Early on the morning of August 21, 1863, Quantrill’s Raiders descended on the still sleeping town of Lawrence. In this carefully orchestrated early morning raid, he and his band, in four terrible hours, turned the town into a bloody and blazing inferno unparallel in its brutality

Quantrill and his bushwhacker mob of raiders began their reign of terror at 5:00 a.m., looting and burning as they went, bent on total destruction of the town, then less than 3,000 residents. By the time it was over, they had killed approximately 180 men and boys, and left Lawrence nothing more than smoldering ruins.

The resilient citizens of Lawrence buried the dead and banded together on the road to recovery. Within days, makeshift stores re-opened and rebuilding began. By the following spring, new stores, two newspapers and telegraph wires were established. The first bridge across the Kansas River at Lawrence was also finished. Only months later, the railroad came through. Lawrence had survived and would adopt the city motto: "From Ashes to Immortality."

In 1864, the University of Kansas was founded beginning with six departments of instruction: science, arts and literature, medicine, theory and practice of elementary instruction, and agriculture. The University of Kansas was the first State institution in the United States to adopt co-education of the sexes, although private institutions further east had been the pioneers in this direction.

Oregon and Santa Fe Trail traffic declined after the Civil War ended in 1865, and railroads rapidly rolled across the Plains. By the 1870s, the wagon trails had become obsolete.

In 1884, the Haskell Indian Nations University opened as the United States Industrial Training School for Native Americans. Becoming known as the nation’s premier intertribal university, enrollment increased from its original 22 students to more than 400 students within one semester's time.

After all its difficulties, Lawrence was bound and determined to survive, along with its burgeoning University of Kansas, which has long become the focus of Lawrence, Kansas.