The sacking of Lawrence occurred on May 21, 1856, when pro-slavery settlers, led by Douglas County Sheriff Samuel J. Jones, attacked and ransacked Lawrence, Kansas, a town which had been founded by anti-slavery settlers from Massachusetts who were hoping to make Kansas a free state. The incident fueled the irregular conflict in Kansas Territory that later became known as Bleeding Kansas. The human cost of the attack was low: only one persona member of the pro-slavery gangwas killed, and his death was accidental. However, Jones and his men halted production of the Free-State newspapers the Kansas Free State and the Herald of Freedom (with the former ceasing publication altogether and the latter taking months to once again start up). The pro-slavery men also destroyed the Free State Hotel and Charles L. Robinson's house. Background Lawrence was founded in 1854 by antislavery settlers from Massachusetts, many of whom received financial support from the New England Emigrant Aid Company. The town was the de facto headquarters of Free-State Kansas, for which reason it soon became the epicenter of violence in the territory. The many pro-slavery settlers in eastern Kansas loathed the Free-State residents of the town (and vice versa). While the village had nearly been raided during the so-called Wakarusa War in December 1855, it was not directly attacked at that time. Abolitionists and Free-Staters at the time saw the sack as a reply to the non-fatal shooting on April 23, 1856, of Douglas County Sheriff Samuel J. Jones, who was in Lawrence attempting to arrest Free-State settlers. Lawrence residents drove Jones out of town after they shot him. On May 11, Federal Marshal Israel B. Donaldson proclaimed that the "assassination attempt" had interfered with the execution of warrants against the extralegal Free-State legislature, which was set up in opposition to the official pro-slavery or "bogus" territorial government. Donaldson's proclamation and the presentment by the first district of Kansas's grand jury that "the building known as the 'Free State' Hotel' in Lawrence had been constructed with a view to military occupation and defense, regularly parapeted and portholed, for the use of cannon and small arms, thereby endangering the public safety, and encouraging rebellion and sedition in this country" enabled Sheriff Jones and Marshal Donaldson assembling an army of roughly 800 Southern settlers. This group planned to enter Lawrence, disarm the citizens, destroy the antislavery newspapers, and level the Free State Hotel. Sack