Okla-homey
8/21/2006, 06:23 AM
August 21, 1863 Burning of Lawrence, Kansas
http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/8854/quantrellraid4le.gif
143 years ago today, the vicious ongoing guerilla war in Missouri spilled over into Kansas and precipitated one of the most appalling acts of violence during the Civil War war when 150 men in the abolitionist town of Lawrence were shot down like dogs in a lightning raid by Southern partisans.
The Civil War took a very different form in Kansas and Missouri than it did throughout the rest of the nation. There were few regular armies operating there; instead, partisan bands attacked civilians and each other. The roots of conflict in the region dated back to 1854, when the Kansas-Missouri border became ground zero for tension over slavery.
While residents of Kansas Territory were trying to decide the issue of slavery, bands from Missouri, a slave state, began attacking abolitionist settlements in the territory. Their goal was to discourage settlement by folks with abolitionist sentiments because Kansas would be "slave" or "free" depending on the outcome of a referendum vote to be held among her residents. Abolitionists reacted with equal vigor.
Generally, the southern fighters were called "bushwhackers" by their enemies, but they often referred to themselves as "guerillas" or "partisans"
When the war began, the long heritage of hatred between partisans created unparalleled violence in the area. In August 1863, the Union commander along the border, General Thomas Ewing, arrested several wives and sisters of members of a notorious irregular cavalry unit led by William Quantrill (alternately spelled "Quantrell") -- a native of Ohio and a schoolteacher, who held a Confederate commission and a captaincy.
http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/7285/quantrill2xb.jpg
William C. Quantrill
Quantrill's troopers had scorched the region along the KS/MO border country, terrorizing and murdering Union sympathizers. On August 14, the building in Kansas City where the women were being detained collapsed, killing five.
http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/5603/hockensmith20clark20quantrills.jpg
Typical Missouri partisan. Young, well armed, and lacking a distinguishable uniform
Quantrill assembled 450 men to exact revenge for the collapse which he believed had been a deliberate act. This army, which included such future western outlaws as the Younger brothers and Frank and Jesse James, headed for Lawrence, Kansas, long known as the center of abolitionism in Kansas.
Lawrence had been settled largely by New Englanders with liberal notions. Newspapers printed there with their editorial condemnations of slavery and the southern independence movement enraged pro-South entities all over the region.
http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/3800/qeflag10es.gif
Design of flag allegedly carried by Quantrill's column as they raided into Kansas. The black color implied that they accepted no surrenders.
Crossing over into Kansas from western Missouri wearing captured Union uniforms, and kidnapping 10 farmers in order to guide them to Lawrence, the column murdered each of them at intervals along the route.
On this morning, Quantrill's men rode into Lawrence and dragged 182 men from their homes, many in front of their families, and shot them dead as many begged for their lives. They killed men and boys but they did not harm a single woman or girl. The attack had begun at dawn and was all over by 9am.
http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/8137/lawrenc22tz.jpg
a period engraving depicting the raid appeared in "Harper's Weekly," a leading Northern newsmagazine
They burned 185 buildings in Lawrence, destroyed the hated newspaper presses, then rode back to Missouri with Union cavalry in hot pursuit. Those blue troopers who chased Quantrill's boys back into the Missouri bushes were mostly The Seventh Kansas Cavalry, raised in Kansas and known as "Jayhawkers" and "Redlegs" for the red gaiters they wore.
http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/8899/lawwrenceruinssmaller2zj.jpg
Lawrence after the raid.
This incident incited the North and led to even more killing by both sides along the Kansas-Missouri border. Plenty of violence, atrocities and death inflicted by, and on, both sides.
"...They tried to make my uncle Harrison into an informer, but he wouldn't do it. He was only a boy... They tried to hang him, time and again they tried it, 'stretching his neck', they called it, but he didn't say anything. I think he'd have died before he'd said anything. He's the one I'm named after, and I'm happy to say that there were people...around at the time who said I took after him." -- President Harry S. Truman
HST speaking about what Kansas "Red Legs" did to his uncle, at age thirteen during the Civil War
In direct retaliation for the burning of Lawrence, Federal authorites issued Order No. 11, the most drastic and repressive military measure directed against civilians by the Union Army during the Civil War.
