At dawn on August 21, 1863, William Quantrill led approximately 450 Confederate guerrillas into Lawrence, Kansas — a town he had targeted specifically because it was the center of Kansas abolitionism. By the time they left four hours later, between 150 and 200 civilian men and boys had been shot dead in the streets, in their homes, and in front of their families.

It was the deadliest civilian massacre of the Civil War.

The Border War

The guerrilla conflict in Missouri and Kansas — called Bleeding Kansas in the antebellum period — predated the Civil War and had its own brutal logic. Kansas abolitionists and Missouri slaveholders had been raiding and killing each other since the 1850s. The Civil War formalized the conflict without civilizing it.

Quantrill's Raiders — officially Confederate irregular cavalry — operated primarily in western Missouri, raiding Union supply lines, killing Unionist civilians, and terrorizing the region. Their counterparts were the Kansas Jayhawkers, who did largely the same things to Confederate sympathizers in Missouri. Both sides took few prisoners. Both sides burned farms.

The Union Army attempted to suppress Missouri guerrillas with Order No. 11 in August 1863 — forcibly depopulating four Missouri counties to deny Quantrill's men support. The order was brutal and partially effective. It did not stop the Lawrence raid.

Lawrence

Quantrill had planned the raid for months. Lawrence had been chosen because it was the home of Senator James Lane, who had led Kansas Jayhawker raids into Missouri, and because it was the symbolic center of Kansas abolitionism. Quantrill is reported to have told his men to kill every man big enough to carry a gun.

The raiders swept through the town in waves. Men were shot answering their doors. Boys were dragged from their mothers and executed in the yard. The town's business district was burned. Hotels were torched with men inside. Mayor George Collamore hid in his well and asphyxiated.

No women were killed. This appears to have been a deliberate order from Quantrill, not the result of restraint by his men.

The Aftermath

The Lawrence massacre shocked even Confederates. General Sterling Price condemned it. Jefferson Davis declined to recognize Quantrill's commission. Quantrill was killed in a Union ambush in Kentucky in May 1865.

Several of his men went on to become the most famous outlaws of the postwar West. Jesse James had ridden with Quantrill's lieutenants. So had Frank James and Cole Younger. The violence of the border war was partly responsible for the violence of the frontier that followed.

Lawrence rebuilt. The population, which had fled during the raid, mostly returned. The dead were counted as best anyone could and buried. The exact number remains disputed.