Consider your man of straw cited, though for the record the above statement resembles the argument in your own recent postings about rape and theft ala "both sides did it" far more than anything I have written. Retaliation in itself can and does contain many moral wrongs. I simply noted the documented fact that the Lawrence raid was not the unprovoked attack on helpless innocents that many yankees attempt to portray when they reference it. Rather, it was an incident that was part of an ongoing exchange of back and forth skirmishes that had been going on for years and even the last decade.
The people in Lawrence were innocent civilian men and boys and the southern raiders shot them for it.
Some were. Others were not and in fact had participated in prior atrocities against the southerners. Senator Lane, who avoided capture by hiding, was a powerful influence behind many of the northern military actions being taken against the families of Quantrill's raiders and other confederates in Missouri.