Editing Asymmetric warfare (section)

===American Civil War===
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The [[American Civil War]] saw the rise of asymmetric warfare in the [[Border states (American Civil War)|Border States]], and in particular on the US Western Territorial Border after the [[Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854]] opened the territories to vote on the expansion of slavery beyond the [[Missouri Compromise]] lines. Political implications of this broken 1820's compromise were nothing less than the potential expansion of slavery all across the North American continent, including the northern reaches of the [[Mexican Cession|annexed Mexican territories]] to California and Oregon. So the stakes were high, and it caused a flood of immigration to the border: some to grab land and expand slavery west, others to grab land and vote down the expansion of slavery. The pro-slavery land grabbers began asymmetric, violent attacks against the more pacifist abolitionists who had settled [[Lawrence, Kansas|Lawrence]] and other territorial towns to suppress slavery. [[John Brown (abolitionist)|John Brown]], the abolitionist, travelled to [[Osawatomie, Kansas|Osawatomie]] in the [[Kansas Territory]] expressly to foment retaliatory attacks back against the pro-slavery guerrillas who, by 1858, had twice ransacked both Lawrence and Osawatomie (where one of Brown's sons was shot dead).

The abolitionists would not return the attacks and Brown theorized that a violent spark set off on "the Border" would be a way to finally ignite his long hoped-for slave rebellion.<ref>{{cite episode |first=Rapley|last=Rob|year=2012|network=PBS |series=The American Experience |season=24 |number=9, 10, 11 |title=The Abolitionists |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/abolitionists/player/ |transcript=Transcript |transcript-url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/transcript/abolitionists-transcript/ |access-date=2016-03-19}}</ref>{{time needed|date=October 2014}} Brown had broad-sworded slave owners at Potawatomi Creek, so the bloody civilian violence was initially symmetrical; however, once the American Civil War ignited in 1861, and when the state of Missouri voted overwhelmingly not to secede from the Union, the pro-slavers on the MO-KS border were driven either south to Arkansas and Texas, or underground—where they became guerrilla fighters and "Bushwhackers" living in the bushy ravines throughout northwest Missouri across the (now) state line from Kansas. The bloody "Border War" lasted all during the Civil War (and long after with guerrilla partisans like the James brothers cynically robbing and murdering, aided and abetted by lingering lost causers<ref>T.J. Stiles, "Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War," 2002</ref>{{page needed|date=October 2014}}). Tragically the Western Border War was an asymmetric war: pro-slavery guerrillas and paramilitary partisans on the pro-Confederate side attacked pro-Union townspeople and commissioned Union military units, with the Union army trying to keep both in check: blocking Kansans and pro-Union Missourians from organizing militarily against the marauding Bushwhackers.

The worst act of domestic terror in U.S. history came in August 1863 when paramilitary guerrillas amassed 350 strong and rode all night 50 miles across eastern Kansas to the abolitionist stronghold of Lawrence (a political target) and destroyed the town, gunning down 150 civilians. The Confederate officer whose company had joined [[Quantrill's Raiders]] that day witnessed the civilian slaughter and forbade his soldiers from participating in the carnage. The commissioned officer refused to participate in Quantrill's asymmetric warfare on civilians.<ref>Border War Sesquicentennial proceedings at Lawrence, Kan., August 2013</ref>{{Full citation needed|date=October 2014}}