Alarm might have spread had anyone discovered the list. The identity of the riders, their destination, and their purpose would have been clear then. Someone in the column dropped a scrap of paper while passing a farmyard. Had anyone found the note and struck a match they would have seen a long row of names—prominent Kansans mostly. Likewise, all the names were those of Lawrence men.
“Who we want,” ran the heading.1
One year before, Olathe also slept. Although nothing separated the city of a thousand from “Dixie” except a ten-mile stretch of prairie, Olathe had earlier been lulled by numerous false alarms. The first came one night in August 1861, when a horde of Missourians were reportedly on the march to loot and burn the city. Even though the fear had been widespread and men, women, and children flew wildly about, dawn and scouts revealed not “a wolf, owl, or secessionist.” It had been a terrible, yet groundless alarm. But as everyone later agreed, grounds for concern remained. And if it had done little more than redden faces, the embarrassing panic had at least hammered home one valuable lesson. Henceforth, an armed patrol would guard the town, just in case.
Later another false alarm rocked Olathe. But this time the city was ready. Still later, another scare hit the town and once more the people responded. And so on.2
Finally, in July 1862 the vigilance of Olathe was rewarded when three Missourians rode into town, robbed the deputy sheriff, then rode out again. The excited militia rapidly formed, and after a brief but furious chase the thieves were brought to bay. With that, townsmen buried their prey, congratulated one another on a job well done, and promptly returned to life and business as usual.
“Missouri had better send a few more of their bushwhackers through Olathe,” laughed a proud resident.3 And so, one dark night two months later, Missouri did. Except for the saloon, which was jammed with soldiers, Olathe was asleep and very unprepared as over one hundred shadowy horsemen drifted quietly through the streets. The first that anyone knew of their plight came with a simple midnight rap on the door. And suddenly, like some distorted dream, every man in town found himself standing in the square, huddled and helpless.
Then, from the crowd of Rebels a tall, graceful figure appeared. Instantly, most of the groggy townsmen were stunned. He seemed so different. Although dressed much like the rest, he was cleaner, neater, almost fastidious. His blond hair was trim and much shorter than the others’, and quite unlike the fierce, mocking eyes all around, his were soft, easy, friendly. And when this strange man finally spoke his voice had a ring as clear and reassuring as his appearance. The man announced to the gathering in the square that his name was William Quantrill. If everyone kept their wits and remained calm no one would get hurt. They had come only for horses, guns, and ammunition, he went on, not to harm or destroy. Private property would even be respected, he added, if no resistance was made.
With that the raiders began the roundup of horses. One man protested, however. Drawing a butcher knife from his boot, the Kansan went for his mount. Just as he rose to swing in the saddle a shotgun blast ripped the top of his head off. While the horrified citizens watched on, the corpse flopped up and down on the street in wild death convulsions. Another man, an enraged soldier, grabbed a pistol and snapped the hammer at a Rebel three times. But each click was a dud, and before he could squeeze out a fourth his body was riddled with balls. And thus began the sack of Olathe. Guards watched the captives while shouting men broke away and kicked in the stores. Hotels and their guests were robbed. Another soldier was killed when he failed to leave his room as ordered. The offices of the two newspapers were demolished. The jail was thrown open and baffled inmates set free. Items were plucked from the citizens: jewelry, watches, miniature photographs of comely women. At dawn the guerrillas herded up the horses, loaded the plunder into wagons, and quietly marched from town.4
Olathe never recovered from the trauma of September 7. Businessmen whose stores were gutted chose not to reopen and risk another such loss. One editor was totally ruined and could not continue his paper. Many families moved away. Those who remained admitted they did so only because of the troops that now garrisoned the town. Even then most were apprehensive.5 Indeed, so too were the residents of other border towns and farms, for the ease with which Olathe was taken left nothing secure. In one night one man erased for all Kansans any fine notions they might have had about the war, about wealth, about old age. In one night one man became to Kansas what Lane, Jennison, Montgomery, and Hoyt had been for months to Missouri—the blade of Western war.
