Might it also refer to a lynching? ("..they had him dancin' on the end of a rope...") Prior to the outbreak of the WBTS there was a considerable number of localized lynchings including the (in)famous activities in North Texas between pro- and anti-slave factions. The same held true for "Bloody Kansas) along the Kansas-Missouri border and I'd suspect any place on the frontier where both Southerners and Yankees were present that feelings ran equally as high in that great debate.