ABSTRACT
On Thursday, August 21, 1913, crowds gathered in Lawrence to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the massacre. Several hundred survivors were present; many had been children in 1863, but William Quantrill’s attack was fresh in their minds. After paying their respects at a monument to the victims, attendees filled the Bowersock Opera House to hear speeches about Lawrence’s bloodstained history. One speaker was Topeka businessman Charles Sumner Gleed. Originally from Vermont, Gleed was born in 1856, the same year that Lawrence was first attacked and Gleed’s namesake was caned by Preston Brooks. He began with some conciliatory comments. He admitted, for instance, that the Confederate government was not responsible for the massacre. But he could never, never forgive William Quantrill. Gleed called him a “thin, cold, bloodless man with great personal vanity” who was “cruel and relent - less in all his methods.” Quantrill was not an honorable soldier, but a “dryland pirate with plunder his object and murder his pastime.” Gleed went on to list Quantrill’s terrible deeds, including the murder of Edward Fitch.1