Quantrill was no stranger to Kansas. A number of men in the crowd that night recognized their captor, and some actually spoke with him. Although he was remembered by many as not much more than a boy named Charley Hart, Quantrill had once been a friend during the territorial years and had even lived among them briefly. But all that was past. Things had changed. He was no longer Charley Hart, nor was he a boy. And Missouri was now his home, not Kansas. More important, when the war came it was the South with which he chose to side and not his native North.
Quantrill’s war began innocently enough. Eagerly rushing off with the army of Sterling Price, he fought as a private in the opening battles for Missouri—Wilson’s Creek, Drywood, Lexington. It was after the Rebel victory at Lexington, however, that a change was made.
Despite the best of Southern hopes, Lexington—a bitter, hard-won affair—came to nothing because Price soon retreated without a parting shot. And when he did, a veil of gloom and despair lowered over all Missouri secessionists. As the regular conflict receded south it left hundreds of Rebel soldiers in its wake. Some, maimed and crippled, would never fight again. Others, fed up with war and sensing that the cause was already lost, took the oath of loyalty and quietly returned to their homes. There were a few, however, who left the army only to pursue a more active, independent role. Quantrill was one of them.6 Above the others he rose to command. Brave, intelligent, affable, from the start it was Quantrill’s aim not simply to spar with the enemy in ravaged western Missouri but also to take the hard hand of war to untouched Kansas, and to do it as often as possible. So long as he led this would be his guiding star.
On a cold dawn in March 1862, a small, determined group of men took their first ride into Kansas. Quantrill, George Todd, and over thirty more ventured across the line to settle accounts with several jayhawkers living in Aubrey. As the guerrillas entered the village, they were fired upon from the hotel and were soon followed by three men who bolted from the building. They were swiftly chased down in a field of dry cornstalks and shot. In the melee others were wounded. The store was ransacked, horses taken, and although he was later released, a Union officer was led away as prisoner.7
The sack of Aubrey, although traumatic to those involved, was not a cause of major concern throughout the rest of Kansas. That a huddle of buildings a short jog across the border should be captured created no panic, although it did stir some interest. More important, to many who supposed that the war had retreated south with Price, it did come as a mild shock to find that it had not entirely. And although John Speer asked his Lawrence readers if they remembered Hart, it was the mysterious, foreign-sounding name “Quantrill” that swirled along the border from that day forward.8
A week later Quantrill reportedly swooped down and captured the Union garrison at Liberty, Missouri, a dozen miles northeast of Kansas City. After paroling the soldiers the guerrillas showed up next on the Missouri River, where they robbed a steamer after forcing it to land. A short time afterwards the bridge over the Blue River was burned, a soldier and tollkeeper killed, and suddenly Quantrill was everywhere.9 Others took the cue and joined the war once more. Indeed, before the month of March was out, loyal Missourians and their brethren in Kansas began to hear the name Quantrill with disturbing regularity. But also before the month had passed, the cause for all the anxiety very nearly ended when the leader and over twenty of his men were surrounded one night while at a home on the state line. After a furious gun battle in which several wer
e killed, the bushwhackers made a miraculous, fiery escape.10
But life got no easier from that point on. Within the next thirty days there were two other narrow escapes, a desperate encounter each, and each with loss of life.11 As a result Quantrill disappeared altogether for the next few months, moving from place to place—the timber and bluffs above the Blackwater River; the hills and hollows along the Blue, a deep, dark wilderness east of Kansas City; or the even more tangled and vast Sni-a-bar country, a nightmare world of snakes, ticks, and flies accessible only by hog path or deer run. With his departure the guerrilla war in western Missouri perceptibly cooled.
April and May 1862 passed quietly. In June, however, there was activity, and then, in early July near Pleasant Hill Quantrill reappeared. Here the Rebels and a like number of Federals dueled for hours; first in a running firefight, then locking up for a savage handto-hand struggle in the underbrush. When the smoke had cleared nearly thirty men lay dead and many wounded, including Quantrill, shot through the leg.12 More fighting broke out elsewhere. Adding a new dimension to the war, blue uniforms were stripped from the dead and donned by bushwhackers.
