In 1856, three years before his celebrated raid on Harpers Ferry, John Brown, with...
In reprisal for the Sack of Lawrence and the attack on Charles Sumner, John Brown and six companions murdered five pro-slavery men at Pottawatomie Creek in Kansas. A war of reprisals left 200 dead in “Bleeding Kansas.”
Anti-slavery and pro-slavery forces in Kansas clashed in a series of violent conflicts throughout the 1850s.