Quantrill's Raiders: Murderous Role Models for the James-Younger Gang

Over a century after their deaths, Jesse James and his bunch of brigands are still as much idolized as they are condemned for their ten-year spree of robbery and murder. But their early lessons in brutality came from a man named William C. Quantrill, whose guerilla bands staged bloody attacks against Federal troops and Union sympathizers along the Kansas-Missouri border. The tension between the two states was due to the fact that Kansas was opposed to slavery, while Missouri was not. This culminated in a border war that preceded and overlapped the Civil War. Fellow gang members Cole and Jim Younger were also members of Quantrill's Raiders, and learned well the group's tactics of ambush.

William Clarke Quantrill was born in Ohio in 1837, and worked briefly as a school teacher in Lawrence, Kansas prior to the Civil War. Though a "Yankee" by birth, Quantrill sided with the Confederacy when war broke out in 1861. He moved to Missouri, where he organized a small gang of partisans and launched raids into Kansas. Quantrill was made a captain in the Confederate Army, but continued to act independently, and was soon branded an outlaw by Union forces.

Quantrill's Raiders broke off into splinter groups, one of the largest of which was led by Quantrill's former lieutenant, William T. "Bloody Bill" Anderson, who was noted for his brutality and his hatred of the Union. The psychopathic Anderson relished torturing prisoners and then mutilating their corpses, particularly scalping them. His most barbaric act occurred in September, 1864 in the town of Centralia, Missouri, when he and his men kidnapped 22 unarmed Union soldiers from a passing train and summarily executed all of them. Several weeks later, Anderson's men ambushed another group of soldiers who were searching for the original 22, and killed dozens of them (PBS). Young brothers Frank and Jesse James joined up under Anderson's band of marauders, through their friend, Archie Clement (ibid). Anderson's short, brutal life came to an abrupt end in Missouri in late October of 1864 when he and some of his men were surprised by a patrol of Federal soldiers under the command of Captain S.P. Cox. Before the guerilla leader knew what hit him, he was pierced with dozens of bullets as he sat on his horse. Anderson's mangled corpse was photographed and put on display before it was mutilated by vengeful Union soldiers (CSA).

Quantrill's Raiders even appalled some Confederates with their assault on Lawrence, Kansas, on August 21, 1863. Riding into town with a force of about 400, they rounded up as many men and boys as they could find, killing over 150 of them, often in front of horrified women and children. After this deadly spree, the raiders burned and pillaged as much as they could before leaving the devastated survivors in the ruins of their town. A monument in Lawrence's Oak Hill Cemetery commemorates the victims of the massacre.

In planning the Lawrence Massacre, Quantrill's Raiders were gunning for a few men in particular, among them Senator James Lane, a Mexican War veteran and strong proponent for a "free-soil" Kansas, a state without slavery. Lane managed to escape with his life that fateful August night, but ironically, wound up committing suicide shortly after the Civil War. Another factor motivating the raiders was the accidental death of several women during the collapse of a Kansas City jail. The deceased were relatives of several of Quantrill's Raiders, including Bloody Bill Anderson.

Other guerilla groups roamed the plains during the Kansas-Missouri border war, on both sides of the conflict, but none achieved quite the notoriety of Quantrill's Raiders. One notable Northern faction was known as the Jayhawkers, who retaliated for the Lawrence Massacre by forcing the residents of several Missouri counties out of their homes and then burning the dwellings (ibid). Quantrill's looting and pillaging continued after the Civil War ended in April of 1865, but not for much longer. He was severely wounded in a shoot-out with Union forces in Kentucky several weeks later, and died after one month.

Sources

"William Clarke Quantrill." PBS- The West 2001. The West Film Project & WETA. 16 Oct.
2007 .

"William Quantrill and the Lawrence Massacre." American Studies at the University of Virginia.
17 Oct. 2007 .

Find A Grave. Ed. Jim Tipton. 17 Oct. 2007 .

"William 'Bloody Bill' Anderson." American Experience 5 Dec. 2005. Public Broadcasting
Service. 17 Oct. 2007 .

"Capt. William Anderson (Bloody Bill)." War for Southern Independence. C.S.A. 17 Oct.
2007 .