With reason, loyalists grew impatient. Because the military seemed unable to deal with the partisans there was talk of starting an Opposition Amateur Bushwhacking Company. Others began insisting that wives accompany them wherever they went because no man had yet been troubled by guerrillas while in the presence of a woman. And with both Union soldiers and bushwhackers now wearing blue, life in western Missouri became a double-edged game of survival with loyal and Rebel citizen alike never sure as to who they were facing.13
In light of the recent outbreak, drastic measures were deemed necessary if the exasperating war was ever to end. Thus from angry military commanders rolled a series of unfortunate acts that slammed the door on any sane solution to the border war. One such act issued from the quill of James Blunt. Characteristically exploding at the renewed fighting—because as district commander the millstone sat squarely on his back—that brash, headstrong individual responded by hoisting the black flag, transforming what had been until then a sputtering, reasonably humane fight into an allout war of extermination:
Whereas a system of warfare has been inaugurated, known as “bushwhacking” in which … rebel fiends lay in wait for their prey, to assassinate Union soldiers and citizens, it is therefore ordered … they shall not be treated as prisoners of war, but be summarily tried by Drum Head Court Martial, and if proved guilty, be executed, (by hanging or shooting on the spot), as no punishment can be too prompt or severe for such unnatural enemies of the human race.14
Other generals had penned such statements, although in practice they usually fell by the board. Good to his word, however, Blunt followed through, and guerrilla captives either mounted the scaffold or faced the firing squad.
Bushwhackers pored over newspapers eagerly and were aware of events as they occurred. Some of the men with Quantrill were children when the territorial cry of “No quarter!” was raised in 1854. That threat, the threat of their fathers, never actually happened. Now, almost a decade later these sons read that in fact they were engaged in just such a contest; not the noble kind of romantic novels, but a brutal, vicious, primitive kind in which the defeated died and the victorious lived. A few would never respond in the manner Blunt’s edict seemed to demand; instead, they quietly left the war. And for the time being Quantrill himself continued to parole captured Federals and seek exchanges whenever the occasion arose. There were a growing number, however, such as George Todd—tight-lipped, cold-eyed, deadly George Todd—there were a number like him who held no illusions about the border war, and the altered course of the struggle was for them one of the easiest paths in the world to take. In time most would think, and act, like George Todd.
By the second week of August 1862, anyone could see that western Missouri was ablaze with revolt. After the capture of two steamboats the Missouri virtually dried up from a Rebel blockade, and everywhere large bodies of men moved silently through forest and valley.15
When all was ready, Confederate recruiter Col. John Hughes appeared and took charge of this burgeoning army, then marched it to camp near Independence. There, on the tenth he was joined by Upton Hayes and his raw recruits, and that same day, still nursing his leg wound, in rode Quantrill and his seasoned guerrillas. In all, the assembled force approached four hundred men. Early the next morning the Rebels struck the garrison at Independence. The fighting raged for several hours, but after dozens lay dead on both sides, including Colonel Hughes, the white flag was lifted and the Southerners had control of the town.16 Federal troops soon began converging, however, and after paroling his captives, Hayes—who now took command—led his army to the southeast. And while Hayes was gaining an even bloodier victory at Lone Jack several days later, Quantrill and his band were elsewhere, being officially sworn in as a Partisan Ranger Company. In suit, Quantrill was voted captain by his followers.17
The stir among loyal Missourians caused by Independence and Lone Jack was immediate. There was no lack of concern across the border either. If it was any consolation to Kansans, however, the Rebels showed small inclination to menace their state, and the whole affair had the appearance of an internal scrap between Union and Confederate Missourians. As the weeks passed, sketchy but welcome reports arrived, which stated that the Southern army, possibly five thousand men, demoralized and low on ammunition, was flying south in utter disarray. Quantrill was thought to be among them.18
“Heels up and coat tails streaming in the wind,” clapped one Kansan. “They are running. That is the latest news.”19
Within days, the sleeping town of Olathe discovered that not all of the Rebels were running.
