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|branch= |serviceyears= 1861–1865 |rank= 35px Captain |unit= |commands= |battles= }} William Clarke Quantrill (July 31, 1837 – June 6, 1865) was a Confederate guerrilla leader during the American Civil War. After leading a Confederate bushwhacker unit along the Missouri-Kansas border in the early 1860s, which included the notorious raid on Lawrence, Kansas ("Quantrill's Raid") in 1863, he eventually ended up in Kentucky, where he was mortally wounded in a Union ambush in May 1865 at the age of 27. ==Early life== Quantrill was the oldest of twelve children, four of whom died in infancy.〔(E. Leslie, ''The Devil Knows How to Ride'', Random House, 1996. pp. 406-406, 410 )〕 He was born at Canal Dover (now just Dover), Ohio, on July 31, 1837. His father was Thomas Henry Quantrill, formerly of Hagerstown, Maryland. His mother, Caroline Cornelia Clark, was a native of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. They were married on October 11, 1836 and moved to Canal Dover the following December. Quantrill was well-educated and followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a schoolteacher at the age of sixteen. In 1854, his abusive father died of tuberculosis, leaving the family with a huge financial debt. Quantrill's mother had to turn her home into a boarding house in order to survive. Quantrill helped support the family by working as a schoolteacher but left home a year later and headed to Mendota, Illinois.〔(Brownlee, ''Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy'', Library of Congress 1958, p. 54 )〕 Here, Quantrill took up a job in the lumberyards, unloading timber from rail cars. One night while working the late shift, he shot a man dead. Authorities briefly arrested Quantrill, who claimed self-defense. Since there were no eyewitnesses and the victim was a stranger who knew no one in town, William was set free. But police strongly urged him to leave Mendota. Quantrill continued his career as a teacher, moving to Fort Wayne, Indiana in February 1856. And although the district was impressed with Quantrill's teaching abilities, the wages remained meager. Quantrill journeyed back home to Canal Dover that fall, with no more money in his pockets than when he had left.〔(Brownlee, ''Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy'', Library of Congress 1958, p. 55 )〕 Quantrill spent the winter in his family's dumpy shack in the impoverished town, growing restless. It was around this time that many Ohioans began to migrate to Kansas Territory in search of cheap land and opportunity. This included Henry Torrey and Harmon Beeson, two local men hoping to build a large farm for their families out west. Although they didn't trust the 19-year-old William, Bill's mother's pleadings persuaded them to let her son accompany them to Kansas in an effort to get him to turn his life around. The party of three departed in late February 1857. Torrey and Beeson agreed to pay for Quantrill's land in exchange for a couple of months' worth of work. They settled at Marais des Cygnes, but things did not go as well as planned. After about two months, Quantrill began to slack off when it came to working the land, and he spent most days wandering aimlessly about the wilderness with a rifle. A dispute arose over the claim, and he went to court with Torrey and Beeson. The court awarded the men what was owed to them, but Quantrill only paid half of what the court had mandated. His relationship with Beeson was never the same, but he remained friends with Torrey. Shortly afterwards, Quantrill accompanied a large group of hometown friends in their quest to start a settlement on Tuscarora Lake. But soon neighbors began to notice Bill stealing goods out of other people's cabins, so they banished him from the community in January 1858. He signed on as a teamster with the U.S. Army expedition heading to Salt Lake City, Utah in the spring. Little is known of Quantrill's journey out west, except that he excelled at the game of poker. He racked up piles of winnings by playing the game against his comrades at Fort Bridger but flushed it all on one hand the next day, leaving him dead broke. Quantrill then joined a group of Missouri ruffians and became somewhat of a drifter. The group helped protect Missouri farmers from the Jayhawkers for pay and slept wherever they could find lodging. Quantrill traveled back to Utah and then to Colorado, but returned in less than a year to Lawrence, Kansas, in 1859. It was at this time that his political views started to take shape, and his attitude towards the slavery issue began to form.〔(E. Leslie, ''The Devil Knows How to Ride'', Random House, 1996 )〕 Before 1860, Quantrill's political view appeared to support the anti-slavery side. He wrote to his good friend W.W. Scott in January 1858 that the Lecompton Constitution was a "swindle" and that James H. Lane, a Northern sympathizer, was "as good a man as we have here." He also called the Democrats "the worst men we have for they are all rascals, for no one can be a democrat here without being one."〔(Connelley, ''Quantrill and the Border Wars'', Pageant Book Co, 1956, pp. 72–74 )〕 One year later, in 1859, he was back in Lawrence, Kansas where he taught school until it closed in 1860. He then took up with brigands and turned to cattle rustling and anything else that could earn him a dollar. He also learned the profitability of capturing runaway slaves and devised treacherous plans to use free black men as bait for runaway slaves, whom he captured and returned to their masters in exchange for reward money. His new lifestyle may have been the reason for his change of political views. In February 1860, Quantrill wrote a letter to his mother expressing his views on the anti-slavery supporters. He told her the pro-slavery movement was right and that he now detested Jim Lane. He said that the hanging of John Brown had been too good for him and that, "the devil has got unlimited sway over this territory, and will hold it until we have a better set of man and society generally."〔(Connelley, ''Quantrill and the Border Wars'', Pageant Book Co, 1956, pp. 94–96. "My Dear Mother", February 8, 1860 )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「William Quantrill」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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