Pottawatomie Massacre | Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1854-1865

On May 24, 1856, the Pottawatomie Massacre took place. John Brown and abolitionist settlers killed five pro-slavery settlers in Franklin County, Kansas. From the article:

"On the night of May 24, 1856, the radical abolitionist John Brown, five of his sons, and three other associates murdered five proslavery men at three different cabins along the banks of Pottawatomie Creek, near present-day Lane, Kansas. Brown had been enraged by both the sacking of the anti-slavery town of Lawrence several days before and the vicious attack on Charles Sumner on the floor of the U.S. Senate, in which Representative Preston Brooks, of South Carolina, relentlessly beat Sumner with a cane. The killings at Pottawatomie Creek marked the beginning of the bloodletting of the “Bleeding Kansas” period, as both sides of the slavery issue embarked on a campaign of terror, intimidation, and armed conflict that lasted throughout the summer."