True West Magazine
About 800 pro-slavery men attacked the antislavery town of Lawrence, Kansas on May 21, 1856. The invaders aimed to destroy the buildings of Lawrence, not to get into a fight with the citizens.
The people of Lawrence did not resist, and much of their town was blown up or torched. The main target was the Free State Hotel, a center of antislavery actions in the region. Ironically, it was the source of the only casualty of the day. One of the attackers was hit on the head by falling debris from the hotel and died on the spot. Post Views:
True West Magazine
On September 19, 1876, Bill Cox and several men shot to death Dr. Phillip Brassell and his son George near Yorktown, Texas. The incident was tied to the Sutton-Taylor Feud. Cox and the others got away with the murders.
A few years later, Cox moved to New Mexico. He reinvented himself as W.W. Cox, a successful rancher, businessman and civic leader. But some things didn’t change. Cox was implicated in the 1896 murders of Albert Jennings Fountain and his son. He was also tied to the assassination of Pat Garrett in 1908. Post Views: 49
Bloody Bill Anderson got little respect in death. The Confederate guerilla died in battle on…
True West Magazine
John Stiles Holliday
Phillip Brassell was a doctor in Fayette County, Georgia in the years after the Civil War. And he was sick–tuberculosis, made worse by the climate. It’s likely that he consulted with the only other physician in the county about what to do. It’s not clear what Dr. John Stiles Holliday (photo) might have told him. But in 1870, Brassell took his family to Texas.
Dr. Holliday’s nephew, a dentist, followed the same route when he was diagnosed with consumption a couple of years later. Dr. Brassell died in the Sutton-Taylor Feud. Doc Holliday went on to greater infamy.