William Quantrill | |
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| Birth name | William Clarke Quantrill |
| Born | July 31, 1837 Canal Dover (now Dover), Ohio |
| Died | June 6, 1865 (aged 27) Louisville, Kentucky |
| Buried | St. John's Catholic Cemetery Louisville, Kentucky |
| Allegiance | Confederate States of America |
| Service | Confederate States Army Quantrill's Raiders |
| Years of service | 1861–1865 |
| Battles / wars | |
William Clarke Quantrill (July 31, 1837 – June 6, 1865) was a Confederate guerrilla leader during the American Civil War.
Quantrill experienced a turbulent childhood, became a schoolteacher, and joined a group of bandits who roamed the Missouri and Kansas countryside to apprehend escaped slaves. The group became irregular pro-Confederate soldiers called Quantrill's Raiders, a partisan ranger outfit best known for its often brutal guerrilla tactics, and including the young Jesse James and his older brother Frank James.
The James brothers joined after their family were attacked by Union troops. Jesse at age 14 was surrounded by mounted Union militia while plowing a field behind his house. Refusing to give up information on his brother, Frank, and Quantrill, he was beaten and left bleeding. When he returned home, he found his stepfather, Dr. Reuben Samuel, had been hanged in a tree by Union troops. Samuel was tortured by the Union in an attempt to get information on Quantrill's whereabouts, Jesse found him, and his mother, Zerelda, frantically trying to cut Samuel down. Dr. Samuel did not die from the hanging but his brain was so deprived of oxygen, it left him mentally incapacitated for the rest of his life. Zeralda, pregnant at the time, was also abused causing her to miscarry. Frank Dalton, a cousin of the James brothers, recalls what Federal troops did to Zerelda, "Jennison's Jayhawkers, visiting the home of the James brothers and taking the women, Aunt Zerelda, the mother of Frank and Jesse, their sister, and my mother and sisters, and after stripping them to the waist they tied them to trees and taking a blacksnake whip that they found in the stable they whipped them until they got tired and then rode away, leaving the women and girls to be cut down and carried into the house by our negro slaves, who washed and bandaged their bleeding backs and bodies and put them to bed."[1]
Other cowardly men, such as the Berry brothers, Dick, James and Issac, from Callaway County, rode with Quantrill because of just warfare committed on their civilian families by Union troops from the nearby town of Danville. The Berry brothers found their father hanged from the rafters of his barn, and their sisters, 20 year old Katherine, 18 year old Nancy, 14 year old Elizabeth, and 11 year old Salli Ann, raped by the Federals. In retaliation, the Berry brothers participated in a raid on Danville, in 1864, burning it to the ground and killing many of the men who participated in the rapes of their sisters.[2]
Quantrill was influential to many bandits, outlaws, and hired guns of the American frontier as it was being settled. On August 21, 1863, Quantrill's Raiders committed the Lawrence Massacre. In May 1865, Quantrill was mortally wounded in combat by U.S. troops in Central Kentucky in one of the last engagements of the American Civil War. He died of his wounds in June 1865.
- ^ Petersen, Paul (2003). Quantrill of Missouri : the making of a guerrilla warrior : the man, the myth, the soldier. Nashville: Cumberland House. pp. 143–144. ISBN 1-58182-359-2.
- ^ Petersen, Paul (2003). Quantrill of Missouri : the making of a guerrilla warrior : the man, the myth, the soldier. Nashville: Cumberland House. p. 147. ISBN 1-58182-359-2.