But the fact of the matter is that the 5th Kansas Cavalry had a reputation that they lived up to. Second men like 1st Sgt August Bondi of Co. 'k' 5th kansas Cavalry, and there were severly other in the 5th Kansas, Bondi simply wrote a book about his gallent exploits, should have been hung for the part he played as an accessory to murders in Kansas in the Pottawatomie Creek massacure, when he rode with John Brown. Yet he is concidered a hero in Kansas history. Is there an excuse for the burning of Churches, Schools and the homes of widows and orphans of Confederate soldiers who were killed years before the Union soldiers ever arrived at Pine Bluff, or that had died of disease at Sulphur Springs?
Then we have the all encompassing eternal mythology of mistreated slave in the south, Many of whom, like Willie Jones body servant to Col. Fontaine P. Yell 26th Arkansas Infantry from Pine Bluff, who became the riches Black man in Arkansas, served honorable in Confederate Service and stayed with their masters after they were emancipated and well after the war was over. Whose business dealings were in partnership with Ex-Confederate businessmen after the war. Blacks servicing as scouts and spies for the Confederate is well known, because they most often play the part of a runaway slave and could pass freely in union lines.
Yet in Pine Bluff and in the Contriband camps of Helena the Union Soldiers would go to those camps and rape the Negro women, because they could take advantage of them with no reprocussions.
War makes good people go bad. But there is a difference between retalitory retribution and just mean spirited bullying because you have the power and ability to do so. If abolishionist felt means spirited bullying was wrong for the Slave owner, then the 5th Kansas in particular and the abolishionist in it were no better in their treatment of those who could not defend themselves in Jefferson County, White and black. They weren't saint or avenging "Angels" righting a wrong