Quantrill's Raiders in Texas

De: Evauilt Boswell

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

In the fall of 1863, William Clarke Quantrill, the Missouri bushwhacker, took about three hundred of his followers across Indian Territory to Sherman, Texas. In the Lone Star State, the bushwhackers made camp at Mineral Creek. Henry McCulloch, the Confederate commander of the District of Northeast Texas, tried to find a use for the pseudo-rebels, but they failed in rounding up deserters, chasing Indians, and destroying moonshiners. They did manage to ravage the city of Sherman, getting drunk and shooting the tassels off the hat of Grayson County's leading lady, Sophia Butts. They also robbed and killed citizens, including Sophia's husband. Then they began to fight among themselves until Quantrill's command splintered. Texas seemed little changed in the guerrillas' wake, but the atrocities they committed after returning north show that their time near Sherman changed them decisively.

Not recommended

The Virtual Voice was pretty bad and didn't even differentiate between prose and captions. Also, it included all the misplaced inflections and mispronunciation that you would expect from a text to voice narrator. I'm not a listener that is sensitive to narrators normally, but this one is pretty bad.

The book itself isn't much better than the narration. I went back and looked at the book's publication date and I was surprised that it was 2003 and not from the 1960''s. The author makes a considerable effort to 'both sides' the War and a lot of the book reads like Quantrill apologia. That continues into a misplaced 'Carpetbaggers' and 'Scallywags' Dunning school description of the Reconstruction period. This book is pretty squarely in the Lost Cause tradition. To the author's credit, they didn't sensationalize the Jesse James association but I expected a much better effort.