Dark Command (1940)

William Cantrell: I know what I'm doing, Ma. I'll be running Kansas yet. I'm going clear up to the top. But I'm not going for the climb or the view.

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[Cantrell has been defeated by Bob Seton in the election for marshal]
William Cantrell: Learning, studying, working like a dog... and what did it get me? The first chance I have to be somebody, I'm beaten out of it by an ignorant cowhand who can't even write his own name! Well, I can write mine... and I'm going to write it across the territory in letters of fire and blood if I have to! I'm going to be somebody in this country! Somebody big!

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Fletcher 'Fletch' McCloud: Well, I guess Lawrence is burned to the ground.
Bob 'Shortcut' Seton: Yeah. Well, we got a saying down in Texas: that it takes a good fire to burn down the weeds... to let the flowers grow.

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The character of Will Cantrell is loosely based on the real life Confederate guerrilla leader William Quantrill. Like Cantrell, Quantrill was born in Ohio, taught school in Lawrence, Kansas, became a guerrilla fighter on the Confederate side and burnt Lawrence to the ground. However, the Confederacy eventually distanced itself from, and eventually disowned, him because of his band's propensity for executing prisoners, massacring civilians, looting and raping. The real Quantrill was killed in an ambush, beheaded by a Union cavalryman's saber, in Kentucky at the ripe old age of 27 instead of at the hands of Bob Seton.
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