William Clarke Quantrill: His Life And Times

Alfred E. Castel

• Publisher: Normanby Press
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781786253309
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

The Quantrill legend is rooted in acts of savage violence throughout Kansas and Missouri during the Civil War--deeds both romanticized and vilified. 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. Some of Quantrill's bushwhackers made names for themselves at Lawrence or after the war, as outlaws: "Bloody Bill" Anderson, Cole Younger, George Todd, "Little Archie" Clement, and Frank and Jesse James.-Print ed.

Chapter I — “The Devil Has Got Unlimited Sway”

Sometime in the spring of 1860 a lone man disembarked from the Lawrence ferry and walked with quick, light strides down Massachusetts Street to the Whitney House hotel. His lean body was attired in a rough woolen shirt and corduroy pants tucked into high leather boots. A slouch hat was pulled low over his face and he carried a cheap oilcloth grip. He entered the hotel, went to the desk, and asked for and obtained a room for the night. In the register he signed the name “Charles Hart.”

After he had gone upstairs the hotel proprietor, Nathan Stone, called Holland Wheeler, one of the residents, over to the desk. Pointing to the back page of the register, Stone whispered confidentially, “That’s Hart’s real name.” Wheeler leaned forward and read; “Wm. C. Quantrill” “He’s a detective for the Delaware Indians,” Stone added, as if to explain the discrepancy.{1}

Within the next two years the name scribbled on the back page of Stone’s guestbook was to be spelled out in giant letters of fire and blood along the entire border. It was to become a name hated and feared by thousands, loved and admired by thousands more. It was to become a name linked to the bloodiest deeds of the Civil War, and to some of that war’s most dashing and sensational exploits. It was to become a name synonymous with desolation, terror, and murder. It was in the end to become a name around which myths clustered and legends developed. It was the name of a man on the threshold of becoming the “bloodiest man in American History.”

William Clarke Quantrill’s life began, unsensationally enough, in the quiet little town of Canal Dover, Ohio, where he was born on July 31, 1837.{2} His father was Thomas Henry Quantrill, a tinsmith, who in time became a teacher, then principal of the Canal Dover school. His mother’s maiden name was Caroline Cornelia Clarke. Both she and her husband were natives of Hagerstown, Maryland, whence they had moved following their marriage in 1836. Seven other children were born to them, four of whom died in infancy. A sister, Mary, one year younger than William, had curvature of the spine and passed away in 1863. Two brothers, Thomas and Franklin, survived both him and the notoriety he gave their family name.

We no longer believe in the hereditary transfer of character traits. But if we did, we could make much out of Quantrill’s immediate ancestors. For instance, a great-uncle named Thomas Quantrill achieved a certain fame as a pirate along the Louisiana Texas coast during the rollicking days of Jean Lafitte. His father’s brother Jesse, on the other hand, led a long and eventful career in and out of prisons as a forger, confidence man, and six-time bigamist. Indeed, the father himself once embezzled school funds in order to pay for the printing of a booklet on tinsmithing which he had written. And when a member of the school board exposed the fraud, the senior Quantrill endeavored unsuccessfully to kill him. But, in noting these things, we should also in fairness point out that the rest of the rather numerous Quantrill clan apparently led normal, decent, humdrum lives. His mother seems to have been nothing more nor less than that—a mother. And his father, despite the theft and attempted assassination, retained both his position as principal and his respectable standing in Canal Dover.

The meager records which have come down to us concerning Quantrill’s childhood depict a juvenile monster. He is supposed to have delighted in shooting pigs through the ears, nailing live snakes to trees, stabbing horses and cows, and other equally sadistic rural sports. Moreover, his favorite pastime allegedly was wandering through the woods alone shooting small game, and he is described as having had few friends and no close ones.

Such accounts should be received with more than a little skepticism. As in the case of all men who achieve fame of any sort, the events of later life are reflected back upon their early years. In addition, deeds which on the part of any other youth would have been completely forgotten no doubt took on a sinister quality in the case of Quantrill. Finally, one can readily imagine that the post-Civil War inhabitants of Canal Dover were not exactly bursting with pride over this particular home-town boy and how he had “made good.”

Quantrill was a superior student academically and acquired a better than average education for his time and place. At the age of sixteen he ceased to be a pupil and became a teacher in the Canal Dover school. Such youthful pedagogues were not at all unusual in those informal days.

In December, 1854, Quantrill’s father, for whom he is said to have had little love, died of consumption—a common disease in the family. The Quantrills now found themselves in straitened circumstances. Mrs. Quantrill took in boarders, sister Mary did sewing, and Quantrill continued teaching. There are many indications that he bitterly resented his home being turned into a boardinghouse and the resultant loss of social status.

