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1712 New York Slave Revolt 1739 Stono Rebellion 1791-1804 Haitian Revolution 1800 Gabriel Prosser (Suppressed) 1805 Chatham Manor 1811 Charles Deslondes (Suppressed) 1815 George Boxley (Suppressed) 1822 Denmark Vesey (Suppressed) 1831 Nat Turner's rebellion 1839 Amistad 1856 Pottawatomie Massacre 1859 John Brown This box: view • talk • edit

The Pottawatomie Massacre occurred during the night of May 24 and the morning of May 25, 1856. The New York Slave Revolt of 1712 was an uprising in New York City of 23 enslaved African Americans in which nine whites were shot stabbed or beaten to The Stono Rebellion (sometimes called Cato's Conspiracy or Cato's Rebellion) is one of the earliest known organized acts of rebellion against slavery within the The Revolution (1791–1804 was the most successful of African Slave rebellions in the Western Hemisphere Gabriel (1776&ndash October 10, 1800) today commonly if incorrectly known as Gabriel Prosser, was a skilled and literate enslaved blacksmith Chatham Manor is the Georgian-style home built between 1768 and 1771 by William Fitzhugh on the Rappahannock River in Stafford County Virginia Charles Deslondes led a slave revolt in parts of the Louisiana Territory on January 8, 1811. George Boxley was a white storekeeper who while living in Spotsylvania Virginia, allegedly tried to coordinate a local slave rebellion on March 6, 1815 Denmark Vesey (originally Telemaque,1767? &ndash July 2, 1822) was a West Indian slave brought to the United States Nat Turner's Rebellion (also known as the Southampton Insurrection) was a Slave rebellion that took place in Southampton County, Virginia during The Amistad, 40 US (15 Pet 518 (1841 was a United States Supreme Court case resulting from the rebellion of slaves on board the Spanish John Brown (May 9 1800 December 2 1859 was an American Abolitionist who advocated and practiced armed Insurrection as a means to end all Slavery Events 1218 - The Fifth Crusade leaves Acre for Egypt. 1276 - Magnus Ladulås is crowned Events 1085 - Alfonso VI of Castile takes Toledo Spain back from the Moors. Year 1856 ( MDCCCLVI) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian Calendar (or a Leap year In reaction to the sacking of Lawrence (Kansas) by pro-slavery forces, John Brown and a band of abolitionist settlers (some of them members of the Pottawatomie Rifles) killed five pro-slavery settlers north of Pottawatomie Creek in Franklin County, Kansas. In the summer of 1856 the Sacking of Lawrence helped ratchet up the guerrilla war in Kansas Territory that became known as " Bleeding Kansas. Kansas ( is a Midwestern state in the central region of the United States of America, an area often referred to as the American " Slavery in the United States began soon after English colonists first settled Virginia in 1607 and lasted until the passage of the Thirteenth John Brown (May 9 1800 December 2 1859 was an American Abolitionist who advocated and practiced armed Insurrection as a means to end all Slavery Abolitionism was a political movement of the 18th and 19th century which sought to make Slavery illegal particularly in the United States and British West Indies The Pottawatomie Rifles was a group of abolitionist (or Free state) Kansas settlers of Franklin and Anderson counties both of which Franklin County (county code FR) is a county located in East Central Kansas, in the Central United States. This was one of the many bloody episodes in Kansas preceding the American Civil War, which came to be known collectively as Bleeding Kansas. Causes of the war See also Origins of the American Civil War, Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War The coexistence of a slave-owning South Bleeding Kansas, sometimes referred to in history as Bloody Kansas or the Border War, was a series of violent events involving Free-Staters

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,^[1] as well as by the brutal beating of anti-slavery Senator Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks. Charles Sumner (January 6 1811 &ndash March 11 1874 was an American politician and statesman from Massachusetts. Preston Smith Brooks ( August 5, 1819 &ndash January 27, 1857) was a Democratic Congressman from South Carolina (Sumner had given a firey speech to the U.S. Senate and in retaliation, Brooks caned him nearly to death. The United States Senate is the Upper house of the bicameral United States Congress, the Lower house being the House of Representatives )

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 proslavery 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" (quoted in Reynolds, p. Benjamin Franklin Stringfellow (September 3 1816-April 26 1891 was a Missouri Attorney General, a high ranking Border ruffian and one of the organizers of 162). Brown was outraged by both the violence of proslavery forces, and also by what he saw as a weak and cowardly response by the antislavery partisans and the Free State settlers, who he described as cowards, or worse (Reynolds pp. 163-166).

Attack

A Free State company under the command of John Brown, Jr. , set out, and the Osawatomie company joined them. Osawatomie is a city in Miami County, Kansas, United States, 61 miles (98 km southwest of Kansas City. On the morning of May 22, 1856, they heard of the sack of Lawrence and the arrest of Deitzler, Brown, and Jenkins. Events 334 BC - The Greek army of Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of the Granicus. Year 1856 ( MDCCCLVI) was a Leap year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian Calendar (or a Leap year 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. Events 1430 - Siege of Compiègne: Joan of Arc is captured by the Burgundians while leading an army to relieve Compiègne

On May 23, John Brown, Sr. Events 1430 - Siege of Compiègne: Joan of Arc is captured by the Burgundians while leading an army to relieve Compiègne 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, silently 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. Events 1218 - The Fifth Crusade leaves Acre for Egypt. 1276 - Magnus Ladulås is crowned 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, 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 followed their captors out into the darkness, where Owen Brown and Salmon Brown 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 death (Reynolds 2005, 172).

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 (Reynolds 2005, 172-3). 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 ruffians from Missouri, or participated in the sack of Lawrence. In the decade leading up to the American Civil War, pro- slavery activists infiltrated Kansas Territory from the neighboring Slave state of Missouri Missouri ( or) is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee 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 (Reynolds 2005, 177).

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 (Reynolds 2005, 177). Events 1085 - Alfonso VI of Castile takes Toledo Spain back from the Moors.

References

See also

Kansas in the Civil War