Kansas City journal. [volume] (Kansas City, Mo.) 1897-1928, 1898-09-18
QUANTRELL'S LAWRENCE RAID.
Boyish Recoliections of the Massacre
and the Vengeance that
Followed.

Il was boy of u, living at Law
renee Kas, when the city was sacked
and burned by Quantrell and his follow
ers," said a kansan who is visiting IN
New York. ITO understand the situation
fully you must bear in mind the intense
hatred that during the civil war existed
between Kansans and Missourians. This
hatred grew out of the struggle between
the pro-slavery men from Missouri, bent
upon extending slavery into Kansas. and
the free state immigrants from the North.
equally determined that Kansas should
come into the Union as free state 1t
was a little war of itself waged with great
bitterness. When the pro-slavery men mas
sacred in cold blood peacabie settlement
of Northern men at Marais des Cygnes,
old John Brown of the free state cause of
set 1t by putting to death with the sword
the pro-slavery settlers along OsiIwatomie
creek. With these events fresh in mlnd II
is easy to imagine the feeling of vindictive-
ness toward each other with wntch the
Karsans and Missourians went into the
civiF war. -s---r- --s-
! ..At the time of the Quantrell raid, on
August 90 1863, 1 was living in Lawrence
at the house of a man named Ellis, attend
ing school. In the early morning. before
daylight, l was awakened by the sound of
firing. | jumped from the bed, pulling on
my trousers and ran down stairs. Ellis had
gate. AS soon as L had stepped TO The door
| could see plainly the blaze of rifles down
the street and hear the sound of horses
hoofs beating the road with a noise like
cavalry advancing, and with them the
shouts of men and the screaming OF wom-
en- and children.
ELLIS turned back from the gate, ran
through the house catching up his shotgun
as he went. and calling TO me to follow
him, started for the nearest cornfield, a
hundred yards back from the house.
looked over my shoulder and saw horsemen
riding after us through the yard; and II
ever 1 used my legs for all they We're
worth / did it then. They fired three or
four revolver shots at us while We Were In
view. but Ellis and 1 got to the cornfieid
ahead of them. and, once among the corn,
ten feet high, in the darkness, We We're as
well hidden as if the ground had swai-
lowed us up.
From along the main street of the town
and its cross streets came the constant
sound of shooting, with the calling out of
orders and screaming of frightened women.
Other fugitives came into the cornfeld.
and as soon as they found out that Ellis
and | We're not Confederates they told us
of husbands and fathers shot down un-
armed at their doors. They said the raiders
We're sparing nobody.
About s O'Clock Ellis said he was &C.
ing back near enough to the town to see
what was going on. If he did not return
/ in half an hour 1 might follow; him. So,
off through the bushes and corntield to-
ward the town. He did not come back.
so when I thought the half hour was up |
went after him. The raiders had gone and
the people were coming back from the
, woods and cornflelds. There Were dead
men everywhere, lying as they had fallen.
| in the streets and yards, IN the doorwayS'
and in the burning buildings. My impress
| sion is that there We're loo men killed in
| the massacre. though have since seen
the figures placed at $50. The horror of
the thing was like Il shadow over the
! town for years. and no one felt really safe
there against another raid until after the
close of the war.
with the inevitable delay in summoning
| troops. Quantrell was able to make good
| his retreat into Missouri, where most of
| his force disbanded and went to their
| homes. But vengeance was not SLOW in
overtaking some of them. \ detachment
of Kansas troops was soon In Missouri,
| and when they found any of the plunder
| from Lawrence in the house of man it
sealed his fate.
'Twenty-seven men we hanged in one
captain of a Kansas regiment said TO me.
| In looting one Of the Lawrence stores the
raiders had taken quantity of shirts of
peculiar checked pattern. When. on our
return visit to Missouri, we struck i
community where the men generally were
wearing new shirts of this pattern. we
knew we had got among the Quantrell
raiders. There were no formalities of trial
| or waste of time. When We caught a man
with one of these shirts on, he went up
| toward the limb of cottonwood tree
| about as fast as a rope could be made to
work"
With such a war as this you will under
stand the military necessity of General Ew-
! irg's famous move in depopulating a strip
some fifty miles in width of Western Mis-
souri,. along the entire eastern border of
| Kansas. Some towns like Kansas City,
which could! be held by the Union troops;
were spared. but the country people Rad
| ali to go. leaving their farms and taking
| their choice whether to go east into Mis-.
souri, or west into Kansas. II was a cruel
stroke of war but 1t broke up many nest
| ing places of Confederate guerrillas and
| rendered Kansas practically safe against
another raid like that of Quantrell.