Stark Mad Abolitionists

by Robert K. Sutton

  In his most famous South Carolina exploit, he led an attack on Combahee Ferry, working hand-in-hand with Harriet Tubman, who had relocated to Beaufort, South Carolina. Tubman tended to wounded and sick soldiers and established an extensive spy network in the area. From her informants, Tubman learned and relayed to Montgomery that the plantations in and around the ferry were ripe for an attack. Montgomery led three boats up the river, and attacked and burned the plantations. Some seven hundred to eight hundred slaves seized the opportunity to escape; they ran and jumped on board the boats, bringing whatever they could carry.248

  Montgomery remained in command of the 2nd South Carolina until he resigned his commission in 1864 and returned to Kansas. He led the 6th Kansas State Militia to defend the state against Sterling Price, who had organized a futile attack to attempt to regain Missouri for the Confederates. Montgomery’s fellow Jayhawker—Doc Jennison—had re-entered the service as well, leading the 15th Kansas Cavalry.

  Missourians despised the African American soldiers because many escaped from bondage from their state. Their resentment of Jayhawkers also knew few bounds. James Lane held a special place in Missourians’ pantheon of villains both for commanding the Jayhawkers and for recruiting black soldiers. Because Lane lived in Lawrence, and because the town was the symbol of the abolitionist movement, and because it was the haven for escaped slaves, they despised this community as well. But Missourians did not just sit around and mope. They had bands of guerrillas of their own, who in time were more ruthless than their Kansas counterparts.

  13 We Could Stand No More

  WHEN THE WAR BEGAN, THE citizens of Lawrence were—justifiably—concerned that they would be in the crosshairs of attacks from Confederate sympathizers from Missouri. Why not? In the years leading up to statehood, Border Ruffians had attempted to annihilate the town three times, so what was to stop them now? Early in the war, troops trained on the outskirts of Lawrence, and other regiments came and went on their way to battle. Governor Charles Robinson did everything within his power to keep troops in or near the town as a further precaution. The citizens established their own defenses, taking turns watching the entrances into town, developing plans for defense on a moment’s notice.

  The year 1861 went by and nothing happened—the same with 1862. Alarms went off when the Lawrence Journal reported guerrilla raids into Aubry, Olathe, and Shawneetown, and the newspaper’s editor declared, in September 1862, that the town’s militia were “without arms, ammunition, and subsistence” because “the legislature did not appropriate a dime to provide for the public defense.” The town was “powerless and [could] do nothing effectual for defense.” The Journal cautioned its readers again in November 1862 that there had been “fugitive reports for some weeks that Quantrell [sic], the notorious predatory chieftain of the border rebels was making serious preparation to give Lawrence a call.” But the editor went on to say that “our citizens have given all due heed to these rumors, …” because the town had “13 companies of militia under the command of Col. Frank Swift, the hero of Wilson’s Creek” ready for action.249

  So, as the first two years of the war drew to a close, and since there were no attacks, and the citizens believed that the reports of guerrilla attacks near the Kansas/Missouri border did not concern them, they relaxed their defenses. It became more and more onerous for business people to conduct their daily affairs, and then be expected to stand on guard duty at night. Plus, the people were convinced that the distance between the guerrilla hideouts in Missouri and Lawrence would be so difficult, even the guerrillas would not attempt such a feat.

  The town’s complacency was a concern to George W. Collamore, who was elected mayor of Lawrence in the spring of 1863. Rev. Cordley wrote that Mayor Collamore “was a very active man … [who] realized as few others did the danger in which Lawrence stood, and he endeavored … to arouse the people to a sense of the situation.” Rev. Cordley went on to write that Collamore “organized an effective military company and secured arms for them from the state. He also organized and armed companies in the country about Lawrence.” But he believed “that the guns should be kept in the armory and not be carried home by the men,” which turned out to be a disastrous decision when the town was attacked later that year. The mayor secured a small body of militia stationed in Lawrence, but on August 1, 1863, it was withdrawn.250

