The Misty Chords of Massacre

The Massacre

I have long thought, and long assumed that I would be in my old favorite hometown of Lawrence, Kansas, on the sesquicentennial anniversary of William C. Quantrill’s raid and massacre of the town.  That anniversary occurs tomorrow, so no, I won’t be there.  

That’s OK.  While the City of Lawrence did some fine commemorating last weekend, the actual anniversary will just be a Wednesday.  I will be following the massacre in real time via Twitter at #QR1863.  It is a great idea to crowdtweet this historical event, with several participants giving updates as historical figures, including many who are doomed to meet the bad end of a bullet within a day. 

I am particularly fascinated in following the drunken tweets of guerilla preacher Larkin Skaggs, who is going to kill and mutilate a bunch of people until he gets too drunk and passes out.  He will wake up to realize that he missed the exit of his murderous comrades, and that the locals are pretty hot over his morning’s activities.  He will later learn, I think, that the practice of drawing and quartering has not been forgotten on the 19^th Century American frontier.*

Monument to Victims of Lawrence Massacre, August 21, 1863.

When I lived in Lawrence the sites of the massacre were regular stops in my routine.  I used to love to run out to Oak Hill Cemetery, and then stretch and catch my breath at the mass grave.  Dawn on a biting winter day is a particularly good time for that.

Grave of James Lane

Then I would amble over the grave of the old Grim Chieftain, James Lane.  You can still smell the crazy on the headstone!

Day to day life in Lawrence goes on pretty much without constant reminders of the massacre.  I guess people in Boston don’t think about the battle of Bunker Hill every day. 

Still, for history geeks like myself, there were always plenty of opportunities to stay aware of that chapter of the city’s history.  For me the Lawrence Massacre probably did cross my mind almost every day that I lived there.  There were the markers and monuments at the sites of the murder of significant townsmen, and there were also the unmarked spots where little known, or perhaps fabled events occurred.  Was there a large number of unidentified African American men killed and piled on 8^th Street?  That’s the story, but their names don’t appear on the list. 

Maybe this is because of the racism of the times, or maybe this is because these people were unknown refugees, and the official list is only concerned with dead residents.  On the other hand, some of the primary accounts stress that the black refugees and military recruits high tailed it out of town as soon as the guerillas rode in.  They knew the character of these men even better than white residents, who could conceive of a raid for booty and burning, but not wholesale slaughter. 

I will get back to Lawrence soon, and when I do I will pay respects.  However, I will spend tomorrow in the virtual world of Twitter, following this atrocity at 140 characters per message.

* I could be wrong.  It’s possible the survivors simply hanged old Skaggs and then chopped him up post-mortem.  They weren’t barbarians!