The
Pottawatomie Massacre occurred during the night of May 24 and the morning of May 25, 1856. In reaction to the
sacking of LawrenceIn the summer of 1856, the Sacking of Lawrence helped ratchet up the guerrilla war in Kansas Territory that became known as Bleeding Kansas.-Background:...
(
KansasKansas is a state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa tribe, who inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south wind," although this was...
) by pro-slavery forces,
John BrownJohn Brown was an American abolitionist, and folk hero who advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to end all slavery...
and a band of
abolitionistAbolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and emancipate slaves in western Europe and the Americas. The slave system aroused little protest until the 18th century, when rationalist thinkers of the Enlightenment criticized it for violating the rights of man, and Quaker and other evangelical...
settlers (some of them members of the
Pottawatomie RiflesThe Pottawatomie Rifles was a group of about one hundred abolitionist Kansas settlers of Franklin and Anderson counties, both of which are along the Pottawatomie Creek...
) killed five pro-slavery settlers north of Pottawatomie Creek in
Franklin County, KansasFranklin County is a county located in East Central Kansas, in the Central United States. The county's population—one of the fastest growing in the state of Kansas—was estimated to be 26,513 in the year 2006. Its county seat and most populous city is Ottawa...
. This was one of the many bloody episodes in Kansas preceding the
American Civil WarThe American Civil War , also known as the War Between the States and several other names, was a civil war in the United States of America. Eleven Southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America...
, which came to be known collectively as
Bleeding KansasBleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas or the Border War, was a series of violent events, involving anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian" elements, that took place in the Kansas Territory and the western frontier towns of the U.S. state of Missouri roughly between 1854 and 1858...
.
John Brown was particularly affected by the sacking of Lawrence, in which a sheriff-led posse destroyed newspaper offices, private houses and a hotel, as well as by the brutal beating of anti-slavery Senator
Charles SumnerCharles Sumner was an American politician and statesman from Massachusetts. An academic lawyer and a powerful orator, Sumner was the leader of the antislavery forces in Massachusetts and a leader of the Radical Republicans in the United States Senate during the American Civil War and...
by
Preston BrooksPreston Smith Brooks was a Democratic Congressman from South Carolina, known for physically beating Senator Charles Sumner on the floor of the United States Senate...
.
The
Pottawatomie Massacre occurred during the night of May 24 and the morning of May 25, 1856. In reaction to the
sacking of LawrenceIn the summer of 1856, the Sacking of Lawrence helped ratchet up the guerrilla war in Kansas Territory that became known as Bleeding Kansas.-Background:...
(
KansasKansas is a state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa tribe, who inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south wind," although this was...
) by pro-slavery forces,
John BrownJohn Brown was an American abolitionist, and folk hero who advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to end all slavery...
and a band of
abolitionistAbolitionism was a movement to end the slave trade and emancipate slaves in western Europe and the Americas. The slave system aroused little protest until the 18th century, when rationalist thinkers of the Enlightenment criticized it for violating the rights of man, and Quaker and other evangelical...
settlers (some of them members of the
Pottawatomie RiflesThe Pottawatomie Rifles was a group of about one hundred abolitionist Kansas settlers of Franklin and Anderson counties, both of which are along the Pottawatomie Creek...
) killed five pro-slavery settlers north of Pottawatomie Creek in
Franklin County, KansasFranklin County is a county located in East Central Kansas, in the Central United States. The county's population—one of the fastest growing in the state of Kansas—was estimated to be 26,513 in the year 2006. Its county seat and most populous city is Ottawa...
. This was one of the many bloody episodes in Kansas preceding the
American Civil WarThe American Civil War , also known as the War Between the States and several other names, was a civil war in the United States of America. Eleven Southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America...
, which came to be known collectively as
Bleeding KansasBleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas or the Border War, was a series of violent events, involving anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery "Border Ruffian" elements, that took place in the Kansas Territory and the western frontier towns of the U.S. state of Missouri roughly between 1854 and 1858...
.
Background
John Brown was particularly affected by the sacking of Lawrence, in which a sheriff-led posse destroyed newspaper offices, private houses and a hotel, as well as by the brutal beating of anti-slavery Senator
Charles SumnerCharles Sumner was an American politician and statesman from Massachusetts. An academic lawyer and a powerful orator, Sumner was the leader of the antislavery forces in Massachusetts and a leader of the Radical Republicans in the United States Senate during the American Civil War and...
by
Preston BrooksPreston Smith Brooks was a Democratic Congressman from South Carolina, known for physically beating Senator Charles Sumner on the floor of the United States Senate...
. (Sumner had given a fiery speech to the
U.S. SenateThe United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral United States Congress, the lower house being the House of Representatives. The composition and powers of the Senate and the House are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution . Each U.S state is represented by two senators,...
which included insulting remarks concerning a member of Brooks' family and in retaliation, Brooks caned him nearly to death.)
