"I had long been of the opinion that this race had a right to kill rebels." Colonel James M. Williams was attempting to justify his dogged efforts to recruit the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry to those whites who objected to arming former slaves and black freedmen into service of the United States Army. While the 54th Massachusetts garnered more fame, even having an Academy Award winning movie made about their brave assault on Fort Wagner, there was a band of black soldiers who had fought and bled months before. Below the fold is their story.
Today most might find it strange that during the American Civil War most Northern whites would object to African-Americans serving in the ranks to put down the rebellion of the southern states and secure their own freedom. Our common sense today would be that those blacks enlisted in the fight would make excellent motivated soldiers. At that time however it was widely held by whites that blacks, due to temperament peculiar to the race, would be suitable as auxiliaries only and never as front line soldiers. One white soldier expressed that assessment as; "I will never fight by the side of a nigger and that is the feeling of the army...." A small group of abolitionist Federal officers were certain that opinion was wrong. They not only believed it in error, but felt that the time had come for the runaway slaves and free blacks to join the effort on their behalf.
The catalyst for the effort to recruit a black regiment was Senator James H. Lane known in Kansas as the "Grim Chieftan." A colorful figure who dated back to Bleeding Kansas, Lane was a fiery stump speaker and politically able to bend with the wind of popular opinion. Prior to moving to Kansas lane had served as a Democrat in the Indiana legislature, lieutenant-governor of that state and as a representative to Congress. He cast an affirmative vote for the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Lane changed his political colors when in Kansas and became a staunch defender of Kansas as a free state. Lane was not an abolitionist so much as a hater of slaveholders and their system. To help destroy that economic sinew of the Confederacy Lane began to recruit a black regiment in June of 1862.
At that time it was not certain that such efforts were entirely legal. Authorization to recruit blacks as laborers in service to the Federal Army digging trenches and fortifications, hauling supplies and nursing in hospitals had been made in June. Lane had been given a commission by President Lincoln to recruit in Kansas. Lane widened that commission to include blacks as infantry. To that end Lane appointed Captain J.M. Williams of the 5th Kansas Cavalry to recruit in the region around Lawrence and Fort Leavenworth. Captain Henry Seaman of the same regiment was given the area of Mound City and Fort Scott to draw recruits from. While Senator Lane was embarking on the task of raising black units support from the Commander in Chief was hesitant. Lincoln told a delegation calling upon him that, "to arm the Negroes would turn 50,000 bayonets from the loyal Border States against us that were for us." Lane in his usual style disagreed: "Great God! They say Jim Lane can't enlist colored troops!...That is what I am here for. And I hold in my hands a list of copperheads, disloyal and rebel element in this community; and when I get through organizing colored troops, I am going off to draft these men as cooks for the Negro regiments." That was a fairly incendiary statement for 1862.
The Confederate response to the arming of black soldiers was swift. On August 21st the Confederate government issued an order which made any white officer commanding black troops a felon subject to execution. Southern troops were loudly affirming that no black prisoners would be taken. At best black Federal soldiers were to be sold back into slavery. Prior to this official notice a small group of enlisted soldiers of the 1st Kansas were detailed as foraging party on May 18th, 1862. An Ambush by three hundred rebels killed sixteen and took five prisoners. Three of the prisoners were white soldiers of the 2nd Kansas Battery. They were exchanged for three Confederates. One of the black soldiers was executed and the Confederates were presented with the demand to hand over the murderer. That demand was refused. Upon receiving the Confederate reply Colonel Williams ordered one rebel prisoners shot. The Confederate commander was informed of the action and similar incidents were curtailed.
Relations between the white troops and the first memebers of the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry were initially strained. A company of regulars camped outside the grounds of Fort Scott at a spring which served as the principal fresh water for the post placed a guard around it forbidding any black soldiers from using it. The regulars officers were heard at the local hotel loudly denouncing the use of black as soldiers. Captain Seaman's reply was to surround the regulars with the 1st Kansas preventing them from gaining access to the comforts of the town and fort. Several regulars were arrested and held before a conference was held and a compromise was met.
