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You were the one who brought in revenge as justification. I just asked the question which brought your answer that only Yankees were capable of atrocities.

Some were. Others were not and in fact had participated in prior atrocities against the southerners.

Try reading "The Devil Knows How To Ride: The True Story of William Clarke Quantrill and His Confederate Raiders" by Edward E. Leslie. No attempt was made by Quantrill to determine if anyone had participated in anything. They just rode into town and killed everything in sight. It didn't matter to them, other than they were Yankees. But that's OK to you, isn't it? Only Yankees can commit atrocities, right?

You were the one who brought in revenge as justification.

Your man of staw is again noted. Again, I simply cited the record to place the raid in context. And as I indicated previously, I did so in anticipation of the frequent yankee tactic of attempting to portray the event as an isolated unprovoked act of rage against pure innocents.

I just asked the question which brought your answer that only Yankees were capable of atrocities.

Your man of staw is noted yet again, as is the irony of you making that statement in light of your recent comments to the effect of "they both did it."

To the contrary. Accounts of the raid itself speak of specific attempts to locate Senator Lane in direct retaliation for his contributions to the previous yankee atrocities.

They just rode into town and killed everything in sight.

Not true either. They apparently made a very strong and conscious attempt to target adult males. Women and children, who were definately "in sight" were largely left alone by the raiders. Other non-random manuevering occured as skirmishes broke out between the raiders and the jayhawkers. It was itself a brutal act, but not one of the completely random rage you purport. Innocents were killed in rage, but they picked Lawrence on a hunt for Lane specifically. Not that you are interested in facts like that.

This week NYRB has also put online a 1980 review of Kenneth Stampp by C. Vann Woodward, "The Cult of the Lost Cause." Woodward asks why there wasn't more Confederate guerilla or partisan warfare, on the level of occupied Europe in WWII or the Algerian or Vietnamese Wars. Of course there were Quantrill and other bandits and marauders, but nothing on the scale of 20th century wars. One objection would be that the pro-Confederate men were all in the Confederate regular army. But Woodward and Stampp conclude that Southern nationalism was not really a strong and abiding idea.

You can see reflections of this on these threads. For all the grievances, resentments, hatred of Yankees, state's rights slogans, and arguments about the constitutionality of secession, there doesn't seem to be a strong sense of being a separate nation with a unique destiny or identity or character, that could have made a successful revolution.

This has interesting implications for hypothetical or counterfactual history. Would an independent Confederacy have broken apart into smaller units? Would it eventually have drifted back into the orbit of the union or into the union itself? Or would its leaders have created the powerful, unified, expansionist state they desired?

The thesis about the weakness of Southern or Confederate nationalism also reflects back on the secessionist leaders, though no one could know beforehand, how strong or how weak Confederate nationalism would prove to be. It looks as though Southern pro-slavery leaders were wrong in seeing secession as an alternative to real political activity and engagement within the constitutional system. They didn't have the kind of grievances that would justify overturning the existing government. Nor did was the will present to create a new nation.

Of course it was force that decided things in the end. And it must have seemed plausible to assume in the heady, enthusiastic days of 1860 that the will and energy to create a new nation was present. But those like Sam Houston or Andrew Johnson who questioned the whole "two nations" or "irrepressible conflict" thesis may have been right in the end.

This also reflects on the Rockwellite secessionist or weak compactual creed which sees us forever breaking off into smaller political units. There will be conflicts between such units and without political and constitutional institutions it's more like they'll turn to the use of force. I can't help thinking that in most situations, staying put and settling things within the system is the best way, if it's possible. All the more so, since today we all reject the impassioned support of slavery of most secessionist and Confederate leaders.

Only Yankees can commit atrocities, right?

Certainly not, it is just that Yankees were so much better at it, and on such a grand scale.

Who else could have coerced and duped 21 million people into supporting a war for the subjugation of 9 million, by "any means necessary", all wrapped in the moral cloak of "preserving the union" and "emancipation", leaving all who survived to be indentured servants to the new "government", but a corporate lawyer, Yankee politician?

Talk about an atrocity?

btw, if Quantrill and his men had meant to kill "everything in sight", they would not have drawn up a list beforehand, and the death toll would have exceeded 1000, which you would know if you had read Duane Schulz's Quantrill's War instead of Leslie's BS.