Jennison, who was seldom with the regiment in the field, departed in April 1862, and Anthony resigned his commission four months later. Both pursued successful postwar commercial and political careers in Leavenworth, and the regiment, under new and more capable military leadership, performed well in subsequent campaigns, Jayhawking less but pursued to the end by a bad reputation richly earned in a short but boisterous period.

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Jennison’s closest Southern counterpart, William Clarke Quantrill, was a puzzle, seemingly a study in contradictions. Assertive at times, at other times moody and reclusive, he was a leader who earned both loyalty and contempt. He was undeniably intelligent; he had once been a schoolteacher in Fort Wayne, Ind. That he was also a coldblooded killer was discernible in his heavy-ridded, pale-blue eyes and the almost effeminate lips that smiled wanly beneath his sweeping moustache. He was 26 years old when he destroyed Lawrence, Kan., and entered the history books alongside Tamerlane and Attila the Hun.

Quantrill and his followers sacked Lawrence on August 21, 1863. The deed was so dramatic, so bestial, and of such magnitude that it caught the imagination of the public and, in the end, made more of Quantrill than was really there. Other guerrilla leaders such as Bill Anderson and Jo Shelby accomplished more militarily. Quantrill’s raid, conversely, symbolized the senseless violence that characterized Bushwhacking at its worst, and perhaps for that reason more than any other has been granted a permanent niche in American folklore.

Revenge for Union atrocities, real or imagined, was one stimulus for the Lawrence raid. A three-story brick building in Kansas City was used by the Federals as a prison for women alleged to have aided Bushwhackers. On August 14, the building collapsed; among the five women who died were the sisters of Bushwhackers Bill Anderson and John McCorkle. Quantrill used this incident to fire up support for an attack on Lawrence, plans for which until then had drawn a cool reception even from his hard-bitten associates.

There were other motives for the raid, as well. Loot, of course, was always a motivation among Bushwhackers. To some extent, there was also the desire to show the Federals that they could operate with impunity in Union territory. Quantrill’s need to invigorate his flagging support was another. And information that Jim Lane was in Lawrence whetted Quantrill’s appetite. He wanted Lane’s scalp–figuratively or literally–very badly. If it were to be literally, teenager Archie Clement would be delighted to please his leader. Archie “skelpt” more than one dead Union cavalryman and beheaded another.

Quantrill, Bill Anderson and George Todd led 450 men into Lawrence at 7 a.m. on August 21. They carried lists of specific targets for assassination, but they also heeded Quantrill’s final instructions to “kill every man big enough to carry a gun.”

The first Kansan to die was the Reverend S.S. Snyder, shot in his yard as he milked his cow. At 9 a.m. the Bushwhackers rode out, saddlebags laden with booty, many of the raiders swaying from the effects of newly liberated spirits. In 120 minutes, they had devastated the dusty town of 2,000 inhabitants and killed 150 of its male citizens. Many were gunned down before their wives and children; others died trapped in their flaming homes. Then the raiders torched the entire community, burning $2 million worth of property.

Jim Lane was, indeed, at Lawrence that day. The gaunt spellbinder heard the raiders coming and accurately guessed they would be looking very particularly for him. In his nightshirt, he ran from his house and hid in a corn patch. He survived then, as he did so often through his bizarre political career, on quick wit and quicker action, with no compunctions about his public appearance. Better a live coward than a dead hero, he reasoned.

Ironically, Quantrill’s well-known and senseless raid on Lawrence was followed six weeks later by an almost forgotten but militarily more significant encounter. Leading his men southward to winter in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), Quantrill was drawn to the Union outpost at Baxter Springs, Kan., just west of Joplin, Mo. Here, on October 6, his forces captured the small fort and a wagon train of Union Maj. Gen. James Blunt’s headquarters entourage. Blunt escaped to nearby Fort Scott, but 90 of his soldiers were captured and massacred, and Blunt was relieved of command. A drunken Quantrill boasted that he had accomplished in one day what Confederate Colonel Jo Shelby and Maj. Gen. John Marmaduke had failed for years to do: whip Blunt. The assertion was true, but it also emphasized Quantrill’s increasingly desperate need to counter through acclaim the growing apathy and disgust of many of his own followers.

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