It was the summer night of August 16, 1863, that the Guerilla column, having at its head its ominous banner, marched west from Purdee’s place on Blackwater. With its simple soldiers, or rather volunteers for the expedition, were Colonels Joseph Holt and Boaz Roberts. Officers of the regular Confederate army, who were in Missouri on recruiting service when the march began, fell into line as much from habit as from inclination.
The first camp was made upon a stream midway between Pleasant Hill and Lone Jack, where the grazing was good and the hiding places excellent. All day Quantrell concealed himself there, getting to saddle just at dark and ordering Todd up from the rear to the advance. Passing Pleasant Hill to the north and marching on rapidly fifteen miles, the second camp was at Harrelson’s, twenty-five miles from the place of starting. At three o’clock in the afternoon of the second day, the route was resumed and followed due west to Aubrey, a pleasant Kansas stream, abounding in grass and timber. Here Quantrell halted until darkness set in, feeding the horses well and permitting the men to cook and eat heartily. At eight o’clock the march began again and continued on throughout the night, in the direction of Lawrence. Three pilots were pressed into service, carried with the command as far as they knew anything of the road or the country, and then shot down remorselessly in the nearest timber.
On the morning of the 21st, Lawrence was in sight. An old man a short distance upon the right of the road was feeding his hogs in the gray dawn, the first person seen to stir about the doomed place. Quantrell sent Cole Younger over to the hog-pen to catechize the industrious old farmer and learn from him what changes had taken place in the situation since Taylor had so thoroughly accomplished his mission. Younger, dressed as a Federal lieutenant, exhausted speedily the old man’s limited stock. Really, but little change had taken place. Across the Kansas river there were probably four hundred soldiers in camp, and on the Lawrence side about seventy-five. As for the rebels, he didn’t suppose there was one nearer than Missouri; certainly none within striking distance of Lawrence.
It was a lovely morning. The green of the fields and the blue of the skies were glad together. Birds sang sweetly. The footsteps of autumn had not yet been heard in the land.
“The camp first,” was the cry which ran through the ranks, and Todd, leading Quantrell’s old company, dashed down, yelling and shooting. Scarcely any resistance was made, as every time they stuck their heads out of a tent it was met with a bullet. Ridden over, shot in their blankets, paralyzed, some of them with terror, they ran frantically about. What could they do against the quickest and deadliest pistol shots along the border?
Bill Anderson, Todd, Jarrette, Little, McGuire, Long, Bill McGuire, Richard Kenney, Allen Parmer, Frank James, Clemmons, Shepherd, Hinton, Blunt, Harrison Trow, and the balance of the older men did the most of the killing. They went for revenge, and they took it. These men killed. They burned. The Federals on the opposite side of the river made scarcely any attempt to come to the rescue of their butchered comrades. A few skirmishes held them in check. It was a day of darkness and woe. Killing ran riot. The torch was applied to every residence; the air was filled with cries for mercy; dead men lay in cellars, upon streets, in parlors where costly furniture was, on velvet carpets. The sun came up and flooded the sky with its radiance and yet the devil’s work was not done. Smoke ascended into the air, and the crackling of blazing rafters and crashing of falling walls filled the air. A true story of the day’s terrible work will never be told. Nobody knows it. It is a story of episodes, tragic—a story full of collossal horrors and unexpected deliverances.
Frank James, just as he was in the act of shooting a soldier in uniform who had been caught in a cellar—his pistol was at the Federal’s head—heard an exceedingly soft and penetrating voice calling out to him, “Do not kill him for my sake. He has eight children who have no mother.” James looked and saw a beautiful girl just turned sixteen, blushing at her boldness and trembling before him. In the presence of so much grace and loveliness her father was disarmed. He remembered his own happy youth, his sister, not older than the girl beside him, his mother who had always instilled into his mind lessons of mercy and charity. He put up his pistol.
“Take him, he is yours. I would not harm a hair of his head for the whole state of Kansas,” said James.
Judge Carpenter was killed in the yard of H. C. Clark, and Colonel Holt, one of the Confederate officers with the expedition, saved Clark. He saved others besides Clark. He had been a Union man doing business in Vernon County, Missouri, as a merchant. Jennison, belonging to old Jim Lane of Lawrence, noted “nigger” thief, robber and house burner, who always ran from the enemy, raided the neighborhood in which he lived, plundered him of his goods, burnt his property, insulted his family, and Holt joined the Confederate army for revenge. The notorious general, James H. Lane, to get whom Quantrell would gladly have left and sacrificed the balance of the victims, made his escape through a corn field, hotly pursued but too speedily mounted to be captured. He swam the river.
There were two camps in Lawrence at the time of the attack, one camp of the “nigger” troops being located at the southern end of Massachusetts street and the other camp of white soldiers were camped in the heart of the city. In this latter camp there were twenty-one infantry, eighteen of whom were killed in the first wild charge.