39 Facts About William Quantrill

William Clarke Quantrill was a Confederate guerrilla leader during the American Civil War.

William Quantrill was influential to many bandits, outlaws, and hired guns of the American frontier as it was being settled.

In May 1865, William Quantrill was mortally wounded in combat by US troops in Central Kentucky in one of the last engagements of the American Civil War.

William Quantrill was born at Canal Dover, Ohio, on July 31,1837.

William Quantrill's father was Thomas Henry Quantrill, formerly of Hagerstown, Maryland, and his mother, Caroline Cornelia Clark, was a native of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

William Quantrill was the oldest of twelve children, four of whom died in infancy.

William Quantrill's mother turned the home into a boarding house to survive.

Authorities briefly arrested him for murder, but William Quantrill claimed he had acted in self-defense.

William Quantrill was set free since there were no eyewitnesses, and the victim was a stranger who knew no one in town.

William Quantrill continued teaching, moving to Fort Wayne, Indiana, in February 1856.

William Quantrill journeyed back home to Canal Dover late that year.

William Quantrill spent the winter in his family's diminutive shack in the impoverished town and soon grew restless.

William Quantrill later attempted to rectify this by stealing oxen, firearms, and blankets from Beeson, but he was caught and returned the oxen and weapons; the blankets were not found until later, by which time they had rotted.

Soon, William Quantrill accompanied a large group of hometown friends in their quest to settle near Tuscarora Lake.

However, neighbors soon began to notice William Quantrill stealing goods out of other people's cabins and banished him from the community in January 1858.

Soon thereafter, William Quantrill signed on as a teamster with the US Army expedition heading to Salt Lake City, Utah in early 1858.

William Quantrill racked up piles of winnings by playing the game against his comrades at Fort Bridger but lost it all on one hand, leaving him broke.

William Quantrill then joined a group of Missouri ruffians and became a drifter.

William Quantrill traveled back to Utah and then to Colorado but returned in less than a year to Lawrence, Kansas, in 1859 where he taught at a schoolhouse until it closed in 1860.

William Quantrill then partnered with brigands and turned to cattle rustling and anything else to earn him money.

William Quantrill learned the profitability of capturing runaway slaves and devised plans to use free black men as bait for runaway slaves, whom he subsequently captured and returned to their enslavers in exchange for reward money.

William Quantrill called the Democrats "the worst men we have for they are all rascals, for no one can be a democrat here without being one".

However, in February 1860, William Quantrill wrote a letter to his mother that expressed his views on the anti-slavery supporters.

William Quantrill told her that slavery was right and that he detested Jim Lane.

On March 11,1862, Quantrill joined Confederate forces under Colonel John T Hughes and took part in an attack on Independence, Missouri.

On November 5,1862, William Quantrill joined Colonel Warner Lewis to stage an attack on Lamar, Missouri, where a company of the 8th Regiment Missouri Volunteer Cavalry protected a US Army outpost.

William Quantrill's men believed the collapse was deliberate, which infuriated them.

Some historians have suggested that William Quantrill planned to raid Lawrence before the building's collapse, in retaliation for earlier Jayhawker attacks as well as the burning of Osceola, Missouri.

Lane, a prime target of the raid, managed to escape through a cornfield in his nightshirt, but the guerrillas, on William Quantrill's orders, killed around 150 men and boys who could carry a rifle.

One was led by his lieutenant, "Bloody Bill" Anderson, and William Quantrill joined it briefly in the fall of 1864 during a fight north of the Missouri River.

In early 1865, now leading only a few dozen bushwackers, William Quantrill staged a series of raids in western Kentucky.

William Quantrill was brought by wagon to Louisville, Kentucky, and taken to the military prison hospital on the north side of Broadway at 10th Street.

William Quantrill died from his wounds on June 6,1865, at the age of 27.

William Quantrill was buried in an unmarked grave in what became known as St John's Cemetery in Louisville.

Duffy said that Sharp admitted he was William Quantrill and discussed raids in Kansas and elsewhere in detail.

William Quantrill returned to the US and worked as a cattleman in Fort Worth, Texas.

William Quantrill then moved to Oregon, acting as a cowpuncher and drover, before he reached British Columbia in the 1890s, where he worked in logging, trapping, and finally as a mine caretaker at Coal Harbour at Quatsino.

The family of Major Cornelius Boyle believed that William Quantrill had actually served as a bodyguard for the Provost Marshal General when he visited Mexico after the war, while Jubal Early was in the country as they sought out an alternate resolution.

The historian Matthew Christopher Hulbert argues that William Quantrill "ruled the bushwhacker pantheon" established by the ex-Confederate officer and propagandist John Newman Edwards in the 1870s to provide Missouri with its own "irregular Lost Cause".