In September and October of 1862 both of the commands were moved to Fort Lincoln on the banks of the Little Osage River under the command of newly promoted Colonel Williams. There they were equipped with gray uniforms and antique Belgian muskets. These weapons were castoffs rejected earlier by the Federal army as worthless. Their range was short even for the day. Being of large caliber was somewhat of a mitigation as anyone so unlucky as to be actually shot by one would certainly have a large wound to survive. One white soldier had previously described the Belgian muskets as little better than making muskets from two inch water pipe. Dressing the regiment in gray was not much of a determent as being black the 1st Kansas was not likely to be confused for Confederates. Equipped so the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry was about to see it's first large unit action.
On October 27th, 1862, Captain Seaman marched 250 soldiers of the 1st Kansas and a few cavalrymen of the 5th Kansas from Fort Lincoln towards Butler Missouri. Their mission was to scout out reports of Confederate recruiting efforts in that area. The morning of the 28th found the command emerging from a belt of timber along the Marais des Cygnes River, pronounced "Mary Dasun" by the locals, and spotted horseman on mounds overlooking the river. Unable to catch the figures the battalion settled in for the night at a log farmhouse owned by a southern sypmpathizer. Captain Seaman took the precaution to fortify the place with split rail fencing to form a barricade. The next morning the small band was attacked by a large group of mounted irregulars. The fight was brief but violent. The Confederates set fire to the tall grass prairie as the wind was blowing towards the fortified house. The 1st Kansas replied as best they could with their near useless muskets by fixing bayonets and charging directly into the flames. For no longer than twenty minutes the fighting was hand to hand. Advantage was to the black soldiers having closed on the irregulars who had neither their training or apparently their courage. The Rebels fled.
The 1st Kansas Colored lost one white officer killed and one wounded. Among the enlisted nine were killed and eleven wounded for a total loss of ten killed and twelve wounded. A courier was sent to Forts Scott and Lincoln to bring up mounted forces in order to pursue. The reinforcements arrived on the 30th, but the Confederates had made good thier escape. Kansas was quick to recognize the action. Accounts were publicized in the Leavenworth Kansas Daily Conservative on November 4th and by the Lawrence Republican on the 6th. Both papers extolled the bravery of the black soldiers, but both tended to concentrate column space on the fearlessness of the white officers. This may have been due to having access to officers' official accounts, or to the illeteracy of the enlisted soldiers or perhaps to outright discrimination. At any rate for the first time it was publicly noted that blacks had fought and aquuitted themselves well.
Much of the later service of the 1st Kansas Colored was spent in guarding supply lines and cutting hay. These tasks may have been menial and there were many officers who felt that those duties were the only ones to which black soldiers were capable of, but in the theater of the Trans-Mississippi those assignments were vital to keeping an army in the field. Other than beef cattle the region raised little more corn than what was necessary to feed itself and this was before active operations. Once the armies started moving about the plains of the Indian Territory and the Ozarks of Missouri and Arkansas most residents hid or left altogether. Few row crops were raised. In order for the Union army to penetrate into Confederate territory they had to bring their own food and fodder with them. This necessarily meant miles long wagon trains to supply the combat forces. The next fight of the 1st Kansas Colored was in defence of one of those supply trains.
In the spring of 1863 the Union army held Fort Gibson in Indian Territory, present day Oklahoma. The fort was a large unfortified complex of buildings contructed prior to the war in order to keep the Civilized Tribes on their own land and to protect the Native Americans from depredations by whites. General James Blunt had pushed a moderately large multi-racial force composed of Kansas and Native cavalry units deep into Indian Territory securing the fort, but he had reached the end of his supply tether. A large supply train was formed at Fort Scott in Kansas in order to supply the force at Fort Gibson, by now suffering from hunger and dysentery concurrently, and the 1st Kansas Colored was detailed to guard its arrival to Fort Gibson. Along with the 1st were small units of the 6th and 9th Kansas Cavalry, six companies of the 2nd Colorado Infantry, one section ( two guns ) of the 2nd Kansas Battery and three hundred loyal Cherokee. This was a force of about eight hundred men.