The violence against abolitionists was accompanied by celebrations in the pro-slavery press, with writers such as Benjamin F. Stringfellow of the
Squatter Sovereign proclaiming that pro-slavery forces "are determined to repel this Northern invasion and make Kansas a Slave State; though our rivers should be covered with the blood of their victims and the carcasses of the Abolitionists should be so numerous in the territory as to breed disease and sickness, we will not be deterred from our purpose." Brown was outraged by both the violence of pro-slavery forces, and also by what he saw as a weak and cowardly response by the antislavery partisans and the
Free StateFree-Stater was the name given those settlers in Kansas Territory during the Bleeding Kansas era in the 1850s who opposed the extension of slavery to Kansas....
settlers, whom he described as cowards, or worse
Attack
A Free State company under the command of John Brown, Jr., set out, and the Osawatomie company joined them. On the morning of May 22, 1856, they heard of the
sack of LawrenceIn the summer of 1856, the Sacking of Lawrence helped ratchet up the guerrilla war in Kansas Territory that became known as Bleeding Kansas.-Background:...
and the arrest of Deitzler, Brown, and Jenkins. However, they continued their march toward Lawrence, not knowing whether their assistance might still be needed, and encamped that night near the Ottawa Creek. They remained in the vicinity until the afternoon of May 23, at which time they decided to return home.
On May 23, John Brown, Sr. selected a party to go with him on a private expedition. Captain John Brown, Jr., objected to their leaving his company, but seeing that his father was obdurate, acquiesced, telling him to "do nothing rash." The company consisted of John Brown, four of his sons—Frederick, Owen, Watson, and Oliver—Thomas Winer, and James Townsley, whom John had induced to carry the party in his wagon to their proposed field of operations.
They encamped that night between two deep ravines on the edge of the timber, some distance to the right of the main traveled road. There they remained unobserved until the following evening of May 24. Some time after dark, the party left their place of hiding and proceeded on their "secret expedition". Late in the evening, they called at the house of James P. Doyle and ordered him and his two adult sons, William and Drury,(all former slave catchers) to go with them as prisoners. (Doyle's 16-year-old son, John, who was not a member of the pro-slavery Law and Order Party, was left with his mother.) The three men were escorted by their captors out into the darkness, where Owen Brown and one of his brothers killed them with broadswords. John Brown, Sr., did not participate in the stabbing but fired a shot into the head of the fallen James Doyle to ensure he was dead.
Brown and his band then went to the house of Allen Wilkinson and ordered him out. He was slashed and stabbed to death by Henry Thompson and Theodore Winer, possibly with help from Brown's sons. From there, they crossed the Pottawatomie, and some time after midnight, forced their way into the cabin of James Harris at sword-point. Harris had three house guests: John S. Wightman, Jerome Glanville, and William Sherman, the brother of Henry Sherman ("Dutch Henry"), a militant pro-slavery activist. Glanville and Harris were taken outside for interrogation and asked whether they had threatened Free State settlers, aided
Border RuffiansIn the decade leading up to the American Civil War, pro-slavery activists infiltrated Kansas Territory from the neighboring slave state of Missouri. To abolitionists and other Free-Staters, who desired Kansas to be admitted to the Union as a free state, they were collectively known as Border...
from
MissouriMissouri is a state in the Midwest region of the United States bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. Missouri is the 18th most populous state with a 2008 estimated population of 5,911,605. It comprises 114 counties and one independent city....
, or participated in the sack of Lawrence. Satisfied with their answers, Brown's men let Glanville and Harris return to the cabin. William Sherman was led to the edge of the creek and hacked to death with the swords by Brown's sons, Winer, and Thompson.
Having learned at Harris's cabin that "Dutch Henry", their main target in the expedition, was away from home on the prairie, they ended the expedition and returned to the ravine where they had previously encamped. They rejoined the Osawatomie company on the night of May 25.
Footnotes
General References
- Decaro, Louis A. Jr. "Fire from the Midst of You": A Religious Life of John Brown. New York: New York University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8147-1921-X.
- Johnson, Andrew
Andrew Johnson , the 17th President of the United States , was the first U.S. President to be impeached, as well as the first U.S. president to succeed to the presidency upon the assassination of his predecessor.At the time of the secession of the Southern states, Johnson was a U.S. Senator from...
. What John Brown Did in Kansas (December 12, 1859): a speech to the United States House of RepresentativesThe United States House of Representatives, commonly referred to as the "House," is the lower house of the bicameral United States Congress, the upper house being the United States Senate. The composition and powers of the House and the Senate are established in Article One of the Constitution...
, December 12, 1859. Originally published in The Congressional Globe, The Official Proceedings of Congress. Published by John C. Rives, Washington, D. C. Thirty-Sixth Congress, 1st Session, New Series...No. 7, Tuesday, December 13, 1859, pages 105-106. Retrieved May 16, 2005.
- PBS Online. People & Events: Pottawatomie Massacre"John Brown's Holy War." The American Experience. WGBH
WGBH is a non-commercial television and radio broadcast service located in Boston, Massachusetts. WGBH is a member station of the Public Broadcasting Service, and has produced many programs for the network, including nearly a third of PBS's national primetime programming...
, 1999.
- Reynolds, David S. John Brown, Aboltionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights. New York: Vintage, 2005. ISBN 0-375-41188-7.
- Townsley, James. "The Pottawatomie Killings: It is Established Beyond Controversy That John Brown Was the Leader." Republican Citizen. Paola, Kansas, 20 Dec 1879, page 5, column 5.