The Battle of Mine Creek: The Crushing End of the Missouri Campaign

freedom.

Introduction

History is most often written by the victors and not the vanquished. The Battle of Mine Creek is no exception. On October 25, 1864, on the gently rolling plains of eastern Kansas, Union forces under the joint commands of Major Generals Samuel Curtis and Alfred Pleasonton caught up with the rear guard of Major General Sterling Price’s twelve-thousand-strong army after a two-day rapid pursuit following the massive Union victory at the Battle of Westport in Kansas City. After the first contact at the tiny hamlet of Trading Post, the Confederate troops under direct command of Major Generals John S. Marmaduke and James F. Fagan struggled to maintain a rear guard action that would prevent Curtis and Pleasonton’s cavalry from reaching and destroying General Price’s massive wagon train laden with supplies, prisoners, captured loot, weapons and food.

The climactic battle of the day occurred at Mine Creek, a small tributary to the Little Osage River near modern-day Pleasanton, Kansas. About 2,600 blue-coated cavalry troops, led by Colonel John F. Phillips and Lieutenant Colonel Frederick W. Benteen, stared down the guns of about 8,000 Confederate cavalrymen arrayed in a skirmish line that stretched nearly half a mile across. In a short but fierce battle, these Union troops completely smashed the Confederate forces and sent them scrambling farther south.

In his book October 25th and the Battle of Mine Creek, Lumir Buresh likens this charge to the charge of the British Light Brigade that had occurred exactly ten years before, on October 25, 1854, during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War. In terms of audacity in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, this cannot be far from the truth. What a sight this must have been for these Union troopers.

This is the only battle of the entire American Civil War that took place in Kansas. It is largely ignored and nearly completely misunderstood. What makes this remarkable is the fact that it is among the largest cavalry battles of the entire war. When the opposing sides faced each other at Mine Creek, they numbered nearly eleven thousand in total. In terms of magnitude, the Battle of Mine Creek compares with many of the well-known battles in the East. Yet there was little newspaper coverage and few stories that related this mighty charge to the American public despite the fact that this battle effectively ended the Missouri Campaign in the Trans-Mississippi theater of operations. U.S. Army senior historian Kendall Gott said that after this battle none of Sterling Price’s forces get back into the war—Sterling Price’s command is gone.

I hope to make this a book for all of the people of Kansas and Missouri, Civil War historians and those who simply want to read about a battle that took place so long ago on the wind-swept plains of Kansas. Can this be considered a great battle? I hope to show that it can be. From the origins of Bleeding Kansas, the goals of Sterling Price’s Missouri Campaign, the Battle of Westport and the aftermath, I hope to effectively relate the impact that the Battle of Mine Creek had on Kansas, Missouri, the Trans-Mississippi theater, President Lincoln’s reelection in 1864 and the American Civil War as a whole.

Chapter 1

Bleeding Kansas

On the lintels of Kansas

That blood shall not dry;

Henceforth the Bad Angel

Shall harmless go by;

Henceforth to the sunset,

Unchecked on her way,

Shall Liberty follow

The march of the day.

–John Greenleaf Whittier, 1858

On the spring morning of May 19, 1858, a band of about thirty armed proslavery border ruffians, led by Georgia native Charles Hamilton, crossed the border from Missouri into Kansas territory. Hamilton had come to the border area only a couple of years before intent on aiding the proslavery faction, which was mostly from the state of Missouri, in swaying Kansas to become a slave state. This was just one instance of a string of occurrences that erupted on the border between Kansas and Missouri. These small clashes often involved looting, the burning of homes and businesses, the killing of cattle, beatings and, occasionally, deaths.

