Quantrill's Raid on Lawrence

“A Most Cruel and Unjust War:” The Guerrilla Struggle along the Missouri-Kansas Border

Bursheba Fristoe Younger knew better than perhaps anyone the thorough devastation wrought by nearly a decade of guerrilla warfare along the Missouri-Kansas border. The Youngers, like many households, traced their hardships back to the partisan violence of the 1850s. A slaveholding family of southern descent, they owned a dry goods store in Cass County, Missouri, which was repeatedly robbed by antislavery bands of Kansas “jayhawkers.” At the outbreak of the national Civil War, Bursheba’s husband, Henry, remained an avowed Union man, but in July 1862, Unionist militia ambushed, robbed, and murdered the family patriarch as he traveled home from Westport.

Jeremy Neely
Missouri State University

A Long and Bloody Conflict: Military Operations in Missouri and Kansas, Part II

The start of 1862 witnessed the federals in their most precarious position of the war in Missouri. Sterling Price’s Missouri State Guard (MSG) controlled the interior of the state – including large sections of the strategically vital Missouri River Valley. Guerrillas ran rampant through the interior as well. It was up to the newly-installed commander of the Department of the Missouri, Major General Henry W. Halleck to restore the Union’s fortunes in the states. Halleck was not idle over the holiday season of 1861, as he instructed Brigadier General Samuel R. Curtis, commander of the recently-formed Federal Army of the Southwest, on his plans for the upcoming campaign season.

Terry Beckenbaugh
U. S. Air Force Command and Staff College

By Matthew E. Stanley, Albany State University

The First Sack of Lawrence occurred on May 21, 1856, when proslavery men attacked and looted the antislavery town of Lawrence, Kansas. The assault escalated the violence over slavery in Kansas Territory during a period that became known as “Bleeding Kansas.” The sacking coincided with South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks’s scandalous caning of abolitionist Republican senator Charles Sumner, which had occurred on May 20. The two events were paired and dramatized by the national media, constituting turning point in the lead up to the Civil War.

Foreword on the Civil War in Kansas City

Why do Little Dixie battle flags still flap in some Missouri cemeteries? What on earth is a jayhawker? Or a bushwhacker? Why does the name “Quantrill,” for some Missourians, evoke a legacy almost equal to that of the raging abolitionist John Brown on the Kansas side? The history behind all of this speaks to divisions that persist in the Kansas City area.

Rick Montgomery
The Kansas City Star

By Matthew E. Stanley, Albany State University

William Clarke Quantrill was a prominent Confederate guerrilla leader during the American Civil War who is most famous for having led a raid on the Unionist town of Lawrence, Kansas, in August 1863.

By Matthew E. Stanley, Albany State University

William T. Anderson was one of the most notorious Confederate guerrillas of the Civil War. Operating against Unionists in the midst of the guerrilla war in Missouri and Kansas, he was a leading figure in the infamous Lawrence Massacre and the Centralia Massacre, gaining the nickname “Bloody Bill” for the perceived savagery of his exploits.

By Deborah Keating, University of Missouri-Kansas City

Thomas Carney, the second governor of Kansas, was a pivotal player in political maneuverings during the early weeks and months of Kansas statehood and served the state as its second governor during the last tumultuous years of the Civil War. His efforts to protect the state of Kansas and support the war effort during his tenure earned him the sobriquet: “The War Governor.”

By Kristen Epps, University of Central Arkansas

William Quantrill’s raid on the Free-State town of Lawrence, Kansas (also known as the Lawrence Massacre) was a defining moment in the border conflict. At dawn on August 21, 1863, Quantrill and his guerrillas rode into Lawrence, where they burned much of the town and killed between 160 and 190 men and boys.

By Jeremy Neely, Missouri State University

In a controversial attempt to quell guerrilla warfare along the Missouri-Kansas border, Union General Thomas Ewing issued General Order No. 11, exiling several thousand people from their homes in western Missouri. The August 25, 1863, orders required that “all persons” living in Jackson, Cass, Bates, and northern Vernon counties “remove from their present places of residence.”

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