  There was good reason for Collamore’s concern, for just shortly after he took over as mayor, Dick Yeager, a lieutenant in a band of bushwhackers, led a raid into Kansas and attacked several people camped on the Santa Fe Trail near Willow Springs in Douglas County just a few miles south of Lawrence. The Journal reported the attack as “the Boldest Raid Yet!” But the report followed up that a large contingent of soldiers was formed to go after the gang in the hopes of picking up stragglers, so the immediate danger passed.251

  Dick Yeager’s commander, William Clarke Quantrill, was the leader of the largest and best-organized Confederate guerrilla force operating on the Kansas-Missouri border. Guerrillas for the Confederacy were different from their Union counterparts. Both fought with similar irregular military tactics, but the main difference was that in April 1862, the Confederate government legally sanctioned its guerrillas when it passed its Partisan Ranger Act. Guerrillas could form into military commands—companies and regiments—elect officers, receive pay and equipment from the government, and in nearly every way serve as regular soldiers, except they were irregulars. These ranger bands were scattered throughout the country. Some—like John Singleton Mosby in Virginia and John Hunt Morgan in the Upper South and Midwest, and Quantrill in the Kansas-Missouri border region—became legendary for their exploits, but as the war progressed, Confederate commanders became more and more uncomfortable with the undisciplined and brutal activities of the guerrillas, and they convinced the Confederate Congress to repeal the Ranger Act in 1864.

  Of the Confederate guerrilla leaders, however, none were as famous to Southern sympathizers—or as infamous to Union supporters—as William Clarke Quantrill. Ironically, some Lawrence residents likely knew Quantrill. He briefly settled in town in 1860 and passed himself off as Charles or Charley Hart. When he arrived in Lawrence, he told a wild tale that when he and his brother arrived in Kansas, they were attacked by a gang of thirty-two Jayhawkers. His brother was killed and Quantrill was left for dead. He was rescued by an Indian, recovered, and then he hunted down and killed all thirty-two of his attackers. The story sounded good, and the men in his guerrilla army believed it, but it was a complete fabrication.252 Telling tall tales fit nicely with Quantrill’s shady profession in Lawrence. He captured fugitive slaves and returned them to their masters for the reward. He also stole horses. His tall tales came in handy as he expanded his operation, working with antislavery groups to kidnap slaves and help them escape. He then turned around and captured the slaves and returned them to their owners for the reward.

  William Clarke Quantrill. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

  On December 10, 1860, Quantrill led five young Quaker abolitionists from Lawrence on a slave-stealing raid into Jackson County, Missouri. Their plan was to steal the slaves belonging to Morgan Walker, who lived near Blue Springs and owned a 1,900-acre plantation. They arrived early in the morning. Quantrill told his companions to hide in the brush while he scouted out the situation. But instead of helping to steal slaves and selling them back to their owners, he decided to turn on his companions. He found one of Walker’s sons and told him about the planned raid and the time it would happen and that he should warn his father. Quantrill returned to his abolitionist companions and laid out the plan for the night raid.

  Morgan Walker enlisted several neighbors, and they were ready for the attack. They sprang their ambush, killing one Quaker and wounding two others. The other two escaped and made their way back to Lawrence. Quantrill conveniently stayed out of harm’s way. Walker’s men and Quantrill tracked down the two wounded Quakers and killed them. The Jackson County Sheriff arrested Quantrill an
d placed him in jail, but released him the next day when Quantrill convinced the sheriff that the Quakers were there to steal slaves. Following this nasty business, Quantrill spent part of the winter in Jackson County and then traveled to Indian Territory, where he spent time in the Cherokee Nation. When war broke out, he joined the Confederate Army. The next time Quantrill visited Lawrence was in August 1863.253

  How did Quantrill become such a ruthless individual? Early on, there was little indication of the person he would later become. He was born in Canal Dover (present-day Dover), Ohio, on July 31, 1837. He was the oldest of seven children. His father, a school superintendent and tinsmith, died when Quantrill was a teenager, which forced him to help his mother support the family. At age sixteen, he was hired to teach school, but to better his own circumstances and to help his mother, he left Ohio in 1855 and taught school in Illinois and Indiana. Numerous books have chronicled Quantrill’s life, including one biographer who claimed that he showed sadistic tendencies as a child, which explained his later violent behavior.254 His contemporaries, however, said that as a child, he was quiet, well behaved, and studious.

