William Clarke Quantrill

Guerrilla Leader

The border wars in Missouri and Kansas were ruthless and every bit as bloody as major battles of the Civil War. To the residents of these states, devastation and death came without warning. Many notorious outlaws, such as Jesse and Frank James, came to prominence in the guerilla wars on the borders, but no name could strike as much fear as the name William Clarke Quantrill. When he was killed in the spring of 1865, residents in both the North and South breathed a sigh of relief. But it is quite possible that Quantrill was not killed that day by Union soldiers. In fact, evidence strongly suggests that he lived the remainder of his days in North Alabama.

William Quantrill was born in Canal Dover, Ohio, in 1837. Because his father was a schoolteacher, he benefited from a fairly good education himself. Unfortunately, after he moved to Kansas at the age of twenty, he began to support himself through a life of crime. He started off small—he stole cattle and then food to feed them. When the theft was discovered, he fled to Salt Lake City. A few months later, he was living in Lawrence, Kansas.

By this time, the country was embroiled in a bitter civil war. The state of Missouri was divided, neither Union nor Confederate. Although Missouri was not a slave state, not everyone agreed that the country shouldn’t split. Sympathies swayed to the South when Union forces appropriated whatever they needed from residents, and then swayed again when the Confederates did the same. The result was a bitterly divided state. Because Kansas was a border state as well, hostilities oftentimes spilled over.

William Quantrill taught school in Lawrence, Kansas, for a short time but found more lucrative money in stealing slaves, mules and horses and then returning them to their owners for a reward. By now he had several partners. When his plot was uncovered by the law, he was banned from the state of Kansas. Quantrill and his followers left with the promise that they would return for revenge.

Quantrill made his headquarters in Missouri. Among his fellow outlaws were Jesse and Frank James, Dick Yeager, Cole Younger and Bill Anderson. They all had grievances to settle. Although they were not soldiers of the Confederate army, they harbored hatred of the Union soldiers and pro-Union citizens. Many were farm boys who had lost their homes and crops. They had been harassed, and some had lost family members. Among those who had lost loved ones were Bill Anderson and Cole Younger. Anderson’s sisters and Younger’s cousin were kept as prisoners in a run-down brick building in Kansas City. The building had collapsed, injuring or killing the women prisoners. They vowed to get even.

The people of Lawrence were aware of the threats made against them by Quantrill and his men. For some time, they were watchful; guards were ready to sound the alarm of Quantrill and his men’s murderous approach, but as time went on without an attack, citizens of the town assumed that Quantrill’s threats were idle words. Unfortunately for them, Quantrill and his men intended to make good on their threats. The date set for the attack was the early morning hours of August 21, 1863.

The methods of guerrilla warfare were treacherous and harsh. The attack on Lawrence, Kansas, was carefully planned. Spies were employed throughout the town, and at least one citizen supplied maps and valuable information. The townspeople would be dead before anyone had time to react.

Some reports put the number of Quantrill’s men at three hundred, while other sources say there were as many as five hundred who rode toward the twelve hundred unsuspecting citizens of Lawrence, Kansas. Quantrill’s unit carried the Union flag as a cover, but as it neared the town, the flag was lowered and a different, more ominous flag was raised in its place. It was a black flag with Quantrill’s name stitched in red.

The raiders entered the town from the southeast and broke up into squads of four, six and eight. Then they scattered to the homes of sleeping citizens. The main body rode into the business section of town.

Senator James H. Lane, who had ordered his men to come down hard with brutality and force against secessionists, was one of Quantrill’s specific targets. While the men searched his home, Lane escaped death by hiding behind a log in back of his house.

Judge Carpenter, a Union sympathizer who had ruled in favor of the Union cause in one of his court cases, was pulled from his bed. As he ran from the house and tried to escape, his wife ran to him and threw her arms around him. The guerrillas pulled her away roughly and shot him while she begged for mercy.

As the night of carnage continued, over 150 homes and businesses were torched by the marauders. The number of men and boys killed that terrible night was a staggering 185. As the men under Quantrill’s command rode off, two-thirds of the town was left homeless. His name would never be forgotten.

The Civil War and its related border wars continued. Several raids by pro-Union men and soldiers were made in retaliation. Quantrill retreated to Texas. While in Texas, Confederate general E. Kirby Smith issued an order to allow Quantrill’s men to help capture deserters and keep hostile Comanche Indians at arm’s length. In the meantime, “Bloody Bill” Anderson, one of Quantrill’s raiders, split from the group and formed his own band of raiders. There were now two groups of outlaws practicing guerrilla warfare on the citizens of Texas, and that was finally too much. Confederate forces were used to protect the Texans, and Quantrill was arrested. He escaped.

