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Confederate guerilla leader arrested by own side
On this day in 1864, Civil War guerrilla leader William Quantrill was
arrested by Confederate forces in Bonham, Texas. The Ohio native, wanted
for murder in Utah by 1860, collected a group of renegades in the
Kansas-Missouri area at the beginning of the Civil War. He fought with
Confederate forces at the battle of Wilson's Creek in August 1861 but
soon thereafter began irregular independent operations. Quantrill and
his band attacked Union camps, patrols, and settlements. While Union
authorities declared him an outlaw, Quantrill eventually held the rank
of colonel in the Confederate forces. After his infamous sack of
Lawrence, Kansas, and the massacre of Union prisoners at Barter Springs,
Quantrill and his men fled to Texas in October of 1863. There he
quarreled with his associate, William "Bloody Bill" Anderson, and his
band preyed on the citizens of Fannin and Grayson counties. Acts of
violence proliferated so much that regular Confederate forces had to be
assigned to protect residents from the activities of the irregular
Confederate forces, and Gen. Henry McCulloch determined to rid North
Texas of Quantrill's influence. On March 28, 1864, when Quantrill
appeared at Bonham as requested, McCulloch had him arrested on the
charge of ordering the murder of a Confederate major. Quantrill escaped
that day and returned to his camp near Sherman, pursued by more than 300
state and Confederate troops. He and his men crossed the Red River into
Indian Territory. Except for a brief return in May, Quantrill's
activities in Texas were at an end. Quantrill was killed by Union forces
at the very end of the war.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- QUANTRILL, WILLIAM CLARKE
- CIVIL WAR
- ANDERSON, WILLIAM L.
- MCCULLOCH, HENRY EUSTACE
- GORDONVILLE, TX
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Texas Confederates whipped in New Mexico (1862)
- Commander of "Kirby Smith's Confederacy" dies (1893)
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