Sandra, thanks for you reply. The citation for Don R. Bowen is--Don R. Bowen, “Guerrilla War in Western Missouri, 1862-1865: Historical Extensions of the Relative Deprivation Hypothesis,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 19 (January 1977): 32. And, Don R. Bowen, “Guerrilla War in Western Missouri, 1862-1865, 49-50.

You make a lot of good points, and you are right, class is not a determiner in someone committing crimes or not committing crimes, but as we know. most of the crimes are committed by the deprived classes if you consider percentages. What I'm trying to counter is the long-held, absolutely false notion that the Missouri guerrillas were low-life thugs and brigands, people William Elsey Connelley, the president of the Kansas State Historical Society at the end of the last century called "White Trash" and knew he was lying when he said it because he knew these people. Most guerrilas except for the communist variety come from the elite clas; even the terrorism we now see in the Middle East gets its impetus from the elite classes of the area, mostly from those in the Sunni camp. The Missouri guerrillas were overwhelmingly from the privileged class of people in the area, and I'm trying to persuade people that the reason they became so violent, even took scalps (SOME OF THEM, MIND YOU) and were scalped themselves, was because of the violent policy of the Federal government at that time which caused them to be the object of search and destroy operations, where they were executed upon capture. Many of the guerrilas' parents had been killed and their property destroyed, and that caused them to be vengeful, but the violence they participated in was two-way, AS MUCH or more committed by the Federals as the Southern partisans. Many of these Southern partisans were originally Unionists, but under an increaskingly severe and brutal occupation of Missouri, many of them went over to the Southern side in the defense of their homeland area. For too long, the Northern-biased histories have perpetuated a lot of myths about the Border War that seemed to me to need some balance. Words like "Border Ruffians," "Bleeding Kansas," (who was doing the bleeding?) drip with propaganda and seldom does anyone question these 100-plus year old abolitionist propaganda terms and scholars use them without noting their propaganda nature. Demonstrably more proslavery people died in Territorial Kansas of violence than abolitionists, although the numbers were comparable.

Tise website seems taken over by a number of people who don't want to hear the other side, just want to insult anyone who differs in opinion from them and drive them off the website so that only their views prevail. One of these people even posted an unsubstantiated diatribe on the Amazon.com website where my book is sold titled "Rubbish" about my book, but the book lives on and will live longer than he will and his type will because it gives the "other side of the story." And some people don't want to hear just one trumped up side of issues. So here's a cheer for freedom of speech, because I will use that right as long as I live, and I fear no one in that regard. Again, thanks Sandra, for your contribution.You posed several serious and important questions.

Don G.