On August 21, 1863, a Confederate guerilla group led by William Quantrill attacked citizens in the town of Lawrence, Kansas, during the American Civil War. Guerillas killed more than 150 boys and men and burned much of the town. The Lawrence Massacre, also known as Quantrill’s raid, was a culmination of tension between local abolitionists and pro-slavery partisans along the Missouri-Kansas border. These border tensions had been brewing for some time. Beginning in 1855, pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers engaged in a series of violent confrontations and political killings over whether Kansas would be a free state or a slave state, leading to a border war known as “Bleeding Kansas.” Lawrence was founded along the Oregon Trail on the homelands of the Kaw, Lakota, Osage, and Kikapoo by New Englanders. Considered the anti-slavery capital, Lawrence was well-known as a stronghold for abolitionists and the Free-State movement. Continue reading…

Source: Fold3.com

I went through old posts and found hints of an increase in data centers, at least in the early 2000s. One company tried to tell a story of why we need them and created a mural project; they also bought a 1960s power plant.

In 2010, Greenpeace posted a warning and petition re:

The Internet is how we connect, learn new things, and share what we love. But right now, much of our Internet is also dirty, no matter how we use it.

Data centers are where Internet companies store our photos, messages, and music, and many are powered by coal and dirty energy sources that pollute our environment and harm our climate.

What’s worse — the Internet’s demand for energy is only growing. If the Internet were a country, its electricity use would already rank sixth in the world.

Source: Greenpeace petition

I use the Internet daily for research and other purposes, like blogging or sharing information that might help someone. It’s truly embarrassing to realize that warnings about Data Centers were in the news some time ago! However, they were not given enough airtime or a proper platform to inform the public. Now, it is 2026; some parts of our country are suffering from droughts, while others have seen their land devastated not only by historic floods, but also by the fact that building data centers requires not only a lot of land but also an enormous amount of energy and water.

~ Nativegrly77

Quantrill’s Raid on Lawrence

By Kristen Epps, University of Central Arkansas

William Quantrill’s raid on the Free-State town of Lawrence, Kansas (also known as the Lawrence Massacre) was a defining moment in the border conflict. At dawn on August 21, 1863, Quantrill and his guerrillas rode into Lawrence, where they burned much of the town and killed between 160 and 190 men and boys. This raid was the culmination of an ongoing conflict between the Free-State forces who controlled Lawrence and the proslavery partisans who lived in nearby Missouri. Although Kansas entered the Union as a free state in 1861, ending the period called “Bleeding Kansas,” the animosities of the territorial period lived on with the outbreak of civil war that same year.

On that fateful August morning, a group of roughly 400 Confederate guerrillas entered the sleeping town. They immediately began to ransack homes, shoot civilians, loot stores, and set fire to buildings (including the prominent Eldridge Hotel, although Quantrill allowed its inhabitants to evacuate safely). One of the first casualties was Reverend Snyder, shot as he was milking his cow outside his home along present-day East 19th Street. Mayor George Collamore, upon hearing the commotion, hid in his family’s well, where he died of smoke inhalation. The rest of his family survived, although they had lost their home and the raiders severely wounded his 18-year-old son.

George Ellis, a free black man, had risen early to finish some work on his family’s farm. The raiders killed George’s father, but George, his brother Ben, and his mother Jane managed to survive. George hid in a dense thicket near the Kansas River, and after Quantrill’s men set the house afire, Jane successfully dragged Ben out of the flames and concealed him underneath a feather bed. In addition to targeting African Americans, the raiders also inquired about the whereabouts of notorious Free-State leaders like James H. Lane, who was able to hide in a West Lawrence cornfield to escape detection, along with several of his neighbors.

The state governor and a leader of the Free-State movement, Charles Robinson, was lucky enough to escape with his life as well.

For the complete article … use he url below

Sources:

civilwaronthewesternborder.org onthisday.com

~ It was called the Quantrill Raid, but truth is they targeted African Americans in Lawrence and the Massacre included Blacks and Whites because Lawrence was a Free-State

… Things we didn’t learn in History Class! ~Nativegrl77