Baxter Springs, KS. Was It Murder??

Baxter Springs, KS. Was it Murder or not?

  • Baxter Springs just another tragic event that characterizes the Kansas-Missouri border.

    Votes: 11 47.8%
  • Baxter Springs a massacre just simply murder.

    Votes: 9 39.1%
  • Other: there's always a rogue opinion.

    Votes: 3 13.0%

  • Total voters
    23
  • Poll closed .
Is there no difference between Lawrence and Baxter Springs? Both are massacres, but in the former, a city was taken and 150 civilian men killed. In the latter, an armed outpost was attacked and an armed column destroyed; 150 uniformed soldiers were killed. If words mean anything, then massacre is not necessarily murder. 10 times as many died in Pickett's charge, were they murdered? Or were they massacred, slaughtered, decimated, in an orderly and proficient military manner?

In Lawrence, I have no trouble using the word murder - the dead were non-combatants. I have a very hard time applying the word murder to the killing of one side's troops by the other's, even in one-sided battle. Maybe that's just me, though.

Pickett's men weren't shot through the head after capture, at Baxter springs the Union men were. 85 men killed, 8 wounded. Do the math and then try to characterize this as anything but a massacre. At this stage of the war this was a not uncommon way for guerrillas to behave in the theater. And there were instances of the same by regular MO/Ark CSA forces as well during the Camden Expedition.
 
Do the math and then try to characterize this as anything but a massacre.

I don't deny it was a massacre, but as I asked, is there really no difference between killing unarmed civilians and killing uniformed soldiers?

Executing prisoners is bad form under the rules of war. That said, Kansas troops were no slouches when it came to executing captured Bushwhackers. The border war was brutal on both sides.

But if Union soldiers were killing Confederate troops for the crime of wearing a Union coat - and they were - is it more a crime for Confederate soldiers who impose the same sentence for the same 'crime'?
 
I don't deny it was a massacre, but as I asked, is there really no difference between killing unarmed civilians and killing uniformed soldiers?

Executing prisoners is bad form under the rules of war. That said, Kansas troops were no slouches when it came to executing captured Bushwhackers. The border war was brutal on both sides.

But if Union soldiers were killing Confederate troops for the crime of wearing a Union coat - and they were - is it more a crime for Confederate soldiers who impose the same sentence for the same 'crime'?

Guerrillas and bushwackers are neither soldiers, nor civilians. They are not entitled to the protections of either. Wearing the other army's uniform for deception is grounds for summary execution. It was standard practice by regular CSA forces to alter captured Union uniforms so as not to be treated as a "spy" and executed.

I'm not really sure if you are trying to make a joke or what.
 
Guerrillas and bushwackers(sic) are neither soldiers, nor civilians.
Under Union rules. They were often enlisted Confederate soldiers.

They are not entitled to the protections of either.
Under Union rules.

Wearing the other army's uniform for deception is grounds for summary execution.
Under Union rules.

I'm not remotely trying to make a joke, but to illustrate that you are taking a set of rules written by one side and for their own benefit as objective rules that can define the difference between killing and murder.

I think both sides would agree that the summary execution of non-combatants, i.e. Lawrence, is murder. That's why even the guerrillas claimed to have killed Jayhawkers and Red Legs (i.e. combatants) rather than civilians there. But now somehow the summary execution of soldier A by soldier B is murder, but the summary execution of soldier B by soldier A is a justifiable and necessary execution because B didn't follow A's rules? That doesn't seem to draw a very objective distinction between what is murder and what is mere slaughter.
 
In post 11 the author said that "Quantrill was a freedom fighter killing for a cause, or invaders or deposits. Forest murders fellow soldiers where's the honor.... Quantrill murder intruders..." Sir my ancestors rode with General Forest and they viewed every federal troop as an "invader" or "intruder". I am sure General Forest and most other men in his command did as well.
 
No, those were the standard rules of war of the period, not "Union rules."

Actually, they were Union rules:
"The Union Army at the start of the Civil War made no distinction between conventional and guerilla tactics operationally, and the Union Army had no specific policy on how to treat guerillas. Union Major General Henry Halleck, destined to play a huge role in counterinsurgency operations in the west as well as the broader war, recognized early on that policy was necessary for treatment of guerillas. An attorney and authority on international law, Halleck defined guerillas and partisans together as outlaws, subject to treatment as common “Bushwhackers and brigands.” This did little to establish sound policy however, because it simply muddled an already confusing problem of definition."
LTC Jeffrey S. Bateman, "Bushwhackers and Terrorists: Combatant Status Policy in the Civil War and the Global War on Terror" Page 2.
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA449745

Before Halleck decided that Bushwhackers were not entitled to the protections of either soldiers of civilians, many were taken as POWs and others were simply killed by Union officers in the field. He made a decision about how they would all be treated, which made his rules "Union rules," as I said.

Now, once we realize that we are dealing with Union definition of the status of their opponents, rather than their claimed status as (sometimes) enlisted Confederate soldiers, only then can we begin to examine the question of whether Baxter Springs was murder, or whether it was simply a massacre. If the partisans executing Union soldiers was murder, then Union soldiers executing partisans was murder. If Union soldiers killing Partisans after capture was not murder, then those same Partisans killing Union soldiers after capture was not murder.