Like so many other young men before and since, Quantrill decided to try his luck in the West. There, surely, he would soon make a great fortune. In the summer of 1855 he left Canal Dover and with some friends went to Mendota, Illinois. But the best he was able to do there was just another teaching job. Although he supplemented his income by selling copies of his father’s tract on tinsmithing and by hunting ducks and geese, he found it impossible to send any money home. By November he regretted leaving Canal Dover, and informed his mother that he planned to come back and “turn over a new leaf entirely” “This will be the last winter,” he assured her, “that you will ever have to keep boarders.”

However, he failed to carry out either his intention or his promise. Instead of returning home he remained on at Mendota until January, working in a lumber office following the expiration of his school job. According to a totally unsubstantiated historical rumor, he at this time shot and killed a man who attempted to rob him at the lumberyard. If this be so, then at the age of eighteen he “got his man”—the first of what someday was to be a numerous company.

Upon leaving Mendota he headed back east, but went only as far as Fort Wayne, Indiana. Near there, in the spring of 1856, he took another teaching post. His school, he wrote home, was a ‘‘very good one, with from 35 to 40 schollars [sic]” and “20 dollars a month and boarded [sic].” Moreover, the people of the neighborhood said he was “the best teacher they ever had.” In his spare time he studied bookkeeping with the intention of taking up that occupation, as he could “make more money at it” than teaching. During the summer he attended a school at Fort Wayne where he took courses in “Chemistry, Physiology, Latin, and Plane Trignometry.”

By fall he was back in Canal Dover. Once again he taught school, this time in the country south of town. The venture into the world in quest of wealth and success had failed. His mother still took boarders, his sister continued to sew other people’s clothes, they all remained poor. As the bleak winter days passed, he sat in his little backwoods schoolhouse bored and restless, and filled with a spirit of longing.

Then came a chance to escape, and with it the golden prospect of success and adventure. Two Canal Dover men, Colonel Henry Torrey and Hannon V. Beeson, planned to join the thousands of other Ohioans who were migrating to Kansas Territory. Beeson’s son, Richard, a schoolmate of Quantrill’s, was accompanying his father. Quantrill eagerly asked to be included in the party. Mrs. Quantrill also requested that he be allowed to go along. Perhaps in Kansas he might acquire a farm where all her family could settle and begin life anew. In the end Beeson and Torrey agreed to pay Quantrill’s way to Kansas, he in turn to work for them after arriving.

Late in February, 1857, the two Beesons and Quantrill set out for Kansas. Torrey took a separate route and met them in St. Louis, Together they went by steamboat up the Missouri River to Independence. Along the way Quantrill posted a letter home in which he related that the boat was crowded with Kansas-bound settlers and soldiers, that they all had to sleep on the deck, and that he had not been able to remove his clothes more than once since leaving Ohio! At Independence—a town destined to figure prominently in Quantrill’s later career—they purchased two ox teams, loaded up with bacon, flour, beans, and other frontier basics, and then took the Santa Fe Trail to Stanton, Kansas. Here, along the banks of the Marais des Cygnes, they decided to settle. Beeson and Torrey each purchased claims, and in addition took out another claim under Quantrill’s name. Quantrill received sixty dollars to hold the claim for them.

Two months of back-breaking toil and rugged living followed. But the outlook for the future seemed good. Quantrill wrote his mother urging her to sell their Canal Dover house and send him part of the proceeds so that he could buy a claim on which the whole family might settle. By so doing, he argued, “we all will be square with the world & able to say our soul is our own....Is not this worth sacrificing something for?”

Quantrill lived with the Beesons and Torrey, who all occupied the same cabin, and helped them roll logs, clear the land, and plant com. When not working, he hunted and visited with John Bennings, a neighbor, with whom he became very friendly. After a while Bennings convinced him that Beeson and Torrey had not paid him enough for holding their claim. Therefore he insisted that they give him a larger amount. Apparently his demand was justified, for a local “squatter’s court,” which arbitrated the dispute, awarded him sixty-three dollars additional, to be paid in two installments of thirty-three dollars and thirty dollars.

Beeson and Torrey, however, did not settle up at once. Perhaps they did not have the money—sixty-three dollars was a big sum in Kansas in those days—or perhaps they felt that young Quantrill was displaying a disgusting lack of gratitude. Finally Quantrill, impatient and irritated, stole a yoke of oxen from Beeson and a blanket and two pistols from Torrey in order to force payment. Beeson naturally suspected Quantrill of the thefts and went in search of him. This was not the first time he had been troubled by a member of the Quantrill clan. It was he who had exposed the embezzlement of Quantrill’s father and whom the elder Quantrill had attempted to kill!

Beeson spotted Quantrill out on the open prairie. Quantrill turned to run, but Beeson aimed a rifle at him and yelled, “Bill, stop! I want to see you!”

Quantrill faced around toward Beeson, who then shouted, “Lay your gun down in the grass!”

As soon as Quantrill obeyed this order, Beeson told him, “You must bring my oxen back by three o’clock this afternoon, or I shall shoot you on sight!”

