History of the United States I / Unit 14 USH1 1991 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Lawrence and Pottawatomie
The idea
The two events are usually paired and the pairing conceals what happened. At Lawrence on May twenty-first, eighteen fifty-six, a posse destroyed two newspaper presses and burned a deserted hotel, and no resident was harmed. Three days later John Brown led seven men to proslavery settlers near Pottawatomie Creek and killed five of them, two by broadsword and one shot in the forehead. None of those killed had enslaved anybody or taken part in the raid on Lawrence.
In practice
An attack on property answered three days later by an attack on five people who had taken no part in it.
Where people slip
Hold both facts at once, because each side's account keeps only one. Lawrence was lawless, carried out under a false claim of court authority behind banners reading Southern rights and the Superiority of the White Race. Pottawatomie was murder of men who had done nothing. The guerrilla war that followed produced over a hundred and fifty deaths.
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