Lawrence Republican
Lawrence, Kans. Sept. 11, 1862
KANSAS INVADED!
OLATHE SACKED!
QUANTRELL AT WORK!
The town of Olathe … was visited and plundered, on last Saturday night, by the secessionists from Missouri, under the lead of Quantrell [sic]. Had there been a well organized and drilled company of fifty men in Olathe, with proper guard out, the town could never have been taken.… Let other towns take warning. The success of this raid will encourage similar ones on a bolder scale.
Five weeks later Quantrill returned to Kansas. On the night of October 17, 1862, the guerrillas surrounded and captured Shawnee. As at Olathe, stunned citizens were herded into the square to watch helplessly while the Missourians tore their town apart. The stores were quickly looted and torched, as was the large hotel. Townsmen such as William Laurie were dragooned to help load the plunder; Laurie, a photographer who had been run from Kansas City in 1861 for refusing to raise a Rebel flag, was stripped of his clothes and put to work. Seeing his opportunity, however, and clad only in underwear, Laurie quickly escaped to a nearby field.
A former resident of the place, a raider now with Quantrill, recognized a much-hated neighbor from the territorial days. He, George Todd, and several others approached the man. One of the gang baited the Kansan and asked him where he stood politically. Proud, defiant to the end, he boldly responded that he was a devout Unionist, same as always. In a twinkling Todd raised his gun, jerked the trigger, and shot him through the head. And as the man’s wife and daughter screamed in horror, the old neighbor, feeling cheated, bent down, placed a pistol to the victim’s mouth, and shot him once again. Another guerrilla, angry and wild, accused the wife of being an informer and argued to kill her too. At that Quantrill quickly stepped in and threatened to shoot the bushwhacker if he didn’t calm down.
Finally, after setting a number of houses on fire and murdering another man, the raiders rounded up the horses and rode back into the night. When they thought it was safe to do so, many of the citizens raced in a mad attempt to save their property. A few were lucky. For most, however, the flames were too far advanced, and as they had been doing all evening long, they could only gaze on helplessly while their homes went up in smoke.
For his
part, William Laurie was determined that he would never be driven from a town again. First Kansas City, now Shawnee. He would escape the war entirely and move to a haven beyond its reach. There, in faraway Lawrence, he would set up shop and live in peace.
After waylaying several more men, the guerrillas crossed the state line and finally disappeared into Missouri. With Kansas aglow to his back and a handful of dead in his wake, William Quantrill had carried the Civil War to still another Kansas town.20
In the weeks after the raid on Shawnee, as the days grew short and golden leaves sprinkled the valleys, Quantrill organized his men for a trip south. Unseen to a passerby in summer, junglelike lairs became entirely stripped of foliage in the winter. Also, mounts needed constant forage, and the frigid Missouri winter could chill even the most ardent fighting spirit. And so, around the first of November 1862, the captain led his company away from the Missouri River country and took up the southward march. They passed through ravaged western Missouri, moving swiftly over stretches of prairie and field, coursing when possible the timber along the Grand and Osage. Other bushwhacking bands, emboldened by Quantrill’s presence, mushroomed on the countryside, engaged in a variety of acts, then vanished almost as quickly as he passed.
Kansas State Journal
Lawrence, Kans., Nov. 6, 1862
QUANTRELL
There have been fugitive reports circulated, for some weeks, that Quantrell [sic], the notorious predatory chieftain of the border rebels, was making serious preparations to give Lawrence a call.…Were it not for… the probable loss of valuable lives, we should be inclined to favor Quantrell’s purposes against Lawrence; for with any such force as he has yet been at the head of, we are quite well satisfied that to lead it to an assault on Lawrence would be the most fortunate thing that could happen for the future peace of the border. … Mr. Quantrell’s reception would be warm, if he should venture up this way.
Bloody Dawn Page 8
