Premise: They leave all civility, take a cowardly gun and go to the neighbour's farmhouse, whose cousin is married to theirs, then murder the boy who could become a soldier, humiliate and renounce all sense of community, burn the home, steal the livestock, take any money from the victims and send the remaining souls, having lost all, on a foot journey into the unknown.
Hypothesis: The passage is referring to the American Civil War.