The attack was the product of careful planning. Quantrill had gained the confidence of many of the leaders of independent
Bushwhacker groups and chose the day and time of the attack well in advance. Different Missouri rider groups approached Lawrence from the east in several independent columns. They converged with well-timed precision in the final miles before Lawrence during the pre-dawn hours of the chosen day. Many of the men had been riding for over 24 hours to make the rendezvous and had lashed themselves to their saddles to keep riding if they fell asleep. Almost all were armed with multiple six-shot revolvers. ''. The charred remains of the
Eldridge House are in the foreground. Henry Thompson, a black servant from Hesper, attempted to run on foot to Lawrence to warn the town of hundreds of raiders making their way toward Lawrence. Thompson made it as far as
Eudora, Kansas before stopping from exhaustion. An unidentified man riding a
chaise nearby rode by to ask Thompson if he needed help. Thompson replied that he had run from Hesper and needed to warn Lawrence. While Thompson and the man on the chaise were able to gather some Eudorans to ride into Lawrence to warn the city to the west, none of them made it in time. Around 450 guerrillas arrived on the outskirts of Lawrence shortly after 5 a.m. A small squad was dispatched to the summit of
Mount Oread to serve as lookouts, and the remainder rode into town. One of the first deaths was the pastor and lieutenant of the 2nd Kansas Colored Regiment, Samuel S. Snyder, who was outside milking his cows when he was shot by the passing raiders, who were making their way into town. Snyder's death was witnessed by his longtime friend Reverend Hugh Fisher. Their initial focus was the
Eldridge House, a large brick hotel in the heart of Lawrence. After gaining control of the building (which then served as Quantrill's headquarters during the raid), Quantrill's force broke into smaller groups that fanned out throughout the town. Over four hours, the raiders pillaged and burned a quarter of the buildings in Lawrence, including all but two businesses. They looted most of the banks and stores in town and killed over 150 people, all of them men and boys. According to an 1897 account, among the dead, were 18 of 23 unmustered army recruits. By 9 a.m., the raiders were on their way out of town, evading the few units that came in pursuit, and eventually splitting up to avoid Union pursuit of a unified column into Missouri. Some families attempted to make the run towards
Mount Oread in a last-ditch flight for safety. The raid was less of a battle and more of a mass execution. Two weeks before the attack, a Lawrence newspaper had boasted, "Lawrence has ready for any emergency over five hundred fighting men...every one of who would like to see [Quantrill's raiders]". However, a squad of soldiers temporarily stationed in Lawrence had returned to
Fort Leavenworth, and due to the surprise, swiftness, and fury of the initial assault, the local militia was unable to assemble and mount a defense. Most of those Quantrill and his raiders killed were not carrying any weapon. Before the Lawrence Massacre, a previous attack on Lawrence, the
Sacking of Lawrence, saw the pro-slavery attackers, led by Samuel J. Jones, a pro-slavery Missourian who served as Sheriff of
Douglas County, demanding that the citizens of Lawrence give up their firearms to the raiders. Many citizens initially refused, but by the end of the sacking itself, many in Lawrence were left without a weapon of any sort, which, along with the swiftness of the Lawrence Massacre later on, saw Lawrence left defenseless against the attack. Because revenge was a principal motive for the attack, Quantrill's raiders entered Lawrence with lists of men to be killed and buildings to be burned. Senator
James H. Lane was at the top of the list. Lane was a military leader and chief political proponent of the jayhawking raids that had cut a swath of death, plundering, and arson through western Missouri (including the destruction of Osceola) in the early months of the Civil War. Lane escaped death by racing through a cornfield in his nightshirt. John Speer, who Lane had put into the newspaper business, was one of Lane's chief political backers and was also on the list. Speer likewise escaped execution, but two of his sons were killed in the raid. (One of Speer's sons may have been the same John L. Speer that appeared on a list of Red Legs previously issued by the Union military.) Speer's youngest son, 15-year-old Billy, may have been included on the death lists, but Quantrill's men released him after he gave them a false name. (Billy Speer later shot one of the raiders during their exit from Lawrence, causing one of the few casualties among Quantrill's command while in Lawrence.)
Charles L. Robinson, first governor of Kansas and a prominent abolitionist, may also have been on the list, although he was not killed. This according to
Richard Cordley, a minister in Lawrence and a survivor of the attack: Ex-Governor Charles Robinson was an object of special search among them. He was one of the men they particularly wanted. During the whole time they were in town he was in his large stone barn on the hillside. He had just gone to the barn to get his team to drive out into the country, when he saw them come in and saw them make their first charge. He concluded to remain where he was. The barn overlooked the whole town, and he saw the affair from beginning to end. Gangs of raiders came by several times and looked at the barn and went round it, but it looked so much like a fort, that they kept out of range. The men and boys riding with "Bloody Bill" Anderson also accounted for a disproportionate number of the Lawrence dead. The raid devolved into extreme brutality; according to witnesses, the raiders murdered a group of men and their sons who had surrendered under assurances of safety, murdered a father who was in a field with his son, shot a defenseless man who was lying sick in bed, killed an injured man who was being held by his pleading wife, and bound a pair of men and forced them into a burning building where they slowly burned to death. Another dramatic story was told in a letter written on September 7, 1863, by H.M. Simpson, whose entire family narrowly escaped death by hiding in a nearby cornfield as the massacre raged all around them: My father was very slow to get into the cornfield. He was so indignant at the ruffians that he was unwilling to retreat before them. My little children were in the field three hours. They seemed to know that if they cried the noise would betray their parents whereabouts, and so they kept as still as mice. The baby was very hungry & I gave her an ear of raw green corn which she ate ravenously. Many have characterized Quantrill's decision to kill young boys alongside adult men as a particularly reprehensible aspect of the raid. Bobbie Martin is generally cited as being the youngest victim; some histories of the raid state he could have been as young as ten to twelve years old, while others state he was fourteen. Most accounts state he was wearing a Union soldier uniform or clothing made from his father's uniform; some state he was carrying a musket and cartridges. (For perspective on the age of participants in the conflict, it has been estimated that about 800,000 Union soldiers were seventeen years of age or younger, with about 100,000 of those being fifteen or younger.) Most of Quantrill's guerrilla fighters were teenagers. One of the youngest was Riley Crawford, who was 13 when taken by his mother to Quantrill after her husband was shot and her home burned by Union soldiers. ==Aftermath==