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However, not even the genteel Southern high command could argue with success and effectiveness, and in August of 1862, after Quantrill’s men had engineered a truly successful raid on Independence, Missouri, Quantrill’s Raiders were retroactively recognized as part of the Confederate military, and their eponymous leader was given the rank of captain in the Confederate Partisan Ranger Service.

By this time Quantrill’s band had swelled to approximately 450 strong, including such luminary marauders as Bloody Bill Anderson and young Raiders in training such as Coleman Younger, and the James brothers, Frank and Jesse, who carefully studied their captain in an effort to master their craft, while also exulting in the excitement and ill-gotten gains that went hand in hand with the guerrilla lifestyle.

Success led to further savagery as the Raiders continued to push the envelope in terms of acceptable military tactics.

Their authorization/endorsement by the Confederate powers wound up being relatively short-lived.

On August 21, 1863, Quantrill and his men staged a raid on the pro-abolitionist town of Lawrence, Kansas. In less than three hours they slaughtered in cold blood close to two hundred men and boys, the captain having ordered them to kill every male capable of firing a gun. They pillaged the town and burned to the ground anything they left behind.

Once again they proved to be an embarrassment to the powers that be, which sent orders for them to desist in their lawless and savage behavior — but the order fell on deaf ears. Quantrill and his men had grown accustomed to disregarding the pleasantries of society like “law” and “civilized behavior,” and for as long as they considered their work to be effective, they vowed to continue their actions for the overall good of the Confederacy, as well as their own personal amusement and enrichment.

And so they did, until the force gradually began to disband in late 1864, whether out of a sense of the inevitable defeat of the South or from a mixture of boredom and homesickness. Some continued to function as guerrillas in smaller bands until the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, while others attempted to continue to wage the war well after, refusing to accept that the Confederacy was now a lost cause.

Still others journeyed home to their farms and readied themselves for their postwar careers, utilizing the education and enlightenment that their service to the cause had afforded them.

Coleman Younger and Frank and Jesse James fell into this category, and no sooner was the surrender signed than the three enlisted the help of several relatives to form their own gang and set about the civilian career of robbing the U.S. mail and banks.

From an ethical standpoint, these students of Quantrill had rationalized that even though the South had been defeated, there was no reason not to continue their guerrilla resistance against Union banks and commercial enterprises (such as the postal service wagons and the railroads). Indeed, their actions were their patriotic duty, not to mention a neat and tidy way of providing a comfortable existence for themselves and their loved ones.

Other Confederate veterans initially rationalized their behavior as just deserts rendered unto the Damn Yankees, and indeed the James and Younger gang was soon lionized as being more akin to Robin Hood than bank robbers (though there is no evidence that they ever distributed their purloined booty to charitable causes) by the sympathetic media, who were desperately searching for folk heroes to alleviate the pervasive oppression of the lost cause. But eventually this support waned to just their family and friends.

The problem was simple.

Outlaws and illegal behavior were just not acceptable for everyday society, and allowances that were made for wartime behavior out of feelings of desperation and vengeance really didn’t have a place in the peacetime Great Plains — not to mention that the robbing of banks was not as condonable an action when your own