Early Life and Bleeding Kansas
James Montgomery was born to James and Mary Baldwin Montgomery in Austinburg, Ashtabula County, Ohio, on December 22, 1814. He migrated to Kentucky in 1837 with his parents and eventually taught school there. He married, but his first wife died shortly after the wedding, so he married again to Clarinda Evans. They moved to Pike County, Missouri, in 1852, and then to Jackson County and finally Bates County while awaiting the organization of Kansas for settlement.
In 1854 Montgomery purchased land near present day Mound City, Kansas, where he became a leader of local Free-state men and was a fervent abolitionist. In 1857 he organized and commanded a "Self-Protective Company", using it to order pro-slavery settlers out of the region. Conflict with other pro-slavery elements led territorial governor James W. Denver to dispatch U.S. Army soldiers in to restore order. Montgomery at times cooperated with the abolitionist John Brown and considered a raid to rescue Brown after his capture in Virginia, but snow in Pennsylvania upset his plan.
Read more about this topic: James Montgomery (colonel)
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, bleeding and/or kansas:
“Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else—we are the busiest people in the world.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“Love in fantastic triumph sat,
Whilst bleeding hearts around him flowed,”
—Aphra Behn (1640–1689)
“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.... Now I know we’re not in Kansas.”
—Noel Langley (1898–1981)