Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 20, 2025
"I don't dare to tell you the rest of this story as the old Pottawatomie told it to me, for it is near bedtime and these are the very trees between which the ghostly, ghastly figures flitted in the darkness. It is all past and gone now and you need have no fear. You boys on the outer edge who are crowding up to the light of the camp-fire are just as safe as the fellows in the middle.
In a letter to his wife, dated June 26, 1856, more than a month after the massacre in Pottawatomie Valley, Brown said: "On our way to Lawrence we learned that it had been already destroyed, and we encamped with John's company overnight.... On the second day and evening after we left John's men, we encountered quite a number of pro-slavery men and took quite a number of prisoners.
Every acre good, bad, or indifferent was gobbled up, and, like as from an army of Oliver Twists, the cry went up for more. Then the Iowa and Pottawatomie reservations were placed on the market. They lasted a day only, and the still unsatisfied crowd began another agitation. Resultant of this, a third bargain-counter sale took place. The big Cheyenne and Arapahoe country was opened for settlement.
These were terrible years when fierce events followed one another in quick succession the rush of both slave-holders and abolitionists into Kansas; the cruel war along the Wakarusa River; the sack of Lawrence by the pro-slavery party; the massacre by John Brown at Pottawatomie; the diatribes of Sumner in the Senate; the assault on Sumner by Brooks.
Our prisoners we let go, but kept some four or five horses. We were immediately after this accused of murdering five men at Pottawatomie and great efforts have been made by the Missourians and their ruffian allies to capture us. John's company soon afterwards disbanded, and also the Osawatomie men.
Andrew told them squarely that the Harper's Ferry invasion was the inevitable consequence of their attempt to force slavery on Kansas against the will of its inhabitants, and that the Pottawatomie massacre, whether John Brown was connected with it or not, was not so bad in its moral effect as the assault on Sumner. It was what they might expect from attempting to tyrannize over frontier farmers.
"In the hunting-grounds beyond the sun, he and Fluellina and Niniotan will again live together on some green island in the forest, where the buffalo and deer wander in bands of thousands." "And where Delaware, Mingo, Chippewa, Miami, Ottawa, Pottawatomie, Shawnee, Huron, and the white man shall be brothers, and war against each other no more."
Brown was also possessed of the belief that he was himself the divinely chosen agent to let loose the forces of freedom; and that this was the chief motive which prompted the deed at Pottawatomie is as probable as any other. Viewed in this light, the Pottawatomie massacre was measurably successful. Opposing forces became more clearly defined and were pitted against each other in hostile array.
Kickapoo, Pottawatomie, and Kaskaskia Indians were there to see the white-man council, scattered immovably along the streets, their copper faces glistening in the sun, the buckskin fringes on their leggins scarcely stirring as the hours crept by. Squaws stood in the full heat, erect and silent, in yellow or dark red garments woven of silky buffalo wool, and seamed with roebuck sinews.
Such a theory and practice, and the sentiments associated with it, stamped slavery with a heavier condemnation than orator or novelist could frame. This one week in May, 1856, was dark with omens of impending catastrophe. On May 20 Lawrence was devastated; on the 22d, Sumner was assaulted; and on the 24th took place the Pottawatomie massacre. A shadow as of impending doom was reflected in Mrs.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking