Since that's the case, I went back and tightened the language a bit. The original was dashed off pretty quickly and was a bit clumsy in places.That post is so good I was going to ask to copy it, with attribution.
If you use that list, remember:
- It's a United States list. It does not include things that happened on the frontier or in territories before they became states. If we go back to Indian-fighting days on the frontier, there were plenty of high-body-count horrors.
- It does not include non-officially-sanctioned casualty numbers; there's at least one incident on the books where the official death count was in the single digits but credible witnesses put the death toll at over 100.
- It only includes murder (including terrorist acts) but not manslaughter. If I included things like manslaughter, I'd have to include incidents like the Triangle Shirtwaist fire that killed 146.
- It doesn't include things that were never investigated as mass murders such as regional wars between, for example, miners and management. Finally,
- I don't warrant that the list is complete. It is, however, as complete as I can make it with just an hour or so of research. IOW, it was written to be good enough to make a point on the internet; it wasn't intended as a scholarly reference. I welcome corrections and additions from any source.