Gadzooks!
Sunday, 14 May 2006, 7:08 pm
Our own civil war saw the employment of death squads. Quantrill's Raiders was one such. Quantrill was far from the only Confederate guerrilla operating in Missouri, but he rapidly won the greatest renown. He and his men ambushed Union patrols and supply convoys, seized the mail, and occasionally struck at undefended towns on either side of the Kansas-Missouri border. Reflecting the internecine nature of the guerrilla conflict in Missouri, Quantrill directed much of his effort against Unionist civilians, attempting to drive them out of the territory where he operated.
Quantrill claimed sanction under the Confederate Partisan Ranger Act, which authorized certain guerrilla activities, and received a regular Confederate commission as an officer. However, like almost all of the Missouri bushwhackers, he operated outside of the Confederate chain of command. Some of his activities, most notably his massacre of some 200 men and boys in Lawrence, Kansas, in August 1863, appalled the Confederate authorities. In the winter of 1862-63, when Quantrill led his men behind Confederate lines into Texas, their often lawless presence proved an embarrassment to the Confederate command. Yet the Southern generals appreciated his effectiveness against Union forces, which never gained the upper hand over Quantrill.
More