Well, gentlemen and ladies,there is another side. Here is a very small excerpt from my book, Civil War on the Missouri-Kansas Border.This fellowed a description of WHO the guerrillas were: the sons and daughters of elite Misourians:

What, then, did Quantrill’s “friends” say about him? Frank James said, “I will never forget the first time I saw Quantrill . . . he was full of life and a jolly fellow. He had none of the bravado of the desperado about him. We loved him at first sight.” After one of his battles, a woman who saw him for the first time said, “I saw Quantrill . . . after the fighting was over, when he rode to the house to look after his wounded. He looked as little like the horrible bloodthirsty bandit . . . as it is possible to imagine. Instead of this, he was a modest, quiet, good-looking man, with blue eyes . . . , gentle of manner and courteous as well.” His lieutenant, William Gregg, who became a Kansas City lawman after the war, said of him: “History after history has been written about Quantrill and his men, none of which can be characterized as true . . . One thing I do know however, and that is, that he was a soldier and not afraid to die, that he was equitable and just to friend and foe up to a certain period of the war.” Another of Quantrill’s captains, who disliked him, Charles F. (“Fletch”) Taylor, said, “Q. was a good commander and a brave man and all the men had confidence in him. Don’t think he was cowardly, although I never saw him in a close place, as the men preferred to go in the lead, and let him manage, as we did not want to lose him.”

Another writer who has done much to damage Quantrill’s reputation through innuendo is Jay Monaghan, the author of one of the few modern books devoted exclusively to the Border War. Monaghan referred to “lascivious lipped Quantrill with his ready smile and gang of mix-bloods,” a “man of liquor and women, reckless when in command with his slant-eyed crew.” Monaghan said, “Quantrill’s longhorn mustache paralleled the brim of a low-crowned black hat garnished with gold band and tassels. Four pistol butts raised their ugly heads above his belt. This Short-cropped hair emphasized the smallness of his head on a giraffe neck--a pervert among unkempt followers.” On the next page, Monaghan said, “Quantrill’s broad, voluptuous lips sneered.” These almost clownish examples are obviously clear-cut attempts to taint Quantrill as an inveterate “criminal type” through dripping invective. It reminds one of the type of racist propaganda employed during World War II to demonize America’s Japanese enemy by emphasizing racial features and stereotypical behavior. Referring to one of Quantrill’s lieutenants, Dave Pool, as “the freebooting comedian,” is Monaghan’s backhanded way of saying that all the guerrillas were freebooters, for Pool was only typical. Monaghan’s contention that Quantrill was “reckless in command” is especially absurd; his actions were almost always epitomized by great care, deliberation, and caution.

Other writers, such as Albert Castel, author of A Frontier State at War: Kansas 1861-1865 and William Clarke Quantrill: His Life and Times, are subtler in their attacks. Castel said, “It is extremely unlikely, too, that men of the Quantrill-Todd-Anderson ilk were motivated more than slightly by any higher purpose than plunder and murder. In a strict sense they were not even Missourians, and their careers show that they were as ready to rob and slay Confederate adherents as they were Union.” Nearly all of this is untrue, unproven, or ill considered. None of these men at any stage in their careers as guerrillas were “as ready to rob and slay Confederates” as they would Union men. Their guerrilla peers never would have allowed it. As far as the motivations of these three men are concerned, Castel has no idea what moved them. For these men to risk their lives daily, sometimes hourly, they would have had to have been “motivated more than slightly” and firmly believed in the cause for which they were fighting. No amount of money could have induced them into the suffering they voluntarily submitted to, and none of the guerrilla chiefs became rich through obtaining what Castel calls “plunder,” as the Jayhawkers Lane and Jennison did. Indeed, Jennison, was a much more likely candidate for demonization had Castel and the others been motivated to turn their pens on a figure who was truly worthy of their invective--but a “Yankee.”

Why Castel believed that it is necessary to be a Missourian to fight for the South, and inferentially, a Northerner to fight for the North, is quite puzzling because it is widely known that both Northerners and Southerners fought on both sides in the Civil War. In the battle of Chickamauga, for instance, Southerners in the Deep South acted as guides for the Northern Army, while a Northerner, Bushrod Johnson, led the Confederate assault that broke the Union line and won the battle for the South. While Castel is even-handed as historians go, this single example is meant to show the subtle nature of some of the bias employed, consciously or unconsciously, against the Missouri guerrillas. Moreover, it masks the central question: what terrible atrocities by Union forces caused normal young men to turn into violent killers? The answer to that question is particularly embarrassing for Union apologists to answer so they simply don’t.