Tuesday, August 20, 2013

August 21, 1863---The Destruction of Lawrence, Kansas



AUGUST 21, 1863:    
  
William “Bloody Bill” Quantrill and 400 bushwhackers destroy Lawrence, Kansas. After burning and pillaging the town, and raping any number of women, the bushwhackers assembled approximately 200 male residents of the town, aged 12 and up, and killed them en masse. The raid had been carefully planned; Quantrill had a list of names of men he intended to target. Chief among them was Senator James Lane, leader of the “Redlegs”, who had carried out a bloody raid on Osceola, Missouri in 1861, that cost 2,500 lives. Lane was not in Lawrence that night. Another, more recent, motivation was the death of Quantrill’s younger sister, Josephine, in the collapse of the Kansas City Women’s Jail on August 13th. Most of Quantrill’s “men” were teenaged boys aged 15-19, who showed no quarter. A great many of them who survived the war, like the Younger brothers and the James brothers, went on to be the storied outlaws of the Old West.