To go back to Mr Mann's original point about historians-they either have a passion for the history of their area or they wish for there to be lessons learned. The later is especially true of the Civil War in Missouri and Kansas. This subject has many parellels to the Israeli-Palestian conflict which has waged for decades, and has its origins centuries ago. If it was waged with 1860s technology it wouldn't be of concern to us, but now we must worry about the use of weapons of mass destruction, and the expansion of the conflict whereby the world's primary oil supplies are threatened spinning the world into economic recession and depression.

For historical discussion purposes the Federals represent Isreal and the guerrillas represent Hamas, Hezbollah, Fatah, etc. This does not equate them to these Arab terrorists-their circumstance and situations are similiar(fighting a military superior force in an occuppied land).

This is why we need to study the Missouri-Kansas border war in an unbiased manner and realizing the faults and follies of both sides, not demonize one side and place the other upon some divine pedastal(An aside: It appears that many family researchers are desperate to find family ties with Quantrill's band like they are determined to find a family tie to the passengers of the Mayflower). There are currently plenty of works on Quantrill and various other bushwackers and guerillas-some are good, some medicore and some bad. What is desperately needed is a long hard look at the Federal campaign against these guerillas and how the Federal tactics harmed or helped their cause. In many loose ways are future depends upon it-Pakistan already has nukes, at some point Iran will get nukes. Many of these countries have stockpiles of poison gas, and most of the world's oil comes from the region.