2021-02 Raynors HCA Live
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 2/6/2021
Autograph Letter Signed by Union civilian "Hattie" 4pp. octavo, August 23, 1863, Palmyra, Kansas, and reads in part: "...doubtless you will hear of the sacking and burning of Lawrence ere this reaches you. Of all the horrible deeds that have been perpetrated in any of the free states since this war began this last great barbecue as wholesale slaughter is the worst. Quantrill with a gang of secesh variously estimated from 20 to 4 hundred came into Lawrence at daybreak Friday morning armed to the teeth and horseback shooting nearly every man that they could find after making them give up their money robbing and burning all the stores setting fire to most every house. The Eldridge house a public house both larger and higher than the Merrimac in Lowell was burned and it is not known whether the women and children escaped or not there were over 125 bodies (some only the charred remains) gathered up and buried yesterday and they think that they will find more in the cellars when they can get to them....Women with their children that wanted for nothing a few days ago are now widows & orphans sitting around the streets of (what used to be ) Lawrence. They came from there over this way robbing and burning every house on the road. They came within a mile of here and would have come nearer only they saw the companies of our men marching round another way to get ahead of them. They burned one house barn and lots of wheat a mile from here. People have just got their grain thrashed and had large crops but they burned all that they came to. They shot one old man a preacher four times, two miles from here after burning his house a thousand bushels of wheat and his barn because he told them he had no money. They got all of the money that there was in the Lawrence bank and express office. The Mayor and another man went down in a well for safety and they shot they down there and they would call men to the door and then shoot. They were more savage than the wild Indians and were half of them drunk besides. They came there ragged and dirty and dressed themselves at the clothing stores. They took the city so by surprise that not a gun was fired at them there. They took one of them a mile beyond Lawrence and brought him in and shot him and hitched a horse to his body and dragged it through the streets......Our troops have followed those murderers to the Missiouri line and have them nearly surrounded..." More. Fine condition. The Lawrence massacre, also known as Quantrill's raid, was an attack during the American Civil War (1861-65) by Quantrill's Raiders, a Confederate guerrilla group led by William Quantrill, on the Unionist town of Lawrence, Kansas, killing around 150 men and boys. The attack on the morning of Friday, August 21, 1863 targeted Lawrence due to the town's long support of abolition and its reputation as a center for the Jayhawkers, who were free-state militia and vigilante groups known for attacking plantations in pro-slavery Missouri's western counties.
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