  In 1857, Quantrill headed west with neighbors, hoping to cash in on the abundant land available in Kansas. They settled near Stanton, Kansas, on the banks of the Marais des Cygnes River. He corresponded with his mother, expressing hope that he would finally make it financially to better himself and provide more financial support for his family. When he first arrived in Kansas, his sympathies seemed to be with the free-state settlers, and he wrote to a friend that he thought James Lane was “as good a man as we have here.”

  Before long, Quantrill’s neighbors in Stanton noticed that some of their property, such as blankets, clothing, and food had gone missing. They suspected that someone was stealing their belongings, and when Quantrill was caught red-handed, they asked him to leave the area. He did, and went to Fort Leavenworth where he signed on as a drover on a military wagon train headed for Utah. He stayed in Salt Lake City for a while, tried his hand at prospecting in the Pikes Peak gold rush in Colorado, then returned to Kansas and settled in Lawrence as Charley Hart.

  At the beginning of the Civil War, Quantrill joined the Confederate Army and participated in the Battle of Wilson’s Creek. Toward the end of 1861, he either deserted or had permission to leave the Confederate Army, and he formed his guerrilla force to harass free-state Unionists in the border area. He joined up with Andrew Walker, the same young man he had warned about the planned Quaker raid on his father’s plantation a year earlier. Quantrill and Walker heard of a Jayhawker attack nearby, so they, along with eight others, went in pursuit. After a brief engagement, they killed one Jayhawker and wounded several others.

  Following this raid, Andrew Walker was the first to leave the band. His father, fearing Jayhawker attacks on his plantation, talked his son into staying home with a small private army to protect his property. But Quantrill had little trouble gaining new recruits. Before long, the number grew to about forty members, including two men: John Jarrett and his brother-in-law, Thomas Coleman Younger, who rode into Quantrill’s camp in January 1862. Later in life, “Cole” Younger, as he was better known, wrote his reminiscences of his time with Quantrill. Younger came from a prominent and wealthy Missouri family. His father, Henry Washington Younger, owned several businesses, including the mail delivery contract for a five-hundred-mile radius, centered in Jackson County, Missouri, as well as a number of slaves. The elder Younger sympathized with the South but was opposed to secession. Yet because he owned slaves, and probably because of his business successes, he and his family were harassed by Union soldiers in the area. One officer, Captain Irvin Walley, had a particular dislike for the Younger family, and accused Cole of spying for Quantrill. So Cole decided that as long as he was accused of working with Quantrill, he might as well join up as a guerrilla.255

  Cole Younger’s autobiography provides valuable insights into Quantrill’s guerrilla band. He wrote his reminiscences in 1903, after he was released from prison for his involvement in the famous Northfield, Minnesota, bank robbery. Beyond describing his exploits, Younger—probably inadvertently—helped to dispel one of the myths surrounding his guerrilla and later his outlaw band. The first part of the myth suggested that many of the guerrillas came from humble backgrounds. Far from coming from a poor family, Younger wrote that his father was worth nearly $100,000, a princely sum for that day. Frank James, who was with Younger as a member of Quantrill’s guerrillas, and Frank’s brother Jesse, who joined later, came from a well-to-do, slave-owning family as well. A recent study demonstrated that Quantrill’s guerrillas were three times more likely to own slaves and possessed twice as much wealth as the average Missourian.

  The other part of the myth said that Quantrill’s, Younger’s, the James brothers’, and others’ main purpose was to attack northern capitalism—in the form of the Union Army during the war, then by robbing banks and railroads afterwards. They were viewed as something akin to Robin Hood, who stole from the rich to feed the poor. Younger wanted his readers to believe there was a humanitarian side to the guerrillas in his descriptions of several raids. He implied that the men stole money and valuables for the widows and orphans in Missouri. The evidence, however, shows that they kept most of their spoils for themselves. Their motivations were not to rob the rich to give to the poor, but rather to perpetuate the institution of slavery and gain independence for the Confederacy during the war, and rob banks and trains after the war to enrich themselves.256

