Quantrill's Raiders

Quantrill's Raiders were a pro-Confederate partisan guerilla group operating out of Missouri. They began in late 1861 as a dozen men with experience in pro-slavery militias during the Bleeding Kansas conflict, led by William C. Quantrill, but later grew into the most prominent Confederate guerilla group in Missouri. Frank James was a member of this unit, and his brother Jesse would later join.

They raided Union supply lines and mail, and ambushed Union troops. However, like many militias and gangs in the Kansas-Missouri border region, they would also frequently attack civilians, in their case those that supported the Union or were against slavery.

Despite this, many Confederate sympathizers in the region gave them material and financial support(they were not an official C.S. Army unit, and thus were not subsidized by the Confederate Government).

Since Missouri was a Union state, in August many Raiders' female family members were arrested and detained in a private residence, which had to be expanded to accommodate them; it was not sturdy and collapsed, killing several, many of whom were teenagers.

Outraged, Quantrill decided to raid Lawrence, Kansas. Lawrence had been a stronghold of Jayhawk militias during Bleeding Kansas, and those same militias frequently raided pro-Confederate towns in Missouri, most notably Osceola(which has never recovered from the raid).

The raid occurred on August 21, 1863. At 5 AM on that day, 450 raiders assembled on a hill outside Lawrence, leaving a few on the hill to serve as lookouts while the others went into town. After killing Pastor S.S. Snyder on their way into town, they took over a hotel called the Eldridge House, which served as their headquarters. From there, the raiders split up into smaller groups. Before doing so, according to one raider, Quantrill had ordered his men to only target soldiers, and to avoid killing women and children. They had a list of targets, including:

Despite failing to kill these men, they nonetheless killed many other known Jayhawks. However, there were many acts of brutality committed during the raid, some against civilians. A group of men and boys were executed despite surrendering, sick and injured men were killed, and a few were burned alive. Exact casualties are not known, but estimates range from 164 to 175. Also debated is how many were civilians, and how many were Union soldiers; however, the fact that some victims were teenage boys combined with the brutality of some of the killings led to the unit losing popularity with Confederate leaders.
 * Sen. James H. Lane, Jayhawk leader and Union general(survived)
 * John Speer, journalist and supporter of Lane (survived)
 * Charles Robinson, former governor of Kansas (survived)
 * Richard Cordley, the "Abolition Preacher" (survived)

As a result, they relocated to Sherman, Texas, where they spent the winter doing the same sort of things they'd done in Missouri. It was here that the unit disintegrated; in the spring, some splinter groups went back to Missouri, whereas Quantrill went to Kentucky, where he was killed in 1864. Veterans of one of these groups, led by Fletch Taylor, would become the James Gang.