The Immortal Ten

The Immortal Ten were a group of militant abolitionists and Free-Staters in the Kansas Territory who, on July 23, 1859, freed Dr. John Doy from a Missouri jail, where he was being held for allegedly abducting slaves.

Doy and his 19-year-old son Charles were fellow abolitionists who had been arrested by pro-slavery Missouri bounty hunters while trying to deliver slaves to freedom in the Nebraska Territory via the Underground Railroad.

[1] The episode occurred during a period of violent interstate ideological conflict preceding the American Civil War known as "Bleeding Kansas".

On January 25, 1859, the Doys were passing through Lawrence, Kansas en route to the Nebraska Territory with thirteen slaves.

In the summer of 1859, while Dr. Doy was imprisoned in the St. Joseph jail, Major James B. Abbott put together a crew of ten men to rescue him.

Doy was found very ill and unable to walk due to exhaustion and disease, so a couple of the men carried him out.

During the American Civil War, he joined a Colorado volunteer army fighting for the Union and was eventually promoted to the rank of captain.