11/21/2024
A spectacular, likely unpublished armed view of the notorious guerilla leader, boldly
signed in ink on verso - "Col. WCQuantrill/May 1864." In our opinion the autograph
matches Quantrill's known signature. The carte bears the imprint of "Mansfield's City
Gallery, St. Louis, MO." The mustachioed Quantrill appears outfitted in a conspicuous
combination of Plains buffalo skin coat having broad fold over collar and fringed
buckskin trousers. The fur edges along the breast (placket) of the coat are intricately
worked in a patterned leather overlay. Beneath the hide coat is a lighter colored military
shell jacket with short collar and 10 brass buttons. Falling down and over the shell jacket
are a pair of long fringed decorative cords that seemingly attach to the back of the
holsters, and appear to defy function. The bushwhacker sports a pair of menacing
revolvers butt-end forward. Striking a casual demeanor with legs crossed, we see a
cheroot or stub of a cigar dangling in Quantrill's left hand. It should be noted that
officially William Quantrill never ranked higher than captain in the Confederate Army
although he was often revered to as "colonel" while leading as many 450 guerilla fighters.
Qauntrill achieved infamy with the bloody massacre and burning of Lawrence, Kansas,
on August 21, 1863. Lawrence was both the symbolic base of the anti-slavery forces and
the home of the despised Kansas Jayhawker, Senator Jim Lane, who had been targeted in
the raid. Lane escaped in his night shirt while no fewer than 150 civilians were murdered
by Quantrill's bushwhackers - a who's who cast of later day savage outlaws. Noted
Historian Albert Castel wrote that "Blood was never cheaper than it was along the border
in the summer of 1863." Of course, the insidious nature of the Kansas-Missouri conflict
was popularized in the 1976 Clint Eastwood film, Outlaw Jose Wales. Following the
bloody raid Quantrill and his band rode south to Texas in October, undoubtedly to safely
avoid a winter of certain pursuit and reprisal.
The context of the May 1864 photographer must be put into some perspective. By the
spring of 1864 Quantrill's control of his band had become tentative, increasingly
challenged by the popular but "illiterate, vicious, and semi-insane" George Todd,
Quantrill's erstwhile lieutenant. Castel wrote that by then Todd "was in many ways, the
actual chieftain of the band, which, significantly enough began to be called Todd's
Gang." Castel further states that "around the 10th of April 1864 the bushwhackers started
northward" toward Missouri to resume their depreciations. At some point in late April at
"a hideout in Missouri" the simmering matter of command came to an abrupt head. It
seems that during a card game in which Quantrill heatedly accused Todd of cheating, the
unpredictable second-in-command "whipped out a pistol and shoved it into Quantrill's
face." Certainly humiliated in front of his company but without saying a word, Quantrill
simply walked away, saddled his horse, and left the shifting band of ruffians. Quantrill's
exact whereabouts over the next month are unknown and Castel is silent regarding any
surreptitious visit to St. Louis to sit for a photograph. Still, the May date is testament
enough to Quantrill's reservoir of audacity, the city in 1864 firmly under Union control
notwithstanding an appreciable population of Southern sympathizers. The biographer
picks up writing that "early in June Quantrill rode to Bone Hill (across the state in
Jackson County, Missouri) and picked up" his teenage mistress Kate King. Accompanied
by at least five loyal followers, the small group" crossed the Missouri and went into
hiding in the rugged Perche Hills of Howard County" - his time as the guerilla captain "at
a close."
Rumors of Quantrill's marauding continued to instill terror during the summer but in truth
it was a splinter of other bands now commanded by former lieutenants actually engaged
in the murder and plundering. Indeed, under the auspices of Sterling Price's grand
Missouri Invasion in August 1864 Quantrill had briefly reunited with his former
subordinates "Bloody Bill" Anderson and George Todd, but by then Quantrill had been
permanently displaced and probably feared for his own life. In October, despite orders
from Price to "wreck the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad", Quantrill "did not take an
active part" in the ill-fated campaign. In the spring of 1865 Quantrill brashly led a few
dozen followers into Western Kentucky to raid even after both Lee and Johnston had
surrendered. A guerilla hunter named Edwin W. Terrell caught Quantrill and his band in
an ambush at Wakefield Farm, Kentucky on May 10. Quantrill was "shot in the back and
paralyzed." The badly wounded Quantrill was taken by wagon to a military prison
hospital in Louisville where he died on June 6, 1865 at age 27. In death, Quantrill's
celebrity spawned grave markers in three locations - the first in Louisville where he was
originally buried in 1865, another in Dover, Mo. in 1889, and yet a third in Higginsville,
Mo. as recently as 1992.
This one of a kind carte was found in a plastic bag among a batch of nondescript
unidentified civilian views from a Texas consignment. The albumen exhibits soiling with
scattered brown spots probably from the glue underneath. We note a small but unsightly
apparent water stain directly below Quantrill's thin moustache intruding on the chin. The
mount shows edge wear with corners rounded and otherwise damaged. The ink
identification is bold without imperfection.
