Shout out to the hero of Pottawatomi

In reaction to the sacking of Lawrence by pro-slavery forces on May 21, and the telegraphed news of the severe attack on May 22 on Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, for speaking out against slavery in Kansas, John Brown and a band of abolitionist settlers—some of them members of the Pottawatomie Rifles—made a violent reply. Just north of Pottawatomie Creek, in Franklin County, they killed five pro-slavery settlers in front of their families.

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 spared after his mother pleaded for his life.) The three men were escorted by their captors out into the darkness, where Owen Brown and his brother Frederick 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 he was dead.