Quantrill and his men made it safely into Indian Territory and bid Texas goodbye. His followers, having lost confidence in him, elected George Todd as their new leader. Though he assembled a new group of raiders back in Missouri, their strength and numbers would never be the same. The war had continued for nearly three years by this time, and it appeared that even criminals were getting tired of the bloodshed. At some point, he rallied some followers to go with him to Washington to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. The timeline for that event, as well as the circumstances of Quantrill’s death, vary from one account to another.

As Quantrill passed through Kentucky in 1865 (accounts differ), he was ambushed and shot by Federal troops. He lingered for three weeks before he died, and at least one source says he left $500 in gold to his wife, who used the money to open a bordello in St. Louis. The news of his death was splashed in newspapers all across the country. Although there was no evidence that he had officially joined the Confederate army, he was considered pro-Southern in his sentiments. But the Confederate army didn’t trust or approve of his methods either.

After his death and burial, his mother insisted on seeing his body. She was surprised to find that the corpse had red hair and a light complexion. Her son had coal-black hair.

Many people are convinced that Quantrill saw the opportunity to start over with a clean slate and took advantage of his second chance. According to Annie Guthrie, a resident of Guntersville, Alabama, the following story has been passed down through her family.

After the Civil War, a Confederate prisoner, who was among those paroled from the Elmira Prison Camp in New York, began his journey back to the South. Elmira, nicknamed “Hellmira” by those who survived, had a 25 percent death rate, slightly below the death rate of Andersonville, Georgia. The surgeon of Elmira boasted that he had killed more Confederates than any Union soldier. Clothing sent in by prisoners’ families was burned unless it was gray in color, and consequently, many died of exposure. Deaths from scurvy, disease and malnutrition were excessive. Those who survived were lucky.

One of the Elmira alumni put a great deal of distance between himself and the infamous prison when he stopped in a community on North Alabama’s Sand Mountain. He lived with a Methodist minister and his family. While there, he found grace in the eyes of God and became a Christian. In fact, he became a Methodist minister himself. The man went by the name of William Clark McCoy. He was educated, and in addition to being a Methodist minister, he also edited a newspaper. He fell in love with and married a fifteen-year-old girl who had suffered from polio as a child. Before long, they started a family.

It wasn’t long, however, before rumors began to circulate about the similarities between the late William Clarke Quantrill and the Reverend William Clark McCoy. Both had black hair, and both men were missing a finger on one hand. Both men had a tattoo of an Indian maiden. When a newspaperman from Birmingham tried to interview Mrs. McCoy, the five-foot-tall woman chased him off with her cane.

There were other clues as well. In 1884, Frank James, a former member of Quantrill’s Raiders, was held in a Huntsville jail to await trial on an accusation of robbing Alexander Smith, the government paymaster, near Muscle Shoals, Alabama, in 1881. While he was incarcerated, Reverend William Clark McCoy went to visit the prisoner. When he walked in, a surprised Frank James exclaimed, “Well Bill! I thought you were dead!”

Reverend McCoy/Quantrill quickly put his finger to his mouth in a gesture to signal silence. The two men talked quietly for about an hour, and then McCoy left the jail.

The most telling clue was McCoy’s expertise with his ivory-handled pistols. He was standing in the church pulpit one day when Yankee carpetbaggers came in with the intention of inciting some trouble in the community. The Methodist minister warned them that it would be in their best interest to move on. To accentuate his point, he picked up an ear of corn. He scratched or somehow marked an X on one kernel and hung the ear of corn over the front door of the church. From the pulpit, he pulled his pistol and fired. The bullet found its mark on the kernel with an X. The carpetbaggers understood the implication and quickly left.

Reverend McCoy died in 1891 and was buried in Birmingham. His widow would neither confirm nor deny that her husband had been the legendary William Quantrill. Years later, her children spent a small fortune trying to learn his true identity. They even traveled to Missouri to interview the widow of Frank James. They would never know for sure.

Annie Guthrie, the granddaughter of the Reverend William Clark McCoy, would like to know the answer to that question too. Mrs. Guthrie still has the walking cane her grandmother used to chase the reporters away and once visited the horrible Elmira Prison where her grandfather was incarcerated.

Mrs. Guthrie’s grandmother carried the secret of her husband’s true identity with her to her grave. Upon her death, she was buried next to her beloved husband at Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham. Although McCoy had originally been buried at another Birmingham cemetery, his widow had his body reinterred when the installation of a gate at the first cemetery required that his body be among those moved to another location.

After the death of William Clarke Quantrill, accounts of his crimes became almost legendary. He was blamed for more atrocities, killings and lootings than he could have possibly had time for. But those were not the only unanswered questions. Except for the raid on Lawrence, Kansas, today’s Quantrill biographies rarely agree on many facts about him, including the spelling of his name. One fact, however, persists: the life and death of William Clarke Quantrill will forever remain one of history’s enigmas.