Fort Baxter (Kansas)
Fort Baxter, also known as Fort Blair, was a small
Fort Baxter was established during the war by Gen.
They had happened on to some Union forces while on the way to winter camp in Texas. The Union garrison, about 25 white cavalry and 65-70 infantry men of the United States Colored Troops[4] defended the fort. Quantrill moved his men against the Union force led by Blunt out on the prairie, who was transferring a detachment from Fort Scott east to Fort Smith, Arkansas. Quantrill's guerrillas outnumbered the Union forces and killed most of them, a total of 103 men. Blunt and a few cavalry survived and escaped back to Fort Baxter.[5]
After the massacre of Blunt's force, Quantrill withdrew and continued to Texas. The troops stationed at Fort Blair and the survivors of Blunt's force moved away from Fort Baxter and into Camp Ben Butler. They buried most of the dead from both sides in mass graves.
When word of Blunt's defeat reached Fort Scott, Kansas, five companies of US troops were sent to temporarily reinforce Baxter Springs. But on October 20, 1863, the troops in Baxter Springs were ordered to abandon the area and return to the better-fortified Fort Scott. They destroyed and burned everything they could not take with them, and the US Army abandoned Fort Baxter as a military post.[6]
See also
- Kansas Forts and Posts
- Camp Ben Butler.
References
- ^ Woodbury F. Pride, The History of Fort Riley (n.p.: 1926), p. 46
- ^ William E. Connelley, Quantrill and the Border Wars, New York: Pageant Book Co., 1956), 1956 ed., p. 422.
- ^ Edited, Frank W. Blackmar, Kansas: a cyclopedia of state history, embracing events, institutions, industries, counties, cities, towns, prominent persons, etc. ... / with a supplementary volume devoted to selected personal history and reminiscence, Vol. 1 of 3, Chicago: Standard Pub. Co., 1912, p. 657
- ^ "Chapter XIII: The History of Baxter Springs", History of Cherokee County, Kansas and representative citizens, Ed. and comp. by Nathaniel Thompson Allison, 1904
- ^ Connelley, pp. 430,, 432-4.
- ^ Hugh L. Thompson, "Baxter Springs as a Military Post—1862–1863," Kansas in the Civil War Battles and Campaigns, Vol. 3, pp. 32-4 (from the Kansas State Historical Society).
External links
- "Fort Baxter" Archived 2007-12-03 at the Wayback Machine, 1912, Genweb Archives, Library, State of Kansas
- "Fort Baxter", Civil War Talk forum
- William C. Pollard, Jr., Kansas Forts During the Civil War, Library of Virginia - Old West Forts