James Burnett Abbott, an abolitionist sceptical about the medicine of his time

December 3, 1818, Hampton, Connecticut, USA – March 2, 1897, De Soto, Kansas, USA, Major

During the guerrilla episodes of the “Bloody Kansas“, he was a comrade-in-arms of Andrew Taylor Still, but he was also the first to induce him to reflect critically on the medicine of the time.

Born in 1818 in Connecticut, he attended school and later the Potsdam and Gouverneur Academies in New York. Initially employed as a teacher, shoemaker and entrepreneur, from 1840 to 1854 he was active in several manufacturing sectors. He worked in the production of cutlery and glasses and became an expert in plating. In 1851 he lost his first wife and the following year married Elizabeth Watrous.

He was one of the first colonists to settle in Kansas; He arrived in the town of Lawrence on October 10, 1854 with the third group of emigrants organized by the New England Emigrant Aid Company and his house, located on the road to Hickory Point, became a meeting point for the abolitionists of the area.

From 1855 he was a Free State activist in Kansas. When he was sent to Boston to procure a load of weapons (a hundred Sharpe rifles and a howitzer gun) he managed to take them adventurously to Kansas territory under assumed name. He sent the weapons on different boats, disassembled and packed. He was said to be dangerous to confront with because he was made of “iron, ice and fire.”¹

In June 1855 he traced the borders that would then host the city of Palmyra on a plot of land together with other men, Andrew Taylor Still was one of them.²

On July 4 of the same year, in the city of Lawrence, the Independence Day was celebrated with a big festival and a parade. Nevertheless, everybody was affected by the drastic disagreements between the pro-slavery faction and the the antislavery one. Such a dispute had become even more critical after the Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This law decreed that each new annexed state would independently determine whether to allow slavery or not by means of a referendum.

It was becoming more and more clear that the situation would escalate. Along with Captain Saunders, Major Abbott, then thirty-seven, was the commander of an abolitionist troop of eighty men to whom Abbott entrusted the weapons he had previously smuggled.

In addition, secret societies were created that met every week to develop operational strategies. Abram, Andrew, Thomas, John e James Still probably belonged to a militia called Hickory Point Company, whose members would carry nameplates on them on which they had written their name backwards in order to be identified in case of death.

In Autumn 1855 John Brown joined James Lane, an Indiana congressman who had arrived in Kansas to support the Free State. Together they led various guerrilla episodes.

The spark ignited on 21 November 1855, and gave rise to the so-called Wakarusa War. During a quarrel over the ownership of a plot of land, a slave driver named Franklin Coleman killed an unarmed abolitionist named Charles Dow. In retaliation, two abolitionists burned Coleman’s hut, who fled and sought the protection of anti-abolitionist authorities. Perhaps there would have been no consequences if, shortly after the shooting, a man called Jacob Branson had not found Dow’s body in the street and brought it home. The sheriff enlisted a gang of twenty men and arrested Branson, accusing him of threatening a man with pro-slavery convictions. Several abolitionists, fearing that Branson would be hanged, met in Major Abbott’s hut and, while discussing what to do, saw the sheriff pass by with his men and the prisoner. Without hesitation, they blocked the road and got the prisoner back after an exchange of vehement words and a shot accidentally fired by Abbott’s revolver. The sheriff informed the governor that an insurrection was underway and demanded three thousand men to be sent there to bring Branson to justice and arrest those who had freed him.

The city of Lawrence sent an appeal for reinforcements. When at two o’clock in the morning a boy came to the Still house to raise the alarm, informing that many men from Missouri were ravaging the farms, Andrew’s family set out in the woods to go to a neighbor’s house, about a mile away, where the whole neighborhood was gathering to wait anxiously for the arrival of dawn. Terrified of making noise and taking turns in carrying the children, Andrew’s mother, Martha Still, and his two sisters Cassie and Marovia joined the company and arrived safely at the designated building.

They were joined in the early hours of the day by an allied militia, the Hickory Point Company, among whose ranks there was Thomas Still, marching to defend Lawrence. Later in the morning the militia accompanied the Still family back home and Martha went out to take some meat from the smokehouse and feed the men. Just then, an armed gang arrived and told her to go home and send her sons out. The attackers were surprised when not only the Still brothers emerged from the door, but also about twenty of their companions with their guns blazing. They decided to withdraw, but warned that they had targeted Andrew Taylor Still, Major Abbott, and Captain Saunders because they had participated in the liberation of Branson.

Before leaving though, they had challenged them to fight in the evening of that very day in Franklin. The Hickory Point Company, with the support of James Lane’s troops, presented themselves at the appointment and prevailed with relative ease. However, after that episode Andrew Taylor and Major Abbott felt it prudent to hide in the woods for some time.²

Later, Major Abbott commanded the Third Regiment of the Free State Troops during the Sack of Lawrence in 1856, and fought alongside John Brown at Black Jack. He was also a member of the First House of Representatives of Kansas, elected under the Topeka Constitution, and in 1857 became a senator.

In 1859, a certain Dr. John Doy was arrested near Lawrence by anti-abolitionists, who falsely accused him of fleeing slaves and led him to St. Joseph, where he was tried and sentenced to five years in prison. On that occasion Major Abbott organized a team of ten men who became the protagonists of a daring rescue.¹

In 1861, after the adoption of the Wyandotte Constitution, Abbott became a member of the Lower House of the Kansas Legislative Assembly. In the same year he moved to DeSoto and was appointed Shawnee Indians agent, a post he held until 1866.

In 1864, when Major General Sterling Price attacked Missouri and Kansas in an attempt to reconquer St. Louis and turn the tide of the Civil War in favor of the Southerners, Abbott led a group of Shawnee Indians who fought against the Confederates.

He was a great worker, a lover of the territory, ready to help others. He did not belong to a specific religious creed, rather he was a man endowed with spiritual and mental independence that brought him to seek the truth. He believed in brotherhood and good works.

He died in De Soto, Johnson County, on March 2, 1897,¹ two days before the State of Missouri passed the Osteopathy Act, a circumstance that Dr A.T. Still did not neglect to mention in his speech during the celebrations.