Hi Rosemary and Scott,

I have to say that I've never understood the argument against seeing the events of April 20, 1914 as a massacre. It's true that there isn't much in the historical record to prove that the National Guard intended to kill women and children at Ludlow, but, on the other hand, there also isn't much to prove that Guardsmen weren't trying to kill tent colony residents. I don't mean to be trite here, but I think this was a case where actions spoke louder than words. It took hours to burn the colony down and I don't think there is any doubt in the record that the Guard found all kinds of people in the colony once they entered it late in the afternoon on April 20. And they burned it down anyway. I agree with Rosemary that focusing on what soldiers' intentions were is a bit problematic, but I also think that a strong argument can be made that the Guard's actions at Ludlow demonstrated a clear intention to kill. Ask this question: why did the Guard burn down the tent colony? There was no strategic reason to do so -- the Guard had driven the armed miners out of the colony, but instead of pursuing the battle with those miners, the Guard stopped and spent hours burning the colony down. In other words, they made a conscious choice to stay in the colony until the colony no longer existed. If the only goal was to get rid of the colony, then the Guard would have knocked it down like they did at Forbes. Knocking the colony down, however, wasn't likely to kill anyone. Flames, of course, would likely kill more than a few people. Therefore, it's more than reasonable to argue that at least some Guardsmen wanted to kill people once they reached the Ludlow tent colony. I actually do spend some time on soldiers' intentions in my book, but that's too much to get into here. You'll see when the book comes out!

Cheers,

Anthony