill and the James Boys |
| Missouri is probably best
known, among Civil War enthusiasts, for the guerilla warfare that
occurred along the Missouri-Kansas border. William Quantrell was
a former schoolteacher, a brilliant tactician and probably a
psychopath. He commanded a band of pro-South fighters that
included the infamous Bloody Bill Anderson, Cole Younger, and Frank and
a very young Jesse James. Early in the war, in an attempt to curtail guerilla activities, Federal forces began arresting the families of known guerillas and imprisoning them. When the Union Prison in Kansas City collapsed, killing or maiming the female relatives of several of Quantrell's Raiders, they determined to avenge them by attacking Lawrence, Kansas, which Quantrell believed to be a stronghold of Union sympathizers. On August 21, 1863 Quantrell led a force of roughly 450 men into Lawrence. Meeting no resistance, the guerillas slaughtered over 150 men, most of whom were unarmed. In the aftermath of the massacre General Jim Lane (who would become a Kansas state senator after the war, but would commit suicide before taking office) gathered a large contingent of Union sympathizers on the Missouri - Kansas border with the intention of crossing into Missouri to search for the killers. Union officials in Missouri saw this as the build up to a retaliatory bloodbath and ordered Lane to back off. At this point Union forces very nearly came to blows with one another. The standoff ended when General Thomas Ewing issued General Order No. 11, forcing residents of a three-and-a-half county stretch of Missouri along the border to leave their homes and relocate, either within designated, Federally-fortified towns or outside the area. This order was issued on August 25, 1863. Painter George Caleb Bingham, a stout Unionist, vocally protested the order, which was approved with reservations by Lincoln. After the war he made it the subject of one of his most famous paintings. At one time, nearly every Missouri home had a print of the painting. Caught between guerillas on the one hand and armed Kansans on the other, Ewing was in a bad spot. He could not prevent guerillas from sheltering with the residents of the four counties affected, nor could he protect the innocent residents who lived in rural areas. In retrospect, General Order No. 11 was probably the only real solution to the problem. Ewing was hated for it, though, by Union and Rebel sympathizers alike, and it completely destroyed his chances of a political career after the war. In September, 1864, Bloody Bill Anderson led a 400-man force of guerillas in the Centralia Massacre. It began when a train carrying 22 unarmed Union soldiers, who were on leave, pulled into Centralia, MO, while the guerillas were looting it. They took the men off, stripped them and shot them dead. Then they set up an ambush for the force of 150 Union soldiers who set off in pursuit. They killed every last man of them, torturing those who weren't killed outright and mutilating the bodies. It was possibly the worse atrocity of the war. By the end of the war both Quantrell and Anderson had been killed. Afterwards the James and Younger boys became notorious outlaws. Today both Civil War guerillas and post-war bandits tend to be romanticized. |
Here is a biographical sketch of William C. Quantrell from About.com. (You will sometimes see that name as Quantrill, by the way.)
Here is a good article about the Lawrence Massacre.
Civil War St. Louis has an article by an historian named Albert Castel regarding General Order no. 11.
Wikipedia also has an article on General Order No. 11.
There is a roundtable discussion with a panel of experts from PBS on the Centralia Massacre with special focus on the effect it would have had on sixteen-year-old Jesse James, who was one of the participants.
Years ago I found a letter quoted in an old history book wherein a Missouri-based Union officer told a Kansas official that if Kansas-based Union troops crossed the Platte River they would be met "with red hands". Sadly, I misplaced the notes I originally took and now I can't find the letter. If anyone knows of this letter, I'd love to hear from you!
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