“There were plenty of atrocities on both sides. All that was deplorable.”
On this I agree with you.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/hnS/Kansas/fisher3.html
Entering the town from the Southeast they marched in regular order until the center of the residence portion had been reached. Here they broke into a main body and squads of four, six and eight, the larger body galloping furiously down Massaschusetts street to the business section, the smaller squads riding as fast as their horses could carry them to the various parts of the town assigned them for individual action. Some flew to the extreme Western limit, the residence of General Lane and other prominent citizens. Others gallopecl swiftly to the Southwest, skirting Mount Oread and the Southern edge of town. The river front needed but little guarding, yet here, too, pickets were quickly stationed. As the affrighted people flew for safety, no matter what the direction, they were confronted by squads of guerrillas so stationed as to cut off escape. A cordon of death had been thrown around us while we slept.
Fairly within the city the work of death and destruction was begun. With demoniac yells the scoundrels flew hither and yon, wherever a man was to be seen, shooting him down like a dog. Men were called from their beds and murdered before the eyes of wives and children on their doorsteps. Tears, entreaties, prayers availed nothing. The fiends of hell were among us and under the demands of their revengeful black leader they satiated their thirst for blood with fiendish delight.
The lurid glare of burning houses joined with the oncoming sun to shed more light upon the awful scene. The torch was applied to every house that had been marked on the traitoress’ map. Everything that could not be carried away as booty was doomed to destruction. Every business house on Massachusetts street save one was burned to the ground. No home that was picked out as the home of a soldier’s family or that of a Union man was left if it could be burned.
Not only was the torch applied for the destruction of stores and homes, but in many instances the bullet-pierced bodies of their owners were consigned to the flames, in individual instances before life was extinct. Such scenes of barbarity have never been witnessed, even in the days of war, in recent centuries, except among the most degraded tribes of earth.
Particularly atrocious were the murders of Senator Thorp, Dr. Griswold and Editor Trask. Together with Mr. Baker they, with their families, were boarding in the Northern part of the town. The guerrillas called them to the doorway, and assuring them and their wives that they were only to be taken down town to a rendezvous at which the citizens had been gathered, that the danger to the raiders might be lessened as they did their work of robbery and arson, they were marched to the front side-walk and as their wives bade them adieu were commanded to front face, and before the eyes of the women and children on the porch but thirty feet away they were shot in their tracks. The entreaties of wives and mothers and children went for naught. Shot after shot was fired into their prostrate forms until life was extinguished in all but Mr. Paker. Though pierced by seventeen bullets his splendid constitution saved him and he lives to-day.
Equally atrocious was the murder of Judge Carpenter. In delicate health he had not joined the army of the frontier, but he sympathized earnestly with the Union cause and served us nobly in many ways. His judicial utterances were always on the side of the right, and thus he became an object of hatred to the ruffian element. Called from his home in early morn he saw the danger and attempted to escape by running around his house, hoping to get out by a side gate and away to some place of safety. They chased him, and when his wife saw he was certain to be caught she flew to his side and threw her arms around him, enfolding him in her skirts. The murderous guerrillas tried to wrest him away from her, failing in which they forcibly held her to one side and shot him down in her arms. She fell with him and again they tore her partially from him and finished their crime by repeatedly turning their revolvers upon him while still she clung to him and begged for mercy and his life.
Most terrible was the fate of a Mr. D. D. Palmer, an inoffensive man who happened to be in his gunshop when the murderous band came upon him. Having become satiated with ordinary blood-shed they shot him and an assistant, then fired the shop, tied the hands of the men and threw them into the burning building which, being of wood, burned fast and furiously. The wounded men arose and struggled to the door to be kicked back into the flames! When the fire had at last burned the cords from their wrists they again fought their way to the door and begged for mercy. Demoniac yells of revengeful delight came from their tormentors for an answer, and death, slow but awfully sure, was their release!
One hundred and fifty-four of the best business houses and dwellings of Lawrence were burned to the ground. The value of the property destroyed was estimated at one and one-half million dollars. Two-thirds of the people were homeless. Many of them had not a suit of clothing left and but few had a dollar in money. That night nearly an hundred widows and two hundred fatherless children sat wailing in the streets. One hundred and eighty-five men had been killed. Shorn of her pride and beauty and sons the city wept in sack-cloth and sat in ashes— a Phoenix who should one day rise again. Desolation like a pall hung over every home. There was nought doing but burial. The hearse was the only trafficker.
Many a good name and fair is on the list of the lamented dead who were left bleeding on the streets of Lawrence on that terrible day of the raid. A partial list of them is appended. These men and the others slain deserve to have their names inscribed upon the pages of the history of Kansas and the Union. They fell martyrs to a noble cause. Upon the sacred soil of Lawrence, whose individual history is more intimately interwoven with the history of the struggle for the emancipation of the Negro race than that of any other city in the Union, there should be erected a monument to these men, commemorative of the destruction of their town, the burning of their homes, and their murder, which shall tell the history of this awful crime to generations to come. Lawrence stands as the Thermopylae of Kansas and freedom.