Lawrence Massacre 1863: Quantrill's Raid and the Kansas City Jail Collapse

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Before dawn on Friday, August 21, 1863, about 450 Missouri guerrillas under William Quantrill, many of them teenagers lashed to their saddles after a 24-hour ride, entered Lawrence, Kansas. The town was the center of the free-state movement from the Bleeding Kansas years and the base of Jayhawkers and Red Legs led by men such as Senator James H. Lane, Charles Doc Jennison and James Montgomery, who raided western Missouri. Quantrill cited Lane's 1861 sacking of Osceola, Missouri, where nine men were executed after a drumhead court-martial. Then, on August 13, 1863, a Kansas City building used to hold female relatives of guerrillas under General Thomas Ewing Jr.'s General Order No. 10 collapsed, killing five young women, including 15-year-old Josephine Anderson, sister of William Bloody Bill Anderson.

Henry Thompson, a Black servant who saw the column, ran to Eudora to raise a warning that came too late. The raiders posted lookouts on Mount Oread, made the Eldridge House their headquarters, and carried lists of men to kill. Union troops had left for Fort Leavenworth and residents had earlier been disarmed. Over four hours they burned about a quarter of the town and killed more than 150 unarmed men and boys, including 18 of 23 recruits not yet mustered in. Lane escaped through a cornfield in his nightshirt, and former governor Charles L. Robinson watched from a stone barn the raiders avoided.

• Fifteen-year-old Billy Speer gave the raiders a false name, was released, and later shot one of them as they left town.
• The youngest victim is usually given as Bobby Martin, killed while wearing clothes made from his father's Union uniform.
• The H. M. Simpson family hid in a cornfield for three hours, the mother feeding her baby raw green corn to keep her quiet.
• Ewing's General Order No. 11 then evicted residents of four Missouri border counties, and Jennison's men burned so many homes that the chimneys left standing were called Jennison monuments.
• Quantrill died of wounds in Kentucky in 1865, while followers Frank and Jesse James survived the war.