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The 1913 edition of Webster's Dictionary reflects the 19th century understanding of the word ruffian as a "scoundrel, rascal, or unprincipled, deceitful, brutal and unreliable person". Among the first to use the term border ruffian in connection with the slavery issue in Kansas was the Herald of Freedom, a newspaper published in Lawrence ...
G. Murlin Welch, a historian of the territorial period described the Jayhawkers as bands of men that were willing to fight, kill, and rob for a variety of motives that included defense against pro-slavery "Border Ruffians", abolition, driving pro-slavery settlers from their claims of land, revenge, and/or plunder and personal profit. [19]
As a result of the new potential for slavery in Kansas, pro-slavery activists infiltrated Kansas Territory from the neighboring slave state of Missouri. To abolitionists and other Free-Staters, who desired Kansas to be admitted to the Union as a free state, they were collectively known as Border Ruffians. Pro-slavery Missourians flocked to ...
On the morning of August 30, 1856, a force of several hundred Border ruffians led by pro-slavery leader John W. Reid entered Osawatomie, in which John Brown and his family were staying at the cabin of the Rev. Samuel Adair, the husband of Brown's half-sister, Florella. 26-year-old Frederick Brown, the only member of the Brown family present ...
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After taking 11 local free-staters hostage from their homes and fields, the border ruffians forced them into a nearby ravine and began shooting at them. 10 of the men were hit by the fire, five of them fatally. The wife of one of the victims followed the border ruffians to the site, and attempted to give medical treatment to the wounded.
1855, March 30: Missourians who had streamed across the border (known as "Border Ruffians") fill the ballot boxes in favor of pro-slavery candidates. As a result, pro-slavery candidates prevail at every polling district except one (the future Riley County ), and the first official legislature is overwhelmingly composed of pro-slavery delegates.
The free-state leaders sent George W. Deitzler to the east to secure weapons from other anti-slavery people. Amos Lawrence and others sent crates full of rifles, to which they labeled "books" because "the border ruffians had no use for books, [and] they came through without being disturbed."