Cedar City Massacre (Cinco De Mayo)

The Cedar City Massacre was an infamous event that occurred on July 4, 1918 in Cedar City, Utah. The city, located less than one hundred miles from the Confederate border, was attacked during annual Independence Day festivities by members of the Arizona Brigade of Citizens, also known as Arizona Hillboys, who set much of the town on fire and brutally murdered 47 townsfolk, including twelve schoolchildren, and wounded over a hundred others. The act was the worst act of violence by a Confederate guerrilla force in the American West and followed a spate of violent attacks in the American East and Midwest that had resulted in similar casualties. Despite furious searching, the perpetrators were never identified or found and the event grievously damaged the prospects of the then-dominant Republican Party in the West, where they would lose four Senate seats that fall as part of their national losses of 12 Senate seats, in addition to losing nineteen Western House seats, including that of war hero Joseph R. Knowland.