The American Civil War

 Civil War and Quantrill's raid

 

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, Americans went to war with themselves. Disunion revisits and reconsiders America’s most perilous period — using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded.

Here is a look at what this series has to offer.

The conflicted history of one of the Civil War's worst atrocities.   The Lawrence, Kansas Massacre By MATTHEW C. HULBERT   On April 20, 1866, a letter addressed to James Knox arrived in Chesterfield, S.C. Robert E. Lee had surrendered his once-mighty Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant more than a year prior — but the blood of R. H. Miller, the man who had sent the letter from his home in Lawrence, Kans., was still up. Miller outlined a general list of grievances against the ex-Confederacy and then quickly turned to the real subject of his letter: the Lawrence Massacre of Aug. 21, 1863. Miller’s story began early on the day of the assault when William C. Quantrill — undoubtedly the best-known of Missouri’s guerrilla chieftains — and a “set of robber and murders called bushwhackers of who 3 or 400 run all on horses came to my house about sunrise.” A bushwhacker approached Miller’s daughter, Susie, and asked if any federal soldiers had come to Lawrence during the night. The guerrilla threatened to “blow her brains out if she told him a lie.” The rest of the story can be seen here Originally published in the NY Times