The supply train arrived at Cabin Creek on July 1st, 1863. The creek was in flood and crossing the heavily laden wagons was impossible. An additional hindrance was the presence of twenty-two hundred Texans and Natives under Generals Stand Waitie and Douglass Cooper. The Confederates had dug themselves in two lines of rifle pits above the creek along its wooded and steep banks blocking the ford. To the east the armies of Meade and Lee were engaged in a titanic struggle at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Closer U.S. Grant was besiging the Confederate army clinging to Vicksburg. In the far west the 1st Kansas bedded down for night knowing that the time had come to test their training and courage.
At dawn of the 2nd the 1st Kansas Colored faced to it's immediate front two rows of five hundred riflemen holding a line of four hundred yards. To assault that position, across the swollen creek, up the vine choked embankment, the 1st would be facing a force capable of throwing out two thousand rounds a minute at two rounds per man per minute. Some rifleman could achieve three rounds a minute. That meant a bullet nearly every foot, twice a minute. Colonel Williams pounded the Confederate line with his guns for forty minutes in preparation. Williams tested the Confederate line with the Cherokee mounted troopers and noted the positions of his enemy. Satisfied he ordered the 1st Kansas Colored forward.
Colonel Williams led the black soldiers from the front into the creek and up the far bank. Reaching dry ground the 1st reformed its ranks and at a run climbed the slope above losing soldiers along the way. The 1st maintained its line and reached the blaxing rifle pits. At that point the Confederates broke and ran. The rebels attempted a stand a short distance from the creek, but the 1st pursued them forcing them into rout. The Confederates were unable to regain cohesion. The 1st Kansas Colored pursued the retreating rebels for five miles.
The action at Cabin Creek on July 2nd, 1863 proved to even the most sceptical that not only would black men fight for the Union, not only for their freedom and their childrens freedom, but that white soldiers would fight alongside the blacks and that a force so comprised could win. The 1st Kansas Colored had suffered eight killed and thirty wounded. Considering the obstacles before them such light casualties were miraculous. It was assumed that being above the charging soldiers of the 1st the Confederates had made the common mistake of aiming too high.
The 1st Kansas Colored Infantry went on to larger fights. They were critical to Federal victory at the largest action in Indian Territory at Honey Springs two weeks later. Perhaps this and the gallant charge of the 54th Massachusetts was on President Lincoln's mind when in late August of 1863 he remarked to visitors complaining of the policy of arming blacks; "You say you will not fight to free Negroes. Some of them seem to be willing enough to fight for you." Later that day he wrote to Democratic opponents of the policy; "You are dissatisfied with me about the negro [but] some of the commanders of our armies in the field who have given us our most important successes, believe... the use of colored troops, contitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebellion... when this war was won, there will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and stady eye, and well poised bayonet, they helped mankind on to this great conummation; while, I fear there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, they have strove to hinder it."
The 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry went on to suffer massacre at the Battle of Poison Springs nine months after Honey Springs. Once again in defense of the supply train, it suffered the loss of half of its numbers, many bayoneted in the act of surrender. The 1st Kansas Colored was discharged at Fort Leavenworth in October 1865. Only one personal account from among the ranks was recorded and that second hand by the son of one of the regiments enlisted men. Officer accounts survive in the Official Records and in a few melodramatic and inaccurate newspaper stories. An obelisk stands at Fort Scott Kansas commemorating their service and a plaque not far from the Honey Springs battlefield does as well. Little else remains.
It is with honor I would mention in closing that my great-great grandfather served in the 6th Kansas Cavalry and fought with the 1st Kansas Colored at Cabin Creek and Honey Springs when having lost one of his sons serving alongside him asked and was granted leave to return to Fort Scott by General Blunt.
If you are interested in the story of the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry the best sources online are the Kansas Guard Museum the Territorial Kansas Online and the American Heritage on line from which this was sourced. The American Heritage site also has a short account of Colin Powell and his efforts to remember the 9th and 10th US Cavalry, the "Buffalo Soldiers" at Fort Leavenworth.