Today, the 31st of July, is the birthday of Confederate guerrilla fighter William Quantrill. A schoolteacher before the war. He also tried his hand at several other professions. At a certain point he was a runaway slave catcher. During the Civil War he becomes a local guerrilla leader. He witnessed several brutal attacks on local families by Union troops, including murders and rape. On the 21st of August 1863 a 450-man band led by Quantrill rode into Lawrence, Kansas, wrecking the town and killing 150 men and boys.

Note that Union raids in areas with Confederate sympathies were often more destructive. Quantrill and his men killed almost 100 Union soldiers in one attack on a Union column in October 1864. Even after Lee surrendered Quantrill continued to resist Union forces and he was ambushed and killed in June 1865, several months after Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Perhaps he felt like he had no other option but to resist, since his involvement in the Lawrence massacre could have led to his execution. He was only 27 when he died. Some bandits that made the Wild West were a spin off of Confederate guerilla resistance.

It’s hard to determine whether Quantrill’s actions contributed much to the Confederacy’s struggle for independence. Other Confederate raiders were more successful at scoring strategic successes,  such as John Mosby, John Hunt Morgan, Nathan Bedford Forest and Earl Van Dorn, but his pirate like exploits continue to captivate the public.

He is a character in about ten movies. Some of the events mentioned in this post are depicted in the movie Ride With The Devil, which is worth a watch. He is also the subject of an episode of the Belgian Comic Book series ‘The bluebellies.’