Frontiersmen, however, said of this incident:

• Indian behavior was seasonal. They "surrendered" in the fall (Sand Creek occurred in late November), when grass for their ponies died. They returned to the warpath in the spring when the grass grew.
• Black Kettle was friendly. His braves were not.
• Little Raven's Arapahoes had received a pledge of truce. Black Kettle's warriors had not.
• Indian women and children were attacked because the women fought alongside the men, and to avenge cruelty to settlers' families in recent frontier depredations.
• The soldiers involved testified they did not see Black Kettle waving flags during their charge.
• The commanding officer reported after the encounter that "… scalps of white men, women, and children, several of which they had not had time to dry and tan since taken … were taken from the belts of dead warriors on the battlefield of Sand Creek, and from their teepees …. What of the Indian blanket that was captured, fringed with white women's scalps?"
• At Sand Creek, whites mutilated the Indian dead in retaliation, and as psychological warfare (Indians thought that whatever disfigurements the body received, the soul bore in the afterlife).

But North Vietnamese communism under Ho Chi Minh was Stalinist and Maoist in practice.

• Ho came to power in 1945 on a wave of communist terror where thousands of his political foes died, including non-communist Vietnamese nationalist leaders.
• More bloody than Diem's rule in the South was the 1951-56 purge by communists in the North that killed ca. 50,000.
• Diem cancelled the 1956 Vietnam-wide election because Ho opposed a free vote (with international observers) in the North.
• The communist massacre of about 3,000 civilians at Hue in 1968 dwarfed the killing of 200+ noncombatants by U.S. soldiers at My Lai that same year.

In fact, Radical Reconstruction involved many Constitutional conflicts unrelated to race.

• Taxation without representation
  From 1867-71, an "iron-clad oath" disfranchised Southerners who had voluntarily aided the Confederacy. Meanwhile huge tax increases and soaring state debts far exceeded real value received. The personal impact of carpetbag corruption on Southerners eclipsed that of the Tweed and Grant scandals on Northerners. New state social spending – plus postwar re-building costs – tripled and quadrupled Southern state tax rates in 1870 compared to 1860, though the property-tax base had shrunken. 15% of Mississippi landowners could not pay these taxes and lost their land at one time.
• Unfree elections/restriction on republican form of government
  Until 1872, the 14th Amendment prevented ex-Confederates from holding state or federal office if, before supporting the Confederacy, they had sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution. This deprived the South of its natural leaders.
• Standing army in peacetime without consent
  Under Radical Reconstruction, after the President formally declared the rebellion over and with ex-Confederate states unrepresented in Congress, the Army occupied the South.
• No separation of powers
  Through their issuance of general orders, commanding generals in the five military districts under Radical Reconstruction combined executive, legislative, and judicial functions.
• Juryless trials
  Peacetime military tribunals in the South during Radical Reconstruction lacked juries.
• Partisan motives of Constitutional amendments
  The 14th Amendment assured Republican dominance, not black suffrage: the South could either enfranchise the freedman, increasing Republicans in Congress (the 13th Amendment had repealed the 3/5s Compromise); or it could disfranchise him and lose Democratic representation there. The 15th Amendment forbad disfranchisement by race only after Grant won in 1868 due to the freedmen's vote.
• Extra-Constitutional amending process
  Ex-Confederate states had to ratify the 14th Amendment as if they were in the Union, but were unrepresented in the Congress that proposed it, as if they were not in the Union.