I don't mind which we pick, but let's be consistent on both sides at least.
 
Actually, they were Union rules.

Incorrect once again. Those where the rules under which European nations and the U.S. operated. Partisans were guerrillas operating out of uniform, behind the lines. Even the CSA regarded such men as spy's or guerrillas when captured...even when the men were actually enlisted soldiers. See the Great Locomotive Chase for how the CSA actually regarded such operations.

Killing uniformed soldiers after capture was murder, despite your spurious claim otherwise. Partisans (guerrillas with possibly an officer alone having a commission--and none of the men actually enrolled with the CSA) certainly don't even come close to the period standard, they were simply unlawful combatants. They most often did not have uniforms, were not enrolled with a CSA unit, and were sometimes wearing Federal uniforms, and behind the lines. There are multiple grounds for executing them outright.

So while guerrillas assumed they could do whatever they wanted (before, during, and after the war), they were still by definition illegal/unlawful combatants. And when they killed civilians or uniformed men that fell into their hands, it was murder, plain and simple.
 
And what exactly is your point? I'm guessing by your chosen name, that it has something to do with the fanciful fiction of Josey Wales, an entertaining movie, but weak on history.


Nothing to do with my chosen name, I thought that the Red Legs were fictional that's all, but hey you learn new things everyday lol
 
Nothing to do with my chosen name, I thought that the Red Legs were fictional that's all, but hey you learn new things everyday lol

Red legs weren't fictional. They weren't regulars either, instead essentially a group of "civilian" (quasi-military) scouts serving various Union commanders. I'm not going to defend them. And in the hands of opposing regular forces they could rightly be regarded as unlawful combatants.
 
Nothing to do with my chosen name, I thought that the Red Legs were fictional that's all, but hey you learn new things everyday lol
Nope, not fictional, but illustrative of the problems of holding to a stiff uniformed/un-uniformed distinction. They were not necessarily enlisted, and yet some of them had ranks. They wore the uniform when it suited them, acted as scouts and spies, recruiters and messengers. They engaged in combat in the very front lines (as in the Ninth Kansas' pursuit of Quantrill after Lawrence), and engaged in slave and horse-stealing, rebel-hanging, and just plain mayhem at other times. General Ewing publicly pledged to suppress them while paying their leader as his chief detective. Blunt promised to suppress them at the same time Major Ransom of the Sixth had them hunting down the Bushwhackers who took part in the Sam Gaty massacre. Blunt even took a company of them south when he left Leavenworth for Baxter.

Whether they were unlawful combatants depends on the law, I suppose, which despite assertions to the contrary depended more upon the commander in the field than the traditions of Europe and the nation. If they were punished it wasn't by the Union brass, but by mobs who on occasion got tired of their horse thieving.
 
Nope, not fictional, but illustrative of the problems of holding to a stiff uniformed/un-uniformed distinction. They were not necessarily enlisted, and yet some of them had ranks. They wore the uniform when it suited them, acted as scouts and spies, recruiters and messengers. They engaged in combat in the very front lines (as in the Ninth Kansas' pursuit of Quantrill after Lawrence), and engaged in slave and horse-stealing, rebel-hanging, and just plain mayhem at other times. General Ewing publicly pledged to suppress them while paying their leader as his chief detective. Blunt promised to suppress them at the same time Major Ransom of the Sixth had them hunting down the Bushwhackers who took part in the Sam Gaty massacre. Blunt even took a company of them south when he left Leavenworth for Baxter.

Whether they were unlawful combatants depends on the law, I suppose, which despite assertions to the contrary depended more upon the commander in the field than the traditions of Europe and the nation. If they were punished it wasn't by the Union brass, but by mobs who on occasion got tired of their horse thieving.

Thanks Bill, great info you provided me, I'm just not all that familiar with military actions in Kansas, Missouri, etc.
 
The thinking of the day went more or less like this: If you were caught armed in the bush, without some sort of clear indication that you belonged to an organized regular force, then you could be treated as a guerrilla/bushwhacker/unlawful combatant. Ditto if you happened to be caught wearing the uniform of your opponents instead of that of your own side...whether in the brush or on the field. Now if you were working for the side that captured you...well then you had little to fear unless you had a particularly unsavory history with those who now had you in hand.

It is a bit murkier with local militia call ups, but rather easy to sort it out in most of those instances as a POW's local militia officers could be named and attested to by others in the community.

Where it was a point of more pertinent contention was the case of recruiters and recruits behind the lines. Recruiting officers could and did carry valid commissions and at least possessed some sort of uniform in many cases. However, early Federal policy in Missouri was ambiguous, or treating them as guerrillas (unlawful combatants.) A notable execution or two angered enough as being unfair that the policy seems to have been suspended. (See Frisby McCullough who was in uniform and commissioned when captured, though he had been recruiting, and some of those recruited had been formerly paroled.) This was an even more substantial issue for men who had already been paroled or taken oaths, then were caught with recruiting bands. Legally, they were unlawful combatants, whether they felt they were bound by their legal oaths or not. But publicly executing them presented a P.R. problem. Obviously, Confederates did not agree with such a policy since it limited their recruiting and guerrilla operations...unless it was being applied to areas they controlled. :rolleyes:
 
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