It started in the middle of the summer of 1863. Mostly because of logistics, Quantrill farmed out his band in bunches under capable lieutenants, which was probably practical. However, Quantrill found romance and neglected his command and lost himself with the young woman for a few weeks. Charles Fletcher Taylor covered for him and even provided a horse for the young lady to use to travel back and forth to a rendezvous she arranged with Quantrill. Reading Taylor's memoirs, I got the impression that Taylor wasn't really too thrilled about this new role for his guerrilla chief and perhaps even his own part in it. Quantrill came back from whatever to coordinate and lead the famous Lawrence raid, but then made the various sub-groups hide out and refused to allow them to fight back against the various Union units dragnetting their operating area from just after the return from Lawrence and throughout all of September. Some of the lieutenants were probably not too happy about having to take casualties without even putting up some kind of fight, although most of the killed were in Colonel Holt's recruiting command that had accompanied Quantrill's large group to Lawrence and back. The accusation seemed to be that Quantrill just wasn't there for the men anymore--that he seemed preoccupied with his lady fair.

Dissatisfaction came to a head in the Sherman, TX area that folowing winter when Quantrill was forced by the local Confederate command to enforce discipline against some of his own men. This eventually led to gunplay mostly between Bill Anderson's men and the remaining Quantrill faithful. It got so bad that under pressure from both the Rebel command and Anderson that Quantrill pulled his command out of Texas back to Missouri too early before the grass was up and available for the horses. The trip back to Missouri through constant rain, high rivers, little food and forage, and etc. was just one solid trip of misery. By the time they made their operating area most of their horses had died or were debilitated and George Todd had enough of his old commander. In late May or early June 1864 it came to a confrontation and Todd and newly-returned Bill Anderson teamed against Quantrill and deposed him, evidently at the point of a gun. Some of the old faithful offered to be Quantrill's bodyguards, a few others like Warren Welch provided security for Quantrill and his bodyguard all the way to a camp they made in southwest Howard County near Boonsboro in a strongly-southern sanctuary area. There Quantrill and a small bodyguard and Quantrill's lady love remained in exile until September when Quantrill and his bodyguard came out of exile temporarily and joined the rest for the disastrous attack on Fayette.

I obtained this from a number of Quantrill guerrilla memoirs and William Connelley's book. John Edwards gave no hint of this in his 1877 book, because it did nothing to help the Lost Cause.

Will that do?

Bruce Nichols