Quantrill Raiders

The Quantrill Raiders were a group of Confederate partisans from 1861 to 1865 during the American Civil War. The group consisted of Southern secessionists from rural Missouri and the surrounding area. The Group was known for its various War Crimes and its brutal methods of suppressing abolitionists in Kansas. They were notorious for their Lawrence Massacre in 1864 when over 164 civilians were executed and most of the town of Lawrence was ransacked. Their reign of terror ceased when Quantrill was killed in 1865. While the actions they committed were deplorable, neither were they illegal. The killings were an act of war and the killing of civilians wasn't condoned by law due to either the Confederacy or the union being a participant of the Geneva Convention at the time.