Talk:William Quantrill

NPOV?

This page is clearly not NPOV--the Union attacks are labelled atrocities, while Quantrill's justification for his own massacre stands unchallenged. Please also note that it's taken almost verbatim from PBS's "New Views on the West," except that the few negative lines (such as the 1860 charges against Quantrill for murder and horse theft) have been edited out: http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/i_r/quantrill.htm—Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.226.147.36 (talk • contribs)

• sigh* No one can be completely unbiased, although I do find it lacking in many vital details. This guy was fascinating...too bad no psychologist got a crack at him before he died. And the Union attacks were the same attrocities that the Rebel attacks were, just under a different name and wearing different colours. They killed close to the same amounts of people as well.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.186.139.64 (talk • contribs)

Sigh, indeed. This is utter nonsense. You'll want Wikipedia to be 'even-handed' to Eichmann, next. Quantrill was a psychopathic mass-murderer. The number of people killed on both sides is totally irrelevant, and is a laughable 'argument'.

True, but this article doesn't particularly capture that. The dead in Lawrence, for instance, are killed for speeches, &c. Statements like "he was a dashing, free-spirited hero," even when giving weak qualifications like they are, still are allowed to stand unchallenged. If one inserted, "and to Northerners, he was a savage, bloodthirsty murderer," that would certainly earn a POV dispute. As pointed out above, the Jayhawkers commit an "atrocity" while the Lawrence Massacre is labeled as legitimate punishment, which certainly isn't the case. I know the Civil War gets us all fired up, but we can still try to be un-biased.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.215.16.12 (talk • contribs)

Major Revision

I've reworked this article to address two major concerns that I noted above anonymously above (abundance of NPOV language, copyright infringement by taking many sentences direct from PBS). I tried in the new version to present both Northern and Southern views of Quantrill, but I'm no Civil War historian so if anyone else wants to jump in here, please do...

Since I'm the one who put it up in the first place, I also took down the neutrality warning at the top of the article.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.226.147.36 (talk • contribs)

Good work, thanks for putting in the effort. For the future, why not register and get a username? Then you can sign your talk page contributions! Anyway, thanks again. Cheers, -Willmcw 21:11, May 27, 2005 (UTC)

Removal of POV and unsubstantiated statement

The P0V part of the statement stated that the Jayhawkers had plundered West Missouri for years. This is a drastic simplification of guerilla type conflict on the Missouri-Kansas border of several years duration with attrocities on both sides. The statement emphasized the Kansas-Unionist crimes. The sentence implied that material gain was an important motive for the Lawrence Raid. In point of fact, according to Castel's "William Clarke Quantrill, His Life and Times," the raiders travelled as light as possible. They were crossing open Union territory, heavily patrolled by the US Army. They did steal some light booty in Lawrence, but during the retreat to Missouri, they were followed and attacked, and continually jettisoned even the light gear they were carrying for speed's sake. Will return to the article to revise it using Castel's book, currently in storage.

Tapered (talk) 08:46, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

"I, Quantrill" by Max McCoy

Author Max McCoy (of Indiana Jones fame) wrote a novel titled "I, Quantrill" (ISBN-13: 978-0451223807) that should definitely be added to the Fiction section. Amazon.com permalink: http://amzn.com/0451223802 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.199.75.18 (talk) 18:21, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Errors & Questions

Joel B. Mayes was a confederate sympathizer and a war chief of the Cherokee Nations in Texas.

Not possible; you mean Indian Territory. There were no organized Cherokees in Texas, ever.

During the war, Quantrill met thirteen-year-old Sarah Katherine King at her parents' farm in Blue Springs, Missouri. They married and she lived in camp with Quantrill and his men. At the time of his death, she was seventeen.

But the Find-a-Grave memorial cited as a source says she was born 1845, which would make her sixteen (i.e., not extraordinarily young) when they married and twenty when he was killed.

