Bleeding Kansas (King, 1993)

Both sides resorted to violence. In early 1856 a band of proslavery supporters rode into Lawarence, threw printing presses into the river, set the hotel on fire, and killed one man. Three nights later, John Brown, an antislavery activist, led a small band into a proslavery area. They dragged from their homes five men who had had nothing to do with the attack on Lawrence and hacked them to death. The fighting between proslavery and antislavery groups raged for weeks, at the cost of more than 200 lives. Only the arrival of the United States Army created an uneasy peace in what people were now calling "bleeding Kansas."