'This was a two-sided affair,' says Lawrence Mayor Mike Dever. The order led to the displacement of as many as 25,000 people. 11, the Union army's forced evacuation of those areas, which harbored Quantrill and other raiders, known as bushwackers. Several western Missouri counties are gearing up to honor the 150th anniversary on Sunday of General Order No. President Harry Truman's Missouri grandmother complained that Kansas Jayhawkers, as abolitionist guerillas were called, had plundered her farm. People in Kansas recognize that blood is on their ancestors' hands, as well. 'It's hard to take pride in, and it's hard to face up to when it's part of your heritage,' he says. But while Americans have no difficulty memorializing battlefields such as Gettysburg and Pearl Harbor, they are queasy about acknowledging guerilla warfare because it's 'so personal and vengeful,' says Chris Post, a geography professor at Kent State University-Stark who has studied Lawrence's memorial traditions. The Kansans would appear to hold the moral high ground, since Lawrence was an abolitionist stronghold. Commemorations are continuing with talks, museum exhibits and a Twitter reenactment. On Sunday, about 800 people showed up at Lawrence's South Park to hear speeches and a reading of the names of people who died. 'Certainly, we remember the terrible tragedy in which about a fifth of the male population was killed,' says Katie Armitage, author of Lawrence: Survivors of Quantrill's Raid.

Some residents are descendants of the roughly 180 men and boys killed on Aug.

People in Lawrence don't look at it strictly as a sports rivalry. Missouri would like to schedule games anyway, but Kansas has shown no interest.) (Of course, the rivalry isn't what it used to be since Missouri left the Big 12 Conference, meaning they won't play each other annually. 'If you look at it strictly as a sports rivalry, then Quantrill is our guy, because he raided Lawrence.' 'The border war between Missouri and Kansas essentially gave birth to a great rivalry between Mizzou and KU,' says bar owner Zack Cartwright. The Black & Gold Tavern, a Kansas City bar that supports University of Missouri sports teams, is holding a party in honor of William Quantrill's guerrilla attack and what its Facebook page calls 'Missouri's most decisive road victory.' It was the worst atrocity in a decade's worth of Kansas-Missouri border fighting between abolitionists and pro-slavery forces. Wednesday marks the 150th anniversary of Quantrill's Raid, a notorious killing and burning spree in Lawrence, Kan., the present-day home of the University of Kansas. Would you go to a bar to celebrate a massacre? That's a choice people in Kansas City are facing. This illustration depicts the bloody sacking of Lawrence, Kansas by the Quantrill Raiders on Aug.

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