  In late February 1862, not long after Younger became a guerrilla, Quantrill led fifteen men on a raid in Independence, Missouri, which supposedly was lightly defended. Instead, when they rode into town, they encountered an Ohio cavalry regiment. The guerrillas turned tail and rode away with the Ohioans in hot pursuit. Two of Quantrill’s men were killed; Quantrill’s horse was shot out from under him and he was wounded in the leg. They escaped and regrouped a day or two later, at which point Quantrill ordered his men to disperse. Scattering after a raid became a common practice for Quantrill and his men. Cole Younger wrote that “Captain Quantrill believed that it was harder to trail one man than a company.” Younger went on to say that “every little while the company would break up, to rally again at a moment’s notice.”257 As the band grew larger, members would splinter into small groups after a raid, which allowed them to escape capture.

  Abraham “Bullet Hole” Ellis. Ellis was the school superintendent and Quantrill’s former boss, whom he (Quantrill) shot in the forehead. Ellis survived and lived another twenty-two years. The bullet was removed several days later, but the bullet hole remained for the rest of his life. After he died, the bullet and twenty-seven pieces of his skull were sent to the Army/Navy Medical Museum in Washington, DC. Kansas State Historical Society.

  Two weeks after the disaster in Independence, Quantrill decided to lead his first foray into Kansas. His target was the small town of Aubry, today called Stilwell, near the border. He led his hollering, cursing, and shooting forty bushwhackers into town, killing five men who happened to be in the way. While sitting on his horse, Quantrill glanced up at the local hotel and saw two men looking out the window. He pulled out his pistol and fired, hitting one of the men square in the forehead. He later found that Abraham Ellis, the man he had shot, miraculously was not killed. Even more amazingly, he discovered that Ellis was the same Ellis who had hired him to teach school in Stanton several years earlier. Quantrill apologized profusely, tended to his former boss’s wound, and said, “Ellis, I am damned sorry I shot you—you are one of the Kansas men I do not want to shoot!”258

  In this early phase of Quantrill’s guerrilla activities, he looked upon his role as that of an officer, practicing proper military etiquette. After each engagement with Union forces, he paroled his prisoners after taking their weapons, equipment, and horses and caring for their wounds. In military parlance, he gave his captives quarter, which literally meant he housed them in quarters or provided protection. He didn’t have
any problem taking horses from captured soldiers, but he did have a problem with his men stealing horses from locals. One of the early members of his band, George Searcy, rustled fifteen horses from the area around Blue Springs, Missouri. When Quantrill discovered his theft, he hanged Searcy from the nearest tree and returned the horses to their owners, some of whom were Union sympathizers.259

  Quantrill’s military etiquette changed when Major General Henry Halleck issued his Order No. 2, on March 13, 1862. The order stated that since Major General Price was issuing commissions to “certain bandits in this State [Missouri], authorizing them to raise ‘guerrilla forces,’ for the purpose of plunder and marauding, …” he should “know that such a course is contrary to the rules of civilized warfare, and that every man who enlists in such an organization forfeits his life and becomes an outlaw.” Halleck went on to say that “if captured, [guerrillas will not be] treated as ordinary prisoners of war, but will be [hanged] as robbers and murderers.”260 From that point on, Quantrill decided that if he and his men were going to be treated as “robbers and murderers,” they might as well be “robbers and murderers.” If one of his men was captured and executed, he went a little further and executed several Union soldiers.

  Most historians agree that Quantrill was an able commander. His strategy of dispersing his bushwhackers after every raid was one example of his skill. After each raid, he and his men would hide out, often for weeks, either in the houses of supporters or in the thickets and ravines of western Missouri. John McCorkle, another of Quantrill’s guerrillas who later recorded his experiences, described makeshift camps inside caves he and his companions shared far away from civilization when things got hot.261 Quantrill ensured that his men had the finest horses they could buy, borrow, or steal. Union cavalry soldiers who gave chase, on the other hand, generally rode inferior government-issued nags. Each guerrilla was armed with multiple Colt Navy revolvers, and each honed his skills with target practice until he was a crack shot. While Civil War rifled muskets were generally considered superior for accuracy, they had to be reloaded after each shot; with multiple revolvers, however, Quantrill’s men could get off dozens of deadly shots.