Explanation: During the years of ‘Bleeding Kansas’, pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces fought a series of vigilante actions against one another as part of a broader struggle over slavery in the pre-Civil War USA. One major antislavery figure - John Brown - committed a particularly famous (or infamous) killing of supporters of the fraudulent pro-slavery state government after ambushing them in their homes late at night, and then hacking them to bits with broadswords.