During the War Between the States on Monday, March 28, 1864, famous Confederate guerrilla leader William Clarke Quantrill (1837-1865) was arrested by Confederate forces at the town of Bonham in Fannin County, Texas.
According to the Texas State Historical Association’s Handbook of Texas Online: On this day in 1864, Civil War guerrilla leader William Quantrill was arrested by Confederate forces in Bonham, Texas. The Ohio native, wanted for murder in Utah by 1860, collected a group of renegades in the Kansas-Missouri area at the beginning of the Civil War. He fought with Confederate forces at the battle of Wilson’s Creek in August 1861 but soon thereafter began irregular independent operations. Quantrill & his band attacked Union camps, patrols, & settlements. While Union authorities declared him an outlaw, Quantrill eventually held the rank of colonel in the Confederate forces. After his infamous sack of Lawrence, Kansas, & the massacre of Union prisoners at Baxter Springs, Quantrill & his men fled to Texas in October of 1863. There he quarreled with his associate, William “Bloody Bill” Anderson, & his band preyed on the citizens of Fannin & Grayson counties. Acts of violence proliferated so much that regular Confederate forces had to be assigned to protect residents from the activities of the irregular Confederate forces, & Gen. Henry McCulloch determined to rid North Texas of Quantrill’s influence. On March 28, 1864, when Quantrill appeared at Bonham as requested, McCulloch had him arrested on the charge of ordering the murder of a Confederate major. Quantrill escaped that day & returned to his camp near Sherman, pursued by more than 300 state & Confederate troops. He & his men crossed the Red River into Indian Territory. Except for a brief return in May, Quantrill’s activities in Texas were at an end. Quantrill was killed by Union forces at the very end of the war.
Sgt. Ronald A. Payne Squad Leader, Company A, 1st Battalion, 5th Mechanized Infantry, 25th Infantry Division, checks a tunnel entrance before entering.
At a demonstration in France in January 1945 US soldiers inspect captured German weapons including this Sturmgewehr 44.
