Skip to main content

A Word For Quantrill

March 2023
1min read

I read with great interest Edward E. Leslie’s article “Quantrill’s Bones” in your July/August issue. As a participant in some of the matters he discussed, I write to offer a few comments and corrections. The least of these is that in October of 1992, at the time of Quantrill’s burial at Higginsville, Missouri, I was not the “commander in chief of the Missouri division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans” but rather the commander in chief of the entire organization, which is international in scope, enjoys a membership of just over twenty-three thousand and operates from its headquarters at historic Elm Springs in Columbia, Tennessee.

Most discussions of Quantrill center on his famous raid against Lawrence, Kansas, in 1863. Quantrill’s men killed an estimated 150 men—no women or children as is often charged—it being their intention to kill every man of gun-bearing age in that town.

It is worth noting that discussions of the Lawrence raid seldom mention the Camp Jackson Massacre, the Palmyra Massacre, the burning of Osceola, Missouri, or even Order No. 11, the brutal depopulation of three and a half western Missouri counties following the Lawrence raid to punish citizens there for harboring Quantrill’s Raiders. For Missourians laboring under the brutal occupation of their state by Union troops, and particularly those suffering the effects of raids by Kansas Jayhawkers and Redlegs, Quantrill’s raid on Lawrence was the equivalent of Jimmy Doolittle’s raid on Tokyo in 1942.

Most of the persons attending Quantrill’s burial at Higginsville, Missouri, came out of loyalty and admiration rather than curiosity. (One elderly gentleman approached me and told me he was there out of gratitude, as his grandfather had told him that Quantrill “killed the Redleg that burned our farm.”)

I was sorry that the folks in Dover, Ohio, were not willing to permit the skull to be buried with the rest of the remains. Nevertheless, we are well satisfied. Quantrill’s skull rests by his mother rather than in a museum, and the rest of him lies in a cemetery near the final resting place of at least six of his men, as opposed to lying in a box in the Kansas State Historical Society. The Kansans, who were perfect gentlemen and most gracious throughout this process, were impressed by the solemnity of the Higginsville burial ceremony. I still believe that had the Dover folks been present, they might have relented and permitted all of the old warrior to rest in the presence of his comrades.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "October 1995"

Authored by: The Editors

My Hitch in Hell The Bataan Death March

Authored by: The Editors

Thomas Mellon and His Times

Authored by: The Editors

Offerings at the Wall Artifacts from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection

Authored by: The Editors

Aftermath: An Anthology of Post-Vietnam Fiction

Authored by: The Editors

Out of Ireland: The Story of Irish Emigration to America

Authored by: The Editors

Frank Sinatra: The V-Discs

Authored by: The Editors

Treasures of Tin Pan Alley

Authored by: Stephen Bates

Though it appears to have sprung up overnight, the inspiration of free-spirited hackers, it in fact was born in Defense Department Cold War projects of the 1950s

Authored by: Donald Wright

In 1943 Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Britain’s poorest, most dismal African colony, and what he saw there fired him with a fervor that helped found the United Nations

Authored by: Tony Scherman

Wynton Marsalis believes America is in danger of losing the truest mirror of our national identity. If that’s the case, we are at least fortunate that today jazz’s foremost performer is also its most eloquent advocate.

Featured Articles

Famous writers including Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts turned Sleepy Hollow Cemetery into our country’s first conservation project.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.

Roast pig, boiled rockfish, and apple pie were among the dishes George and Martha enjoyed during the holiday in 1797. Here are some actual recipes.

Born during Jim Crow, Belle da Costa Greene perfected the art of "passing" while working for one of the most powerful men in America.