Episode Details

William Clarke Quantrill was born in Ohio in 1837, began teaching school at 16 to pay off his late father's debts, and drifted west to Kansas in 1857. There he sued and then stole from the neighbors who had offered to pay for his land, was expelled from a settlement for robbing cabins, won and lost a fortune at poker as an Army teamster, and switched from anti-slavery letters in 1858 to defending slavery and celebrating John Brown's execution in 1860. In Texas he learned ambush tactics from Cherokee leader Joel B. Mayes.

Back in Missouri he built an irregular pro-Confederate force that included Bloody Bill Anderson, Cole Younger, and Frank and Jesse James. After the collapse of a Kansas City building holding guerrillas' female relatives killed four young women in August 1863, Quantrill led about 450 men into Lawrence, Kansas, on August 21, killing roughly 150 men and boys while Senator James Lane escaped through a cornfield. General Order No. 11 then emptied the Missouri border counties. Shot and paralyzed in a Kentucky ambush in May 1865, he died in Louisville on June 6 at 27.

• He hid stolen blankets from his former partner so long that they rotted.
• Quantrill's success raiding Kansas towns earned him a captain's commission in the Confederate Army.
• By late 1864 his force splintered, and Anderson broke away to lead his own raids.
• A childhood friend dug up his remains in 1887, and he now has grave markers in Louisville, Dover and Higginsville.
• In 1907 a British Columbia mine caretaker named John Sharp claimed to be Quantrill and was soon found beaten to death.