#proslavery

“Fear & excitement”

John Stringfellow, Speaker of the House of Kansas

John Stringfellow’s Squatter Sovereign advised that good proslavery men must somehow silence their antislavery counterparts. John Brown’s murders proved the pointand he did not shy from connecting them to anyone who gave them aid and shelter, however uninvolved in the killing itself. That didn’t mean they should go out of their way to murder…

“There must be no night work”

John Stringfellow, Speaker of the House of Kansas

The Squatter Sovereign advised its reader that in response to the Pottawatomie murders,

Every pro-slavery men in Atchison county ought immediately to call at Atchison, and learn the news and course determined.

They had abolitionists to hunt. It wouldn’t take a psychic to see the solution the paper had in mind, though coordinating our of Atchison…

Wilson Shannon thought it best to use the military to suppress the free state movement in order to restore the proslavery order in Kansas. This, in turn, would prevent his territory sparking a general civil war. Armed bands of proslavery men might endanger that project, but nowhere near so much as the antislavery side would. Shannon believed that…

“A force competent to put it down”

Wilson Shannon

Wilson Shannon at last had cause to use the power that Franklin Pierce had delegated to him and call out the 1st Cavalry to preserve order in Kansas. That meant, to both men, suppressing the antislavery movementin the territory. Armed bands of proslavery men didn’t warrant anything like similar concern. That didn’t mean Shannon was entirely blind to the optics of the situation,…

“A force competent to put it down”

Wilson Shannon

Governor Shannon had to do something. His choice of nothing previously worked the ruin he now faced. By ignoring Lawrence’s reasonable fears that a proslavery “posse” would turn out a band of hooligans bent on their destruction, he made their rampage through the town possible. In response to that devastation, John Brown went off into the night and committed five murders with his…

“How long shall these things continue?”

Wilson Shannon

William Barbee wrote Governor Shannon that proslavery families fled the Osawatomie areafor fear of John Brown’s murdering band. He and the rest of the Kansas militia needed arms and reinforcements to keep what fragile peace remained. They could get the latter from the United States Cavalry out of Fort Scott, but the militia still needed more guns than it had. So if the Governor…

“I’ll drive this knife to the hilt until I find your life”

John Brown

Squire Morse, an old Michigander with two kids, sold Frederick Brown some lead barsthat he took over to the Grant house to make into bullets. Dutch Bill Sherman and his proslavery friends took note of that and told Morse that he needed to quit the area or he would leave it permanently at the end of a rope. He had until eleven that morning to get gone, at which point they returned and…