William Cantrell is based on William Quantrill. Like Cantrell, Quantrill was born in Ohio, taught school, became a guerrilla fighter, and burned Lawrence, Kansas to the ground. However, the Confederacy eventually revoked Quantrill's commission and disowned him because of the atrocities committed by him and his band (which included Frank and Jesse James) against soldiers and civilians. The real Quantrill died after an ambush by a Union cavalry unit at Wakefield Farm. Kentucky. Unable to escape, he was shot in the back and paralyzed from the chest down. He was taken to a military prison hospital in Louisville where he died on June 6, 1865, at the age of 27.
Marjorie Main plays the mother of Will Cantrell (Walter Pidgeon) but was only seven years his senior.
The third film in which John Wayne and Claire Trevor appeared together; the first was "Stagecoach," followed by "Allegheny Uprising," both in 1939.
The second and last time director Raoul Walsh and John Wayne worked together. Walsh had discovered John Wayne and given him his first leading role 10 years earlier in "The Big Trail."
Observing Cantrell's uniform, Bob Seton tells him, "General Beauregard and the Fifth Army are a long ways from here, but that doohickus on your collar says Fifth Army." In the Confederate Army, collar insignia only indicated an officer's rank, not which general's army he belonged to. Furthermore, Civil War armies were not numbered like U.S. forces in the twentieth century, but instead took their names from states, regions, rivers, etc. (ex. the Army of Tennessee, the Army of the Potomac)