The Devil knows how to ride The true story of William Clark Quantrill and his Confederate raiders

It's been 34 years since the publication of William Clarke Quantrill: His Life and Times, the last major biography of the legendary Confederate raider (1837-1865). But in one of those odd publishing events, here come two new lives of Quantrill in the same month‘Duane Schultz's Quantrill's War, reviewed below, and this marginally better study by Leslie (Desperate Journeys: Abandoned Souls). The Kansas-Missouri border area was the scene of some of the Civil War's fiercest fighting and most savage atrocities. Leslie traces Quantrill's childhood in Ohio, and his family and prewar career (he taught school for a time), separating myth from reality to set the stage for the Confederate captain's wartime activities. Throughout his narrative, the author details how Quantrill's life and actions were falsified by numerous contemporaries, resulting in very inaccurate portrayals of the man. In a move likely to spur debate, Leslie contends that Quantrill was not quite the bloodthirsty demon of legend but, rather, a man who merely reacted with increasing ruthlessness to desperate Union measures to render his gang‘as well as other Confederate irregulars‘ineffective. The apex of the death and destruction wrought by Quantrill was his infamous raid on Lawrence, Kans., on August 21, 1863, during which over 150 civilians were killed and a great part of the town was sacked and burned. Leslie also traces the fates of Quantrill's men who survived the war (Quantrill himself died in a Union prison), as well as the strange journeys of Quantrill's bones and skull until their separate burials earlier in this decade. Even Hollywood's two films about Quantrill receive some space in this authoritative and well-written study. Photos and bibliography, not seen by PW. Author tour. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Confederate "partisan ranger" Quantrill, known for senseless killing, led his band of guerrillas on constant raids against Union forces and sympathizers in Missouri and Kansas. His most notorious attack was on Lawrence, Kansas, as he turned his men loose to murder and loot as they pleased, leaving the town in ruins and strewn with corpses. Leslie (Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls: The True Stories of Maroons, Castaways and Other Survivors, LJ 10/1/88) provides a comprehensive story of Quantrill and his raiders, beginning with the Kansas-Missouri border wars all the way through the Civil War and ending with annual guerrilla reunions into the early 1900s. Along the way, he discusses such notorious Quantrill followers as Frank and Jesse James and Cole Younger. Leslie attempts a balanced view of the infamous guerrilla leader, portraying his willingness to kill while dispelling myths surrounding him. This is a good place to begin a study of Quantrill; recommended for academic and public libraries.‘Grant A. Fredericksen, Illinois Prairie Dist. P.L., Metamora (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

One of two action-packed works about the notorious border ruffian and Confederate guerrilla to be published this season (see Duane Schultz's Quantrill's War: The Life and Times of William Clarke Quantrill, p. 1134). Little has survived in Quantrill's hand, writes freelance historian Leslie (Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls, 1988): a few letters home, a couple of commemorative verses, an eight-paragraph military report. It is thus not easy to determine what motivated the man who terrorized the abolitionists of Kansas before and during the Civil War. Born in Ohio to a Unionist family who opposed slavery, he seems to have been converted to the Southern cause while working as a freighter in Utah Territory during the Mormon War, and he embraced the cause with ferocious energy. A part-time cattle rustler when the Civil War broke out, Quantrill, writes Leslie, seems to have had a streak of cruelty--a wartime associate recalls that he once shot a pig just to make it squeal--that served him well in his campaign of terror. Many thousands of deaths can be attributed to his guerrilla command, including the 150 civilians slain during his infamous 1863 raid on Lawrence, Kan. ``I would cover the armies of the Confederacy all over with blood,'' he wrote to a superior. ``I would invade. I would reward audacity. I would exterminate. . . . I would win the independence of my people or I would find them graves.'' Quantrill rode into infamy, dying at the age of 27 near the war's end; his notoriety was assured both because of his own depredations and because among his soldiers were Frank and Jesse James and the Cole brothers, who were to become famous outlaws. Leslie does a remarkably thorough job of telling Quantrill's bloody story, and especially of relating the grisly fate of his remains, which the author traces as they traveled over the next century from one burial site to another, with an intermediate stop at an Ohio fraternity house. Highly recommended for Civil War buffs and students of frontier history. (Author tour)