Stark Mad Abolitionists: Lawrence, Kansas, and the Battle over Slavery in the Civil War Era
✍ Scribed by Sutton, Robert K
- Book ID
- 109876503
- Publisher
- Skyhorse Publishing
- Year
- 2017
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 4 MB
- Category
- Fiction
- ISBN-13
- 9781510716490
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
In May, 1854, Massachusetts was in an uproar. A judge, bound by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, had just ordered a young African American man who had escaped from slavery in Virginia and settled in Boston to be returned to bondage in the South. An estimated 50,000 citizen rioted in protest. Observing the scene was Amos Adams Lawrence, a wealthy Bostonian, who "waked up a stark mad Abolitionist." As quickly as Lawrence waked up, he combined his fortune and his energy with others to create the New England Emigrant Aid Company to encourage abolitionists to emigrate to Kansas to ensure that it would be a free state.
The town that came to bear Lawrence's name became the battleground for the soul of America, with abolitionists battling pro-slavery Missourians who were determined to make Kansas a slave state. The onset of the Civil War only escalated the violence, leading to the infamous raid of William Clarke Quantrill when he led a band of vicious Confederates (including a young...