Western United States - History - General & Miscellaneous, U.S. Civil War - Confederate Soldiers - Military Biography, Guerrillas - Biography, United States Civil War - Military Operations - General & Miscellaneous, U.S. Armed Forces - General & Miscellan

The Devil Knows How To Ride

Name: The Devil Knows How To Ride
Author: Edward E. Leslie
ISBN: 9780306808654

by Edward E. Leslie

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Overview

Brilliantly weaving together eyewitness accounts, letters, memories, newspaper articles, and military reports into a riveting narrative, this definitive biography reveals the personality of William Clarke Quantrill (18371865) and the events that transformed a quiet Ohio schoolteacher from a staunchly Unionist family into a virulent pro-slavery Confederate soldier and the most feared and despised guerrilla chieftain of the Civil War. This groundbreaking work includes the most accurate account ever written of the 1863 Lawrence, Kansas massacre (the greatest atrocity of the Civil War), when Quantrill and 450 raiders torched the Unionist town and executed roughly 200 unarmed, unresisting men and teenage boys. It also details the postwar outlaw careers of those who rode with him—Frank and Jesse James, and Cole Younger. No other history so fully penetrates the myth of a cardboard-cutout psychopath to expose Quantrill in all his brutality and human complexity.

Synopsis

"Brilliantly weaving together eyewitness accounts, letters, memories, newspaper articles, and military reports into a riveting narrative, this definitive biography reveals the personality of William Cl"

New Yorker

[Leslie] sifts through the legends about one of the most notorious of the guerilla fighters who turned western Missouri and eastern Kansas in the 1860s into something like Bosnia in the 1990s.

About the Author, Edward E. Leslie

Edward E. Leslie is a professional writer and author of the internationally acclaimed Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls. He lives in Ohio.

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Editorials

New Yorker

[Leslie] sifts through the legends about one of the most notorious of the guerilla fighters who turned western Missouri and eastern Kansas in the 1860s into something like Bosnia in the 1990s.

Booknews

Reveals the events which transformed a quiet schoolteacher from a Union family into a virulent pro-slavery Confederate soldier and a guerilla chieftain of the Civil War. Details the 1863 Lawrence Massacre, when Quantrill and 450 raiders executed 200 unarmed men, and describes the postwar outlaw careers of those who rode with Quantrill. This is an unabridged republication of the edition first published in New York by Random House, Inc., in 1996. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.