There appears to be a good deal of rather sloppy work on this page that needs rewriting. --Michael K Smith^Talk 14:26, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Number of Graves

It might be worth adding to the article an explanation of why he has two graves. There are not many people who have more than one grave and if the story of John Sharp in 1907 is true then Quantrill actually has three of them; this would make him notable even if he had never done anything in his life. Cottonshirtτ 05:13, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree. I came to this page looking for an explanation and there isn't one here. 138.162.128.55 (talk) 13:48, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Actually, it looks like he has 3 (or 4, if the Sharp story is true). The info box says he is buried in Louisville, Kentucky, in addition to the pictures of the 2 gravestones in the article. BTW, Higginsville is a Veterans Cemetary. Wschart (talk) 23:37, 3 July 2012 (UTC)

Another PoV Issue

"Quantrill's men believed the collapse was deliberate, and the event fanned them into a fury." Some of them may have believed it but it was the sort of thing they would have _said_ they believed if they were going to murder people and needed an excuse. Since we cannot read their minds, I think "some of them may have believed" is as strong as it could be made. 98.229.157.152 (talk) 19:51, 13 October 2013 (UTC)Will in New Haven98.229.157.152 (talk) 19:51, 13 October 2013 (UTC)

CSA Army?

Most of Quantrill's career was not as a member of the provisional army of the CS, but as a self-appointed terrorist leader of al-Qaida type. I am therefore removing the reference in the infobox. I am also removing , since he did not have a CSA commission. Luke (talk) 20:05, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Quantrill's Action in Lawrence

I deleted that statement about Quantrill personally dragging victims from their homes. Leslie's "The Devil Knows How to Ride", widely considered one of the fairest and most accurate accounts of Quantrill, has nary a word of this. Rather, Leslie points out that were Quantrill personally intervened, it was to save lives (e.g., the men in the Eldridge House who had surrendered). The reference that was provided for the original assertion was a compilation of 60 Civil War treasure stories, which seems far from an authoritative source. If no one can find support for this assertion from a first hand or more widely accepted source, it seems soundest to leave this out.MOhistorybuff (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:26, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

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"mass-murderer"

@Abecedare, you advised that that we discuss the addition of "mass murderer" in the lede on the talk-page. I agree, and have been advocating this for a very long time. However, you also stated that you would revert it to the status-quo; however, this is the edit from which your "status-quo" version originates. The status-quo was not to include mass-murderer.

@166.199.114.19, @166.199.114.30, @166.199.7.5, @75.102.131.210. Harry Sibelius (talk) 08:29, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

@Harry Sibelius: See WP:WRONGVERSION. Discuss the content (and sources), and don't get lost in procedural arguments. Abecedare (talk) 14:22, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

• References have been added. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:28, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

  Thank you, I appreciate it. Harry Sibelius (talk) 03:41, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

One night, while working the late shift, Quantrill killed a man

The article cites Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy, by Richard S. Brownlow. There is no mention of this incident in the source, so I have requested an additional source. JHowardGibson (talk) 06:12, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Unreliable sourcing

I've removed content based around a source, Quantrill of Missouri: the making of a guerrilla warrior: the man, the myth, the soldier by Paul R Petersen, as it is an unreliable source, biased in favor of the subject. Here's my rationale:

To start, this book is published by a non-academic publisher. History books published outside of academia lack the oversight and peer-review that academic-published books enjoy. While this does not automatically make non-academic publisher unreliable, this book was published by Cumberland House, which has been noted for publishing unreliable Neo-Confederate histories, such as Stonewall Jackson: The Black Man’s Friend : https://link-springer-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/chapter/10.1057/9781137008947_9. This means that Petersen's book was published without oversight for scholarly standards or neutrality.

The author himself, Paul R Petersen, is not an academic. According to the book's author blub, Petersen is a member of the William Clarke Quantrill Society. This society's long-winded mission statement - when not engaging in whataboutism by ranting about the Union - proclaims that it will "promote and commemorate Southern heritage" by educating about "the contributions of the Missouri Confederate partisan service." Basically, this society - of which the author is a member - promotes Neo-Confederate revisions of history. Therefore, the author doesn't have a neutral, objective view to his subject.

The book itself also engages in whataboutism, emphasizing Union atrocities and downplaying Quantrill's. Even if the book was not published by a biased publisher and written by a biased author, its content is flawed, displaying a clear goal of glorifying its subject. Therefore, Quantrill of Missouri: the making of a guerrilla warrior: the man, the myth, the soldier is an unreliable source and should not be used in this article. Panian513 14:59, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

As of 2024-10-06, the passage is back in there. My understanding that during the American Civil War, both sides observed strict chivalry when it came to dealing with white women. If Quantrill of Missouri is not reliable, do we have any other reliable sources to back it up? Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy by Richard S. Brownlee, published by Louisiana State University Press, does not mention these atrocities. JHowardGibson (talk) 21:40, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

This source is still there, why? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.196.112.17 (talk) 17:38, 26 September 2024 (UTC)