Event Summary:
Date: August 21, 1863
Location: Lawrence, Douglas County, Kansas
Adversaries: William Clarke Quantrill's Raiders vs. the civilian population of Lawrence
Casualties: Between 160-190 men and teenaged boys killed; one raider, Larkin Skaggs, killed
Result: Destruction of most of the town; Order No. 11 issued to quell the bushwhacker violence
William Quantrill's raid on the Free-State town of Lawrence, Kansas (also known as the Lawrence Massacre) was a defining moment in the border conflict. At dawn on August 21, 1863, Quantrill and his guerrillas rode into Lawrence, where they burned much of the town and killed between 160 and 190 men and boys. This raid was the culmination of an ongoing conflict between the Free-State forces who controlled Lawrence and the proslavery partisans who lived in nearby Missouri. Although Kansas entered the Union as a free state in 1861, ending the period called “Bleeding Kansas,” the animosities of the territorial period lived on with the outbreak of civil war that same year.
