Book Review: A Man By Any Other Name: William Clarke Quantrill and the Search for American Manhood

A Man By Any Other Name: William Clarke Quantrill and the Search for American Manhood. By Joseph M. Beilein Jr. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2023. Softcover, 282 pp. $26.95.

Reviewed by Sheritta Bitikofer

Few characters that make it into Civil War memory are as controversial as William Clarke Quantrill. Infamous for his role as a guerilla chieftain, history buffs either idolize him as a Confederate war hero or despise him as a bloodthirsty murderer. Joseph M. Beilein, Jr. is no stranger to the topic of guerilla warfare, having authored or edited multiple books on the subject, and it is hardly surprising that his latest book, A Man By Any Other Name: William Clarke Quantrill and the Search for American Manhood, takes a rather balanced approach to biographing the partisan raider of Lawrence, Kansas fame.

An engaging storyteller in his own right, Beilein takes the reader on a journey through Quantrill’s life from childhood to death and beyond, not so much by detailing the exact events, but by framing the guerilla’s life within the context of antebellum and wartime society. He carefully explains Quantrill’s actions and why they are significant to understanding the pressures and expectations of being a male—specifically, a Southern male—in America in the nineteenth century. Although born and raised in Free States, Quantrill eventually evolved into a Southerner as he came into adulthood and migrated to Kansas.

Structured chronologically, each section of the book focuses on what role Quantrill played within the community throughout his life. In each part, Beilein maps out Quantrill’s journey from schoolteacher to frontiersman, his transition from an apathetic Free-Soiler to pro-slavery partisan ranger, and the occasional duplicity of being both a vicious bushwhacker and a man of integrity who demonstrated loyalty to friends and allies. Along the way, Beilein explains the dynamics of Quantrill’s relationships with other men, women, and Blacks within his world, and how those dynamics are intertwined with how Quantrill—or any other nineteenth-century man—perceived himself as a Southern man and all the obligations that came with his gender.

While Beilein’s biographical style comes across as “Quantrill-apologetic” at times, he isn’t afraid to point out the historiographical flaws in the works of previous scholars, using primary source documentation to back up his critique. He does not agree with much of William E. Connelley’s early study of Quantrill’s life—painting his subject as a sociopathic killer and later trying to sell Quantrill’s bodily remains as trophies—, neither does he completely adhere to the interpretations of biographers, like John N. Edwards and Paul E. Petersen, that aimed to glorify Quantrill’s raids as a great service to the Confederacy.

This “skirmish” between the two rival camps of interpretation and memory, as Beilein calls it, “has gone like this for the last 150 years, and it will presumably continue for the foreseeable future.”(8-9) In some ways, Beilein justifies Quantrill and his band of guerillas through the lens of Southern manhood, that “southerners were prepared to use aggression to wrangle and subdue their world and the people in it,” and that the wartime society insisted that “real men killed.”(159, 136) Concepts of vengeance in response to wrongs done to him have roots in nineteenth-century literature and storytelling, providing subliminal programming that seeking revenge was expected and to do otherwise was a show of cowardice or unmanliness. This is illustrated in many of the decisions that Quantrill had to make as a guerilla chieftain. (131)

Despite this, Quantrill retained certain genteel characteristics that seem out of place with the imagined picture of a rough, gun-wielding bushwhacker. The man wrote poetry, for goodness’ sake! (201-202) Beilein, however, does not let Quantrill off the hook so easily, and reminds readers of his ruthlessness and willingness to draw a gun at the drop of a hat when the situation suited him. (144-145) Through it all, Beilein carefully and methodically analyzes the primary source accounts about Quantrill, both good and bad, rating the legitimacy of the source and viewing it with a healthy dose of skepticism which is made transparent to the reader.

Beilein did not exaggerate when he commented that “Stalking this old bushwhacker” through the archives and collections “takes a toll on one’s spirits and sanity” as he tried to track down the true William Quantrill. In the end, Beilein makes it evident that the trajectory of Quantrill’s life could not have predicted that he would become a man of violence, yet the course of manhood seemed to mold him into that role. In this way, the title feels poignant. It seemed that any man of the era could have become a Quantrill if the conditions were right.

For the reader who is new to Quantrill or knows little about his life Beilein’s biography is a good accompaniment as a tool to understanding the man behind the guerilla mask, as well as the ideologies of Southern partisans within the context of nineteenth-century American manhood. A Man By Any Other Name may not be the best introduction to Quantrill’s life if one desires the play-by-play of everything he did during the war. Beilein sticks to his overall theme of explaining Quantrill’s character and psychology but does a thorough job of capturing the nuances of the world and circumstances around Quantrill at each phase of his life. Those who are fascinated by the “whys” of historical figures will appreciate this scholarly work on Quantrill.