A Teacher's Bloody Field Trips

 July 25, 2024

   Still plugging holes in the big 10-page feature on Killer Kids of The Civil War. Here's a couple more to chew on.

A Teacher's Bloody Field Trips

   Born in Ohio, the eldest of 12 children, William Quantrill, taught school off and on before turning to raiding in the "Bloody Kansas" corridor of the Civil War. His young charges included future outlaws Jesse and Frank James and Cole Younger, not to mention "Bloody Bill" Anderson, among others. He taught them all well.

   His biggest raiding lesson came during the predawn hours of August 21, 1863, when some 450 of Quantrill's Raiders rode into Lawrence, Kansas and slaughtered more than 160 men and boys (some estimates have the bloody total at 190). They also robbed the bank and looted every home. However, their main target, James Henry Lane, the leader of the Free State Party of Kansas, escaped, barely, in his night clothes by running through a cornfield and hiding.

Quantrill's Bloodiest Field Trip

on August 21, 1863

And It's Off to Graduate School

   At the end of the Civil War a generation of boys looked for a reprieve from the fighting, but some of these kids were too well trained to let all those warfare skills go to waste. Especially when so many people in Missouri—and throughout most of the south—felt oppressed by the banks and the railroads. With a little nudging—not much!—a whole bunch of spunky farm boys began to ply the trade they were trained for: bank robbery and train robbery. Over the course of the next twenty years a whole bunch of banks and railroads felt the bite and a whole slew of country outlaws rose to fame and infamy. A couple of them rose damn close to immortality. And, I think you know who that would be.

Coming later this year to a bookstore near you.

"I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn't have the time."

—Mark Twain