At dawn, between two and three hundred Confederate guerrillas under William Quantrill rode into Lawrence, Kansas. For the next four hours, Quantrill's men sought out male citizens and murdered up to two hundred of them in cold blood. They then sacked and fired the business district. The attackers claimed retaliation for an prior Union attack, but the atrocity also reflected the earlier years of violence in "Bleeding Kansas." (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Albert E. Castel, William Clarke Quantrill: His Life and Times (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962), 126-134.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Crime/Disasters
