Before his death he had become a Catholic and had been visited daily by two old priests. To one of these he made confession, and such a confession! He told everything. He was too serious and earnest a man to do less. He kept nothing back, not even the least justifiable of his many homicides.
As the priest listened and listened, and as year after year of the wild war work was made to give up its secrets, what manner of a man must the priest have imagined lay dying there.
Let history be just. On that hospital bed, watched by the calm, colorless face of a Sister of Charity, a dead man lay who, when living, had filled with his deeds four years of terrible war history. A singularly placid look had come with the great change. Alike was praise or censure, reward or punishment. Fate had done its worst and the future stood revealed to the spirit made omniscient by its journey through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He had done with summer’s heat and winter’s cold, with spectral ambuscades and midnight vigils. There would never be any war in the land of the hereafter. The swoop of cavalry, the roar of combat, the agony of defeat, white faces trampled by the iron hoofs of horses, the march—the bivouac, the battle; what remains of these when the transfiguration was done and when the river called Jordan rolled between the shores of the finite and the infinite? Nothing! And yet by those, standing or falling, must the great Guerrilla be judged.
Quantrell differed in some degree from every Guerrilla who was either a comrade or his contemporary. Not superior to Todd in courage and enterprise, nor to Haller, Poole, Jarrette, Younger, Taylor, Anderson, Frank James, Gregg, Lea, Maddox, Dan Vaughn, or Yager, he yet had one peculiar quality which none of these save Gregg, Frank James, Thrailkill, Lea and Younger possessed to the same pre-eminent degree—extraordinary resource and cunning.
All the Guerrillas fought. Indeed, at certain times and under certain conditions fighting might justly have been considered the least of their accomplishments. A successful leader requires coolness, intrepidity, robust health, fine horsemanship, expert pistol practice, quick perception in peril, great rapidity of movement, immense activity, and inexorable fixedness of purpose.
Those mentioned excelled in these qualities, but at times they were too eager to fight, took too many desperate chances, or rushed too recklessly into combats where they could not win. Quantrell counted the cost of everything; watched every way lest an advantage should be taken of him; sought to shield and save his men; strove by much strategy to have the odds with rather than against him; traveled a multitude of long roads rather than one short one once too often; took upon himself many disguises to prevent an embarrassing familiarity; retreat often rather than fight and be worsted; kept scouts everywhere; had the faculty of divination to an almost occult degree; believed in young men; paid attention to small things; listened to every man’s advice and then took his own; stood by his soldiers; obeyed strictly the law of retaliation; preferred the old dispensation to the new—that is to say, the code of Moses to the code of Jesus Christ; inculcated by precept and example the self abnegation and devotion to comrade; fought desperately; carried a black flag; killed everything; made the idea of surrender ridiculous; snapped his fingers at death; was something of a fatalist; rarely drank; trusted few women, but these with his life; played high at cards; believed in religion; respected its ordinances; went at intervals to church; understood human nature thoroughly; never quarreled; was generally taciturn and one of the coolest and deadliest men in a personal combat known to the border. He rode like he was carved from the horse beneath him. In an organization where skill with a pistol was a passport to leadership he shot with a revolver as Leatherstocking shot with a rifle. He drilled his men to fight equally with either hand. Fairly matched, God help the column that came in contact with him.
As to the kind of warfare Quantrell waged, that is another matter. Like the war of La Vendee, the Guerrilla war was one rather of hatred than of opinion. The regular Confederates were fighting for a cause and a nationality—the Guerrilla for vengeance. Mementoes of murdered kinsmen mingled with their weapons; vows consecrated the act of enlistment and the cry for blood was heard from homestead to homestead. Quantrell became a Guerrilla because he had been most savagely dealt with, and he became a chief because he had prudence, firmness, courage, audacity and common sense. In personal intrepidity he was inferior to no man. His features were pleasing without being handsome, his eyes were blue and penetrating. He had a Roman nose. In height he was five feet, eleven inches, and his form was well knit, graceful and sinewy. His constitution was vigorous, and his physical endurance equal to an Indian. His glance was rapid and unerring. His judgment was clearest and surest when the responsibility was heaviest, and when the difficulties gathered thickest about him. Based upon skill, energy, perspicacity and unusual presence of mind, his fame as a Guerrilla will endure for generations.
Quantrell died a Catholic and was buried in a Catholic cemetery at Louisville, Kentucky.