Review - " A Man by Any Other Name: William Clarke Quantrill and the Search for American Manhood " by Joseph Beilein

[A Man by Any Other Name: William Clarke Quantrill and the Search for American Manhood by Joseph M. Beilein, Jr. (University of Georgia Press, 2023). Softcover, 5 maps, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Pages main/total:xvi,210/280. ISBN:978-0-8203-6452-0. $26.95]

A Man by Any Other Name is not a traditional cradle-to-grave biography of a Civil War figure. It might be fair to categorize it as an episodic psycho-biography that seeks to understand its seemingly unknowable subject in deeper ways than those attempted by earlier biographers. Author Joseph Beilein himself labels it an "impressionistic" biography, and I agree with him that, given the established pattern, the volume is a strong fit for the unconventional types of titles often found in Georgia's UnCivil Wars series.

The book does address Quantrill's entire life, from childhood through his death in 1865 at the hands of guerrilla hunters operating in Kentucky during the war's waning moments. However, Beilein's study is less about tracing in detail all of Quantrill's known movements, interactions, and activities [even his eventful and endlessly controversial Civil War career—for that one might still refer to Edward Leslie's The Devil Knows How to Ride (1996)] and more about exploring what made the man tick. In attempting to understand Quantrill's mindset and motivations, including how an antislavery schoolteacher born and raised in Ohio could transform into the war's most infamous pro-Confederate guerrilla fighter, Beilein utilizes an inventive combination of primary source sleuthing, perspectives drawn from gender role studies, and armchair psychology. Where documentary evidence is missing or especially slim, Beilein often raises possibilities through creative conjectural scenarios. Certainly, an informed attempt at getting into the mind of a long-dead historical figure (especially one for whom enlightening primary sources are relatively limited) requires some angled approaches, but Beilein's speculative passages and scenarios can be unexpectedly elaborate in construction. That said, to be fair to the author's source stretching, he does pepper those passages with appropriately placed qualifiers (i.e. maybe, perhaps, likely, probably, etc.).

As the book's title suggests, Beilein finds that Quantrill, as evidenced through his actions, available correspondence, and reactions from others who came into contact with him, was consistently driven to meet the masculine expectations of the period. According to the author, Quantrill was acutely aware of the standards of mid-nineteenth century manliness and attempted, both successfully and unsuccessfully, to meet them. Quantrill was a good student and attempted to find his path in life through a variety of employments, including teacher, long-haul teamster, game hunter, livestock detective, and, briefly, an overseer. In performing those jobs, Quantrill became an acknowledged outdoorsman and skilled handler of firearms. Those sections of the book often contain revealing information not found in other Quantrill publications. The nebulous "confidence man" period of Quantrill's masked life is also discussed, as are enigmatic personal scandals and the different faces Quantrill presented to others to either hide or reveal his intentions. Like other men operating on the frontier, Quantrill thrived on a series of personal transformations, and the book's study of each one of those allows us possible insights into Quantrill's character and political beliefs. However, as Beilein readily admits, that "shiftiness" also leaves us with profound questions about his 'true' identity.

Beilein avoids classifying Quantrill in only black and white terms, rejecting William Connelley's picture of an inhuman fiend and John Newman Edwards's 'knight of the brush' in equal measure. The book traces the evolution of Quantrill's brand of irregular warfare, one in which a sincere initial attempt at adhering to the tenets of civilized warfare (ex. showing mercy to wounded foes and paroling prisoners) devolved into escalating horrors after Union authorities, spearheaded by General Halleck, branded he and his followers as common outlaws.

More broadly, Beilein finds that Quantrill shared a number of traits found in so many other young men who sought to better themselves in the sparsely settled American West, though, unlike Quantrill, most did not use those experiences to become better killers and guerrilla warfare practitioners. Taking Quantrill's frontier-influenced life path as an example, Beilein joins other historians in contextualizing the people and events of Civil War-era Missouri as primarily West-facing.

In the end, I would still recommend Leslie's biography as the go-to Quantrill study for the majority of readers. However, for those with the time and inclination to read more than one book on the subject, Joseph Beilein's A Man by Any Other Name adds to the discussion a new layer of thought-provoking perspectives aligned with current scholarly trends.