Beschreibung:

two quarto, ALsS, both in pencil, written from Ellis to W.W. Scott, an early Quantrill biographer. Both addressed from Elk City, Montgomery County, Kansas, January 5,(10 pages) and January 18, 1879 (6 pages). Ellis (1815-1885), Kansas legislator, School Superintendent, Union soldier and resident of Miami County, gained his fame through his association with the guerrilla leader William Clarke Quantrill. While serving as county commissioner and superintendent of public institutions in 1860, Ellis awarded a teaching certificate to Quantrill. Later, at the outbreak of the Civil War, he joined the Union army and served as Quartermaster for Joseph Lane's brigade. In his lengthy first letter, Ellis recounts to Scott his earliest acquaintance with Quantrell of 1858-1859, when he was superintendent and the future guerilla leader was teaching school near Stanton, Kansas. "I visited his school & put up at his boarding house - I found him an interesting well educated man - we slept together & talked until after 2 P.M. [sic]. The next thing I heard of him he had turned abolitionist and was acting as a conductor on the underground railroad." Ellis notes, however, that Quantrill "was never known to assist any negro unless the negro first assisted him, to steal a horse or mule." Ellis spends several pages discussing Quantrill's involvement with the murder of several Missouri slaves, and then recounts that event that left Ellis with his well-known moniker. On March 7, 1862, enroute from Fort Scott to Fort Leavenworth, Ellis stopped to spend the night at a home near Aubrey, Kansas. Quantrill and his bushwackers attacked the house at daybreak. But at daylight I was awake(ned) by the cry - "The cutthroats are coming" - the house was surrounded & they were yelling & screaming & swearing like devils. Five men who were on the first floor of the house ran out, and were soon overtaken & butchered. Ellis, still upstairs relates: I was carelessly looking out the window and Quantrill saw me...and made a good shot (or as he afterwards expressed it, "a dam'd good shot"). I was struck in the center of the forehead where the brains of most men are supposed to be...". Moving through the house, Quantrill and two of his men came upstairs where they found Ellis lying on a mattress. They were trembling like criminals & swearing like devils...they all pointed their revolvers at my head, with their fingers on the trigger. At least one balled out "If you have any money god damn you "give it to me-or I'll blow you to hell." Ellis complied, turning over cash and checks. He was next taken downstairs, where Quantrill recognized his old employer and "...got a cloth & some water, & washed my face & said he did it himself & was dam'd sorry for it - as I was one of the Kansas men he did not want to hurt." Quantrill then made certain that Ellis' team and wagon contents were not disturbed. Ellis made no attempt to retrieve his stolen cash and checks, but noted "...had I thought of my money it is possible that he might have given it back to me, but I was too far gone..." Remarkably, Ellis recovered from his near-fatal wound, in spite of the fact that several newspapers reported that he had died, and published extensive, and apparently effusive, obituaries. Looking back in 1879, he noted that he did not consider himself a hero and that ...perhaps I am the only man alive to day who ever read his obituary notice & found out exactly what the world thought of him after [he] was dead... In closing, Ellis notes ...if any of my friends in Ohio are anxious to see my likeness & the bullet & portions of my skull bones all they have to do, is to call at the US Army Medicinal Museum in Washington D.C. Twenty-seven bone fragments as well as the pistol ball were supposedly removed from Ellis' wound, that was so grave that his brain was visible, pulsing to the beat of his heart. The second letter, also written to Scott provides primarily second-hand accounts of Quantrill?s death. Ellis does,