Note 1386 — Chapter VIII · (continued 2)

In a previous note I have reproduced one of the typical accounts of the Wyoming massacre, as the story was told by the earlier historians. The details given in accounts of that class were accepted for a long time without question. Fortunately for the good name of the human race, Butler, with all his responsibility for the wrongs done during the continuance of this border warfare, was not the inhuman wretch which he was represented to be, and the wholesale slaughter of the women and children turned out to be a pure invention. Horrors enough remain unchallenged to raise a doubt if even now all errors have been removed. I have not introduced any of these shocking stories in my narrative, but they can be found in Chapman, Miner, and Stone.