Leslie's version of the overthrow of Quantrill by his own subordinates differs significantly from Castel's. (Compare Leslie's description of George Todd, page 97, with Castel's, pages 66-67.) Still, some of Leslie's paragraphs are largely paraphrases of Castel. Many events are described in much greater detail. Thus, his account is about twice as long as Castel's. Leslie's account of Quantrill's life generally follows Castel's, but Leslie spent five years doing additional research, including much time reading Missouri's Civil War- era newspapers and county histories. Owing to the author's judiciousness and the depth of his research, this book is, and for decades will likely remain, the definitive biography of Quantrill. Leslie tells the story so that readers experience it not as a melodrama of good and evil but rather as a clash of two groups, each of which contained victims, defenders-both idealistic and outraged-robbers, murderers, and villains gleeful about the pain and death they inflicted on their enemies. Let no one be misled by the dramatic title to suppose that this is a facile or unsophisticated account. Leslie continues Castel's effort to understand rather than to condemn Qunatrill and his men while not minimizing their horrible deeds. His book was reprinted a few years ago and remains in print.Įdward E. Connelly was predisposed to put Quantrill and his followers in the worst possible light, but Castel strove to be fair and to understand the viewpoints of both sides. Connelly in 1910 and another by Albert Castel in 1962. Quantrill, the best known of the guerrilla chieftains, has been the subject of two earlier scholarly biographies in this century-one by William E. Likewise, nearly a decade ago, Michael Fellman published Inside War, an excellent book-length analysis of the topic and delineation of the participants' outlooks. Richard Brownlee's fine narrative of Missouri guerrilla activities, Grey Ghosts of the Confederacy, which has been in print for almost forty years, is one of the few exceptions. The highly sensational, indeed, repellant, character of the violence perpetrated both by nominally-Confederate guerrillas and by the nominally-Federal militia that opposed them seems to hold much more attraction for amateurs and for local historians than for trained scholars. Relatively few academic writers have studied Missouri's Civil War guerrilla warfare. Frizzell (Bailey Library, Hendrix College, Missouri Life Trip) The Devil Knows How To Ride: The True Story of William Clarke Quantrill and His Confederate Raiders.
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