Or, did it?
Legend of bloody William Quantrill
apparently ends in Louisville hospital

The individual described as the “Bloodiest man in the annals of America” is reported to have died near Taylorsville in 1865.

That was when guerilla raider William Clarke Quantrill, age 27, was killed in a Union ambush on May 10. He supposedly was shot in the back and paralyzed while trying to flee Federal forces led by another guerilla fighter, Edwin Terrell. Quantrill was said to have died a month later in a Louisville hospital.

But, did he?

Quantrill, who led the largest and best-known band of guerrillas in Missouri during the Civil War, also is said, according to another legend, to have pulled off one of the most bizarre escapes in American history.

According to this account, Quantrill was so badly injured in the gunfight at Wakefield Farm that he convinced authorities to let his wife visit him in the hospital. When Mrs. Quantrill arrived, she and her husband stripped the clothes from a dead man and dressed the body in Quantrill’s clothing and placed the deceased in Quantrill’s bed.

Quantrill then dressed in his wife’s clothes and she put on the dead man’s clothing, was bound and gagged and lay on the dead man’s bed. Quantrill, dressed as a woman, walked out of the hospital.

When Mrs. Quantrill later was discovered, she said she had found her husband dead in his bed and had been attacked by the other man in the room. She related that she had been bound and gagged and the man had taken her clothes and escaped.

The authorities believed Mrs. Quantrill and made no further search for her husband. The Louisville hospital records allegedly reflected that Quantrill had died of his wounds and that an unknown member of his gang had managed to escape.

According to the legend, Quantrill and his wife stayed in Kentucky for the next two years while the guerilla raider fully recovered. Then, the story continues, a stranger, named Capt. L.T. Crocker, rode into Woodruff County, Ark., in 1867 and bought a tract of land some 12 miles south of Augusta. An air of mystery persisted about the Crockers and it was rumored that outlaws Frank and Jesse James made several visits to the farm.

One day, when Capt. Crocker was talking with friends in a livery stable, a newcomer approached and said, “You, Capt. Crocker, are the man I knew as Quantrill. I was in the Federal Army and was captured by your men, and it was you who finally let me escape.”

Crocker denied the allegation and said he thought that Quantrill would have “shot any Yankee soldier that he captured.”

The Crockers operated a store and post office in Arkansas for a number of years and raised a family. The Captain supposedly asked several friends and his wife, who knew his true identity, not to reveal that information until after his death. Crocker lived on his farm from 1867 until he died in 1917.

The bloody reputation of William Quantrill really began in 1860 in Kansas when he joined a group of Jayhawkers (free state activists) and accompanied them on a raid, intended to free some Missouri slaves. Instead, he returned with the slaves’ owner and killed three of the Jayhawkers.

Quantrill joined the Confederate Army in 1861, but left soon after, complaining that the South was not fighting with sufficient ferocity. He then formed a renegade band of 400 outlaws and guerillas known as Quantrill’s Raiders. The Raiders fought for the Southern cause, although never officially sanctioned by the Confederate government. Their banditry, bushwacking and brutality fast gained them a reputation. And, although they funneled a portion of their gains to the Confederacy, most of the spoils were divided among themselves.

One of Quantrill’s most infamous days came at Lawrence, Kan., Aug. 21, 1863. He and his men robbed the town’s banks and businesses, burned the homes of suspected Union sympathizers and killed about 180 men and boys.

The Raiders moved into Texas in 1863 and Quantrill was arrested by Confederate forces for apparently plotting the murder of a Southern officer. He escaped and his band split into several factions. He only had about a dozen men in his command when Terrell, hired by Union forces, tracked him down at the Wakefield Farm some five miles south of Taylorsville.

Among the better-known men in Quantrill’s full command were the James brothers and Cole Younger.