the
North who insisted that Kansas should be free for the expansion of the
northern population and institutions.

This corner of Missouri-Kansas was a focus of recklessness and daring
for more than a whole generation. The children born there had an
inheritance of indifference to death such as has been surpassed nowhere
in our frontier unless that were in the bloody Southwest. The men of
this country, at the outbreak of the civil war, made as high an average
in desperate fighting as any that ever lived. Too restless to fight
under the ensign of any but their own ilk, they set up a banner of their
own. The black flags of Quantrell and of Lane, of border ruffian and
jayhawker, were guidons under which quarter was unknown, and mercy a
forgotten thing. Warfare became murder, and murder became assassination.
Ambushing, surprise, pillage and arson went with murder; and women and
children were killed as well as fighting men. Is it wonder that in such
a school there grew up those figures which a certain class of writers
have been wont to call bandit kings; the bank robbers and train robbers
of modern days, the James and Younger type of bad men?

The most notorious of these border fighters was the bloody leader,
Charles William Quantrell, leader at the sacking of Lawrence, and as
dangerous a partisan leader as ever threw leg into saddle. He was born
in Hagerstown, Maryland, July 20, 1836, and as a boy lived for a time in
the Ohio city of Cleveland. At twenty years of age, he joined his
brother for a trip to California, _via_ the great plains. This was in
1856, and Kansas was full of Free Soilers, whose political principles
were not always untempered by a large-minded willingness to rob. A
party of these men surprised the Quantrell party on the Cottonwood
river, and killed the older brother. Charles William Quantrell swore an
undying revenge; and he kept his oath.

It is not necessary to mention in detail the deeds of this border
leader. They might have had commendation for their daring had it not
been for their brutality and treachery. Quantrell had a band of sworn
men, held under solemn oath to stand by each other and to keep their
secrets. These men were well armed and well mounted, were all fearless
and all good shots, the revolver being their especial arm, as it was of
Mosby's men in the civil war. The tactics of this force comprised
surprise, ambush, and a determined rush, in turn; and time and again
they defeated Federal