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/5664/ttewingt11rib3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Brigadier General Thomas Ewing...one of the most hated men in Missouri
Issued August 25, 1863, by Brigadier General Thomas Ewing, Jr., commander of the US District of the Border, headquartered at Kansas City, Order No. 11 required:
...all the inhabitants of the Western Missouri counties of Jackson, Cass, and Bates not living within one mile of specified military posts to vacate their homes by September 9. Those who by that date established their loyalty to the United States government with the commanding officer of the military station nearest their place of residence would be permitted to remove to any military station in the District of the Border or to any part of Kansas except the counties on the eastern border of that state. Persons failing to establish their loyalty were to move out of the district completely or be subject to military punishment.
http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/9355/order116mi.jpg
"Order Number Eleven" by Caleb Bingham. Note the "red legs" on the Federal soldier evicting the residents
Put another way, if you lived in one of these western Missouri counties, you simply had to leave your homestead or go to jail. If you took a loyalty oath, you could be permitted to move west to Kansas. If not, you had to "take to the brush."
Quantrill and his raiders took part in the Confederate retaliation for this order, but when Union forces drove the Confederates back, Quantrill fled to Texas. His guerrilla band broke up into several smaller units, including one headed by his vicious lieutenant, "Bloody Bill" Anderson, known for wearing a necklace of Yankee scalps into battle. Quantrill himself was eventually killed on a raid into Kentucky in 1865. He was buried in the Missouri state Confederate cemetery in Higginsville in the late 1980's. That whole dealio was kinda wierd. For years, KU maintained his skeleton in a collection of artifacts from the period.
http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/6542/quantrillfan2rh.jpg
The burning of Lawrence still ignites passion. Here a Missouri fan goes a bit overboard in his hatred of the Kansas Jayhawks at a KU/Mizzou basketball game.
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/5143/ttjayhawkjr1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Note the little "red legs" and Union blue coat on the Jayhawk...designed to inflame and dredge-up passions from this peroid. Seriously.:eek:
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/4107/insane7zogp3.jpg
http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/8854/quantrellraid4le.gif
143 years ago today, the vicious ongoing guerilla war in Missouri spilled over into Kansas and precipitated one of the most appalling acts of violence during the Civil War war when 150 men in the abolitionist town of Lawrence were shot down like dogs in a lightning raid by Southern partisans.
The Civil War took a very different form in Kansas and Missouri than it did throughout the rest of the nation. There were few regular armies operating there; instead, partisan bands attacked civilians and each other. The roots of conflict in the region dated back to 1854, when the Kansas-Missouri border became ground zero for tension over slavery.
While residents of Kansas Territory were trying to decide the issue of slavery, bands from Missouri, a slave state, began attacking abolitionist settlements in the territory. Their goal was to discourage settlement by folks with abolitionist sentiments because Kansas would be "slave" or "free" depending on the outcome of a referendum vote to be held among her residents. Abolitionists reacted with equal vigor.
Generally, the southern fighters were called "bushwhackers" by their enemies, but they often referred to themselves as "guerillas" or "partisans"
When the war began, the long heritage of hatred between partisans created unparalleled violence in the area. In August 1863, the Union commander along the border, General Thomas Ewing, arrested several wives and sisters of members of a notorious irregular cavalry unit led by William Quantrill (alternately spelled "Quantrell") -- a native of Ohio and a schoolteacher, who held a Confederate commission and a captaincy.
http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/7285/quantrill2xb.jpg
William C. Quantrill
Quantrill's troopers had scorched the region along the KS/MO border country, terrorizing and murdering Union sympathizers. On August 14, the building in Kansas City where the women were being detained collapsed, killing five.
http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/5603/hockensmith20clark20quantrills.jpg
Typical Missouri partisan. Young, well armed, and lacking a distinguishable uniform
Quantrill assembled 450 men to exact revenge for the collapse which he believed had been a deliberate act. This army, which included such future western outlaws as the Younger brothers and Frank and Jesse James, headed for Lawrence, Kansas, long known as the center of abolitionism in Kansas.