Quantrill replied that he would do so, and Beeson let him go. Shortly after the time specified he returned the oxen, also the pistols. The blanket was not found until long afterward, rotted in a hollow log. Beeson and Torrey eventually paid Quantrill at least thirty dollars of the money owing him. Despite this incident, which is the first authenticated indication of criminal tendencies on Quantrill’s part, they remained on generally good terms with him.

During the summer Beeson returned to Canal Dover for the purpose of bringing his and Torrey’s families to Kansas. His enthusiastic account of the opportunities present in the Territory inspired a number of other Canal Dover men to migrate there also. The newcomers took out claims near Stanton at a place which they named Tuscarora Lake in honor of their home county in Ohio. Since many of them were former school chums, Quantrill soon joined their settlement.

Before long the Tuscarora Lake group began missing blankets, provisions, clothing, and other articles. Quantrill loudly denounced the Cedar Creek settlers as being responsible, but his accusation merely directed suspicion to himself. The others kept a close watch on him, and ultimately they caught him in the act. Inquiries among neighboring communities developed the fact that he had been selling the stolen goods. Completely disgusted, they ordered Quantrill to leave the settlement. They spared him a harsher punishment only out of consideration for his mother and because he was a boyhood friend.

Quantrill remained in the vicinity for several weeks, staying either with Bennings or Torrey. Then he went to Fort Leavenworth and joined an army expedition which was fitting out for Utah as a teamster. The commander of the expedition was Brigadier General Albert Sidney Johnston, destined to die in a few years leading the Confederate Army at Shiloh. Its purpose was to assert United States authority over the polygamous Mormons of Brigham Young’s state of Deseret.

Johnston’s column marched across the vast plains, mountains, and deserts, and arrived in Salt Lake City the first of October. Quantrill wrote his mother from the “City of the Saints” describing the country and the customs of the Mormons, and announcing his intention of going in the spring to the Colville gold mines of Canada. “You need not expect me home till you see me there, but bear in mind that I will do what is right, take care of myself, and try to make a fortune honestly, which I think I can do in a year or two.”

Quantrill’s second letter to his mother from Utah, written on December 1, 1858, is much less optimistic. In it we learn that he had suffered a three-week siege of “mountain fever” but had recovered fully and was soon to begin work as a quartermaster’s clerk for fifty dollars a month, “which is no more than 25 at home.” He still did not know when he would return to Ohio, but he was not going to do so “without some money.”{3}

Slightly more than a month later he wrote a third letter home. He had been having a “rather hard time of it.” Through his own fault he had lost the quartermaster job and been reduced to cooking for a mess of twenty-five men. He asked his mother not to “greeve [sic] any more than possible” about him. Someday he would “be worth something—don’t fear.”

In the spring Quantrill carried out his intention of going to the gold fields. But instead of Canada he went to Colorado, where the Pike’s Peak strike had just been made. The trip across the mountains from Utah was a nightmare of cold, starvation, and Indian attacks. He became snow-blind, and twelve out of the nineteen men in his party died. Once in the “diggings” his luck did not change. Forty-seven days of hard pick-and-shovel work netted a mere $54.34—barely enough to pay expenses.

Early in the summer, convinced that Pike’s Peak was “undoubtedly the Humbug of the Humbugs,” he headed back to Kansas. On the way Indians stole his horse and shot his traveling companion. When he arrived in Lawrence he was so “weather beaten & rough looking” that people judged him to be at least twenty-five years old. From Lawrence he wrote his mother asking her not to lose confidence in him. “I expect everybody thinks & talks hard about me but I cannot help it now—it will be all straight before another winter passes.”

By autumn Quantrill had returned to Stanton and his old profession of schoolteaching. Four years of wandering through the West and still he was where he had started—teaching farm children in a back-country schoolhouse at so much per “scholar” and ‘“boarding around” among their parents.

During odd moments in the schoolroom he penned long letters to his mother and sister. Certain passages in them provide interesting insights into his mood at the time and into his character generally. One bespeaks a sense of guilt at having left home and failing to provide for his mother. Another announces an abandonment of his hopes for a great fortune and resignation to a life of hard work and modest achievement. Still another states that he is tired of “roving around” without any tangible goal in sight, and that “such a course must end in nothing” and hence “must be changed, and that soon or it will be too late.” Finally, there is an expression of belief that his survival amidst so ...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• Prologue - The Border Ruffians
• Chapter I - “The Devil Has Got Unlimited Sway”
• Chapter II - “Playing War Is Played Out”
• Chapter III - First Blood
• Chapter IV - Shooting Them Down
• Chapter V - The Knights of the Bush
• Chapter VI - Charley Hart Returns to Lawrence
• Chapter VII - “Brought None of Them Through”
• Chapter VIII - Bushwhacker Against Bushwhacker
• Chapter IX - “Now You Are Skelpt”
• Chapter X - All Shot to Hell
• Chapter XI - “Here’s a Heart for Every Fate”
• Epilogue - The Bandits
• Notes