- Joined
- May 4, 2015
- Location
- Boonville, MO.
Booner, I cannot remember who mentioned this before, but I was just thinking about it again: most of the raiding parties were made up of family relations, and many of the victims were family relations. When I was reading about Anderson, Quantrill, John Brown, it seemed like a majority of them had a tipping point -- an event that just pushed them over the edge of insanity, usually the loss of a family member. Unrelated troops fighting in "foreign" territory just don't experience this sort of personal connection to the war.
Bee,
I think your referring to the post I made in the mid February thread of "What made a Civil War guerrilla?" where I referred to the "Fristoe System" where nearly 40% of those guerrilla's who rode with Quantrill were related to each other through the Fristoe family of western Missouri?
I think Anderson was a psychopath and the war gave him the opportunity to unleash his psychosis. The death and maiming of his sisters was the tipping point. He had a little brother, Jim, who followed in his footprint and was nearly as disturbed as Bill was.
J.Brown, as you know, has again been the subject of a recent post, and I think he was a desperately frustrated man (he had failed in every business venture he tried), who used the cause of freeing the slaves as an outlet to free those frustrations. The federal government, the constitution, the supreme court were all against his cause. Maybe it was the fugitive slave act that set him over. He never did have a reason to go to Kansas until his son asked him to come and bring guns. He justified his actions by answering to a higher authority than anything of this earth.
Quantrill on the other hand, is different. He was an educated man, and from his writings to his mother we know that he was initially a mild abolitionist when he first went to Kansas (around 1857). He was an early supporter of Jim Lane, (again from the letters to his mother), but never really took part in "Bleeding Kansas" but sometime around 1858-59 or so his thoughts changed towards being against Lane and the abolitionists. It may have been while he was in Utah where he was in the company of Southerns from Missouri? He came back to Lawrence KS, and was destitute and began to "Jayhawk" slaves from Missouri. He would steal them away but then return them to Missouri for the reward money. I think It was his ego that drove him. The incident at the Walker farm where he plotted to have his Jayhawker companions killed, and the recognition he received from this, (from the very prominent Walked family), gave his ego the boost it needed/craved. But something happened to him after Lawrence and his command fell apart. I think that after the summer of 1863 Quantrill saw that the confereacy had no chance of winning and he wanted to lay low and consider his options. He knew he would never be allowed to surrender or receive a pardon for his actions In Missouri. In 1864 he spent most of his time in central Missouri with his wife/mistress and we don't hear much about him until January of 1865 when he and about 30 others head for Virginia with the hope of surrendering with the confederates there but things didn't turn out as planned in Kentucky.
These are my thoughts/theories so no need to ask for my referrences.
So back to the question of why Larence? According to writer Todd Mildfelt and his study entitled "The Secret Danites, Kansas First Jayhawkers" (not to be confused with the Mormon Danites), the Danites were a radical abolitionist group formed in 1855 in Lawrence by--Jim Lane. The group was dedicated to the eradication of slavery by any means, including war. Other members of the organization Jim Montgomery (the subject of another recent thread), Charles "Doc" Jennison, John Stuart, and Charles Leonhardt. All of these men later became prominent raiders/thieves/murderers as Jayhawkers and Redlegs and hated to the fullest extent by Missourians of both northern and southern perswaition. But if possible, Lane was hated most. And he lived in Lawrence. And Lawrence had always been the capital of the Kansas ablitionists, Jayhawkers and Redlegs.
The Jayhawkers and guerrillas knew who each other were and where they lived. Some of them had been fighting each other since 1855. And they knew who the supporters of each group were too, but in the end that didn't matter much. If you lived on the other side of the border, you were game. This is where someone will say, " did this justify the killing of young boys?" Of course not, but I can find nothing that justified the type of warfare that occured between Missouri and Kansas.
Bee, as always your posts are an example of intelligence and insight.
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