Lawrence had been settled largely by New Englanders with liberal notions. Newspapers printed there with their editorial condemnations of slavery and the southern independence movement enraged pro-South entities all over the region.
http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/3800/qeflag10es.gif
Design of flag allegedly carried by Quantrill's column as they raided into Kansas. The black color implied that they accepted no surrenders.
Crossing over into Kansas from western Missouri wearing captured Union uniforms, and kidnapping 10 farmers in order to guide them to Lawrence, the column murdered each of them at intervals along the route.
On this morning, Quantrill's men rode into Lawrence and dragged 182 men from their homes, many in front of their families, and shot them dead as many begged for their lives. They killed men and boys but they did not harm a single woman or girl. The attack had begun at dawn and was all over by 9am.
http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/8137/lawrenc22tz.jpg
a period engraving depicting the raid appeared in "Harper's Weekly," a leading Northern newsmagazine
They burned 185 buildings in Lawrence, destroyed the hated newspaper presses, then rode back to Missouri with Union cavalry in hot pursuit. Those blue troopers who chased Quantrill's boys back into the Missouri bushes were mostly The Seventh Kansas Cavalry, raised in Kansas and known as "Jayhawkers" and "Redlegs" for the red gaiters they wore.
http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/8899/lawwrenceruinssmaller2zj.jpg
Lawrence after the raid.
This incident incited the North and led to even more killing by both sides along the Kansas-Missouri border. Plenty of violence, atrocities and death inflicted by, and on, both sides.
"...They tried to make my uncle Harrison into an informer, but he wouldn't do it. He was only a boy... They tried to hang him, time and again they tried it, 'stretching his neck', they called it, but he didn't say anything. I think he'd have died before he'd said anything. He's the one I'm named after, and I'm happy to say that there were people...around at the time who said I took after him." -- President Harry S. Truman
HST speaking about what Kansas "Red Legs" did to his uncle, at age thirteen during the Civil War
In direct retaliation for the burning of Lawrence, Federal authorites issued Order No. 11, the most drastic and repressive military measure directed against civilians by the Union Army during the Civil War.
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/5664/ttewingt11rib3.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Brigadier General Thomas Ewing...one of the most hated men in Missouri
Issued August 25, 1863, by Brigadier General Thomas Ewing, Jr., commander of the US District of the Border, headquartered at Kansas City, Order No. 11 required:
...all the inhabitants of the Western Missouri counties of Jackson, Cass, and Bates not living within one mile of specified military posts to vacate their homes by September 9. Those who by that date established their loyalty to the United States government with the commanding officer of the military station nearest their place of residence would be permitted to remove to any military station in the District of the Border or to any part of Kansas except the counties on the eastern border of that state. Persons failing to establish their loyalty were to move out of the district completely or be subject to military punishment.
http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/9355/order116mi.jpg
"Order Number Eleven" by Caleb Bingham. Note the "red legs" on the Federal soldier evicting the residents
Put another way, if you lived in one of these western Missouri counties, you simply had to leave your homestead or go to jail. If you took a loyalty oath, you could be permitted to move west to Kansas. If not, you had to "take to the brush."
Quantrill and his raiders took part in the Confederate retaliation for this order, but when Union forces drove the Confederates back, Quantrill fled to Texas. His guerrilla band broke up into several smaller units, including one headed by his vicious lieutenant, "Bloody Bill" Anderson, known for wearing a necklace of Yankee scalps into battle. Quantrill himself was eventually killed on a raid into Kentucky in 1865. He was buried in the Missouri state Confederate cemetery in Higginsville in the late 1980's. That whole dealio was kinda wierd. For years, KU maintained his skeleton in a collection of artifacts from the period.
http://img400.imageshack.us/img400/6542/quantrillfan2rh.jpg
The burning of Lawrence still ignites passion. Here a Missouri fan goes a bit overboard in his hatred of the Kansas Jayhawks at a KU/Mizzou basketball game.
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/5143/ttjayhawkjr1.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Note the little "red legs" and Union blue coat on the Jayhawk...designed to inflame and dredge-up passions from this peroid. Seriously.:eek:
http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/4107/insane7zogp3.jpg