The survivors confirmed the retaliatory nature of the attack on Lawrence. According to Castel, "The universal testimony of all the ladies and others who talked with the butchers of the 21st ult. is that these demons claimed they were here to revenge the wrongs done their families by our men under Lane, Jennison, Anthony and Co." Charles L. Robinson, the first Governor of Kansas and an eyewitness to the raid, also characterized the attack as an act of vengeance: "Before this raid the entire border counties of Missouri had experienced more terrible outrages than ever the Quantrill raid at Lawrence... There was no burning of feet and torture by hanging in Lawrence as there was in Missouri, neither were women and children outraged." Robinson explained that Quantrill targeted Lawrence because Jayhawkers had attacked Missouri "as soon as war broke out" and Lawrence was "headquarters for the thieves and their plunder." The article provided a synopsis of the speech that Robinson had given in Lawrence on the twenty-ninth anniversary of the raid. Despite being a truncated paraphrase of the original speech, the article had been approved by Robinson for publication (p. 2).
