Terrorism, warfare, or just plain murder?

It’s increasingly hard to tell these days where terrorism ends and warfare begins, to distinguish killing committed in the name of a cause from outright murder. Previous generations also struggled with it. Consider an incident from 156 years ago at an obscure Missouri waterway.

The Civil War is remembered as the time when blue fought gray. Yet it also contained a murky war within a war whose participants didn’t wear uniforms or carry flags.