Col. John C. Moore, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 9.2, Missouri
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[188] told them it meant the black flag, and gave every man who could not stand that kind of warfare permission to retire and return to his home. After a short consultation twenty of the men turned and rode away. Never until then had Quantrell or his men shot a prisoner or a Federal soldier who offered to surrender. They accepted the black flag when it was forced on them and fought under it, but it was not of their seeking nor did they inaugurate that kind of warfare. The capture, sacking and burning of Lawrence, Kan., was in retaliation of the sacking and burning of Osceola by Jim Lane and his men more than a year before. The fight, and massacre as it has been called, at Centralia, was in retaliation of the killing of one of Anderson's sisters and the crippling for life of another by undermining and throwing down a house in Kansas City in which they with other Southern women were confined.

Missouri was isolated and cut off from the rest of the Confederacy. It was far removed and practically beyond the range of vision of the civilized world. There was a Federal garrison in nearly every town and at nearly every crossroads. Any manifestation of freedom on the part of the people was repressed by banishment, the destruction of property or death. There was no law. The courts were terrorized, and the nominal officers of the law were puppets of the military power. Fire and sword, rapine and murder, reigned supreme, and the guerrillas simply paid back the insults and wrongs to which they and their families and their friends were subjected. They fought in the only way in which they could fight, and they fought to kill.