Quantrill's Raiders
| Quantrill's Raiders | |
|---|---|
| Active | 1861 – May 1865 |
| Allegiance |
.svg){kind=small} Confederate States
|
| Branch | Partisan Rangers |
| Type | Guerrilla force |
| Engagements | |
| Commanders | |
| Notable commanders |
Captain William Quantrill |
Quantrill's Raiders were the best-known of the pro-Confederate partisan rangers ("bushwhackers") who fought in the American Civil War. Their leader was William Quantrill and they included Jesse James and his brother Frank.
Early in the war Missouri and Kansas, nominally under Union government, had become bandit country, with groups of Confederate bushwhackers and anti-slavery Jayhawkers competing for control. The town of Lawrence, Kansas, a center of anti-slavery sentiment, had outlawed Quantrill’s men and jailed some of their young womenfolk. In August 1863 Quantrill led a furious attack on the town, killing over 180 civilians, supposedly in retaliation for the casualties caused when the women’s jail had collapsed, possibly by design.
The Confederate government, which had granted Quantrill a field commission under the Partisan Ranger Act, was outraged and withdrew support for such irregular forces. By 1864 Quantrill had lost control of the group, which split up into small bands. Some, including Quantrill, were killed in various engagements. Others lived on to hold reunions many years later, when the name Quantrill's Raiders began to be used.
The Missouri-Kansas border area was fertile ground for the outbreak of guerrilla warfare when the Civil War erupted in 1861. Historian Albert Castel wrote:
For over six years, ever since Kansas was opened up as a territory by Stephen A. Douglas' Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854, its prairies had been the stage for an almost incessant series of political conventions, raids, massacres, pitched battles, and atrocities, all part of a fierce conflict between the Free State and proslavery forces that had come to Kansas to settle and to battle.
In February 1861 Missouri voters elected delegates to a statewide convention, which rejected secession by a vote of 89-1. Unionists, led by regular U.S. Army commander Nathaniel Lyon and Frank Blair of the politically powerful Blair family, and increasingly pro-secessionist forces, led by Gov. Claiborne Jackson and future Confederate Gen. Sterling Price, fought for political and military control of the state. By June there was open warfare between Union forces and troops supporting the Confederacy. Guerrilla warfare immediately erupted throughout the state and intensified in August after the Union defeat at the Battle of Wilson's Creek.
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