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In William Clarke Quantrill, Albert Castel's classic biography, the story of Quantrill and his men comes alive through facts verified from firsthand, original sources. Castel traces Quantrill's rise to power, from Kansas border ruffian and Confederate Army captain to lawless leader of “the most formidable band of revolver fighters the West ever knew.” During the Civil War Quantrill and his men descended on Lawrence, Kansas, and carried out a frightful massacre of the civilian population.
"For career criminal William Clarke Quantrill, the American Civil War was an opportunity to practice legitimately what he loved most: theft, destruction, and murder ... [This] book deals with [his life and] Quantrill's bloodiest battle, the four-hour sacking of Lawrence, Kansas, where he ordered the massacre of 185 men and boys"--Jacket.
This book features the memoir of William H. Gregg. Gregg served as William Clarke Quantrill's de facto adjutant from December of 1861 until the spring of 1864, making him one of the closest people to the guerrilla chief. Whether it was the origins of Quantrill's band, the early warfare along the border, the planning and execution of the raid on Lawrence, Kansas, the Battle of Baxter Springs, or the dissolution of the company in early 1864, Gregg was there as a participant and observer. The book also includes correspondence between Gregg and William E. Connelley, a historian. Connelley, who was born and raised in Kentucky to a family of Unionists, was deeply affected by the war and was a staunch Unionist and Republican. Even as much of the country was focusing on reunification, Connelley refused to forgive the South and felt little if any empathy for his southern peers. Connelley's relationship with Gregg was complicated at best. At worst, it was exploitive. At times their bond appeared reciprocal, but taken as a whole, Connelley seems to have manipulated an old, weak, and naïve Gregg, offering to help Gregg publish his memoir in exchange for Gregg's assistance in feeding Connelley inside information for a biography of Quantrill.
Brilliantly weaving together eyewitness accounts, letters, memories, newspaper articles, and military reports into a riveting narrative, this definitive biography reveals the personality of William Clarke Quantrill (1837–1865) and the events that transformed a quiet Ohio schoolteacher from a staunchly Unionist family into a virulent pro-slavery Confederate soldier and the most feared and despised guerrilla chieftain of the Civil War. This groundbreaking work includes the most accurate account ever written of the 1863 Lawrence, Kansas massacre (the greatest atrocity of the Civil War), when Quantrill and 450 raiders torched the Unionist town and executed roughly 200 unarmed, unresisting men and teenage boys. It also details the postwar outlaw careers of those who rode with him—Frank and Jesse James, and Cole Younger. No other history so fully penetrates the myth of a cardboard-cutout psychopath to expose Quantrill in all his brutality and human complexity.
One will not find the name of William Clarke Quantrill in the pantheon of noble Civil War personalities but rather listed near the top of the list of its notorious scoundrels. He has been demonized as the devil incarnate, and most historical accounts portray him as a sadistic, pitiless, bloodthirsty killer. That image, however, did not ring true to Paul R. Petersen when he weighed it against the man's wartime accomplishments. When he began researching Quantrill of Missouri, he found that much of the lore that has been accepted as fact had been recorded by those who fought against Quantrill. In short, the victors wrote the history. Petersen asks, "How could this so-called fiend have been a respected schoolteacher? How could he have organized and led up to four hundred men in the most noted band of guerrilla fighters known to history? How could he be so hated by his own men and still lead them in the most renowned battles through Missouri, winning victories over superior Union forces? Others entrusted their sons to him. Others served him as spies. Women willingly tended his wounded, and his followers even guarded him in battle. Most of his people were God-fearing farmers...God-fearing, righteous people would not have followed a depraved, degenerate, psychotic killer."
The Lawrence raid of August 21, 1863, was considered one of the bloodiest events of the Civil War. The actions that brought on the raid are researched and explored in depth here for the very first time. What is discovered is a collusion in a "legacy of lies" that surrounded the stories of the raid.
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Few men of the Civil War era were as complicated or infamous as William Clarke Quantrill. Most who know him recognize him as the architect of the Confederate raid on Lawrence, Kansas, in August 1863 that led to the murder of 180 mostly unarmed men and boys. Before that, though, Quantrill led a transient life, shifting from one masculine form to another. He played the role of fastidious schoolmaster, rough frontiersman, and even confidence man, developing certain notions and skills on his way to becoming a proslavery bushwhacker. Quantrill remains impossible to categorize, a man whose motivations have been difficult to pin down. Using new documents and old documents examined in new ways, A Man by Any Other Name paints the most authentic portrait of Quantrill yet rendered. The detailed study of this man not only explores a one-of-a-kind enigmatic figure but also allows us entry into many representative experiences of the Civil War generation. This picture brings to life a unique vision of antebellum life in the territories and a fresh view of guerrilla warfare on the border. Of even greater consequence, seeing Quantrill in this way allows us to examine the perceived essence of American manhood in the mid-nineteenth century.
The first-ever biography of the perpetrator of the Centralia and Baxter Springs Massacres, as well as innumerable atrocities during the Civil War in the West.