On this May morning, the situation on the border took a horrible turn. Hamilton had allegedly warned sometime before this day that we are coming up there to kill snakes, and will treat all we find there as snakes. In a small ravine on the gently rolling prairie of eastern Kansas, he pointedly fulfilled his promise. During that day’s foray into the territory, Hamilton and his men had rounded up eleven free state men. These men were completely unarmed, and most of them actually knew Hamilton since he had been in the area for a couple of years. The free staters, rounded up only because they favored keeping Kansas free from slavery, were marched into a hilly, secluded area and told to form in a line. Hamilton and his band of ruffians formed in a line opposite them. He then ordered his men to open fire and reportedly fired the first shot himself. After the first volley, they dismounted and used pistols to finish the deed. Of the eleven men, five were murdered on the spot. The rest were wounded, except for one man who had been untouched and had feigned being hit to escape the onslaught. Hamilton’s band then turned and quickly fled for the safety of Missouri. This event became known as the Marais des Cygnes Massacre and was just one in a string of instances that caused famed editor of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley, to label this troubled territory Bleeding Kansas.

Many have argued that Kansas is the Cradle of the Civil War. In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed the newly created territories of Kansas and Nebraska to use popular sovereignty to decide whether each would allow slavery or abolish it on its home soil. This would effectively negate the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which delighted a great many in the proslavery faction. By allowing squatter sovereignty to decide whether a state or territory would welcome slavery or not, the area radically changed the way that the ever expanding country could take shape. Under the Missouri Compromise, slavery was prohibited in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36°30' north except within the boundaries of the proposed state of Missouri. Within the framework of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, each of these new territories could enter the Union and be permitted to be slave-owning areas. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was penned by Senator Stephen A. Douglas, a prominent U.S. senator from Illinois. Senator Douglas hoped that this would effectively end years of often bitter debate between slaveholders and abolitionists by offering what he considered a concession to the Southern states allowing slavery in territories that were currently not open to slavery in the North and West.

The Marais des Cygnes Massacre. Courtesy of the Kansas State Historical Society.

U.S. senator Stephen A. Douglas. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Suddenly, Kansas mattered. With the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the newly formed Kansas and Nebraska Territories were effectively open to settlement by pioneers heading west in droves, seeking land and new lives. The result of this touched off a firestorm of political fighting and ignited a proxy war that reverberated throughout the United States and ultimately was a precursor to the American Civil War. The Kansas Territory and the western parts of Missouri became a microcosm of the slavery issue that had been raging for years. Among the settlers were proslavery sympathizers primarily from Missouri and other parts of the South and abolitionists primarily from the North, many from New England.

Missouri, a slave state, certainly had a vested interest in seeing Kansas join the ranks of slave states. It was currently bordered by Iowa and Illinois, both free states, and Arkansas, a slave state. If Kansas were to become a free state, it would mean that Missouri would now be surrounded by free state territory, with the exception of Arkansas. This was viewed by proslavery Missouri as a considerable threat. If it was to be surrounded on three sides by free states, then it could reasonably be expected that an even greater increase of abolitionist activity would occur, including escapes and Underground Railroad aid. The Kansas-Nebraska Act gave the slave state faction a new hope in keeping the status quo since up to this point there were about the same number of slave states as there were free states. Under the Missouri Compromise, any new states entering the Union would be free. Under the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the decision could go either way. The stage was set for battle.

Initially, most of the new settlers were proslavery due to the proximity to Missouri. They had a short distance to travel to set up communities in towns such as Atchison, named for ardent slavery supporter Senator David Rice Atchison, and Leavenworth. The result of this early flow of proslavery settlers was that, at the outset at least, Kansas appeared well on the way to becoming a slave state. Once the slave staters arrived in Kansas, they began to exert their influence on the political scene in the new territory. While the Free Soilers were later to arrive, they slowly set up initially around the Free State Fortress of Lawrence and were ready to use their influence to ensure that Kansas was free.

By the spring of 1855, it was time for territorial elections. Missourians were ready. Thousands were exhorted to form in large groups to travel to Kansas and vote. General James H. Stringfellow said that [f]amilies with all their slaves are making preparations to move as soon as the weather will permit. He also called for his fellow slave staters to vote at the point of the bowie-knife and the revolver. This type of furor was intense on both sides of the debate. Although there were only about two thousand registered voters in Kansas at the time of the territorial elections, there were about six thousand ballots cast due to this questionable tactic by the slave staters. Kansas governor Andrew H. Reeder was in a quandary after this election. He was tormented about the decision but knew that President Franklin Pierce’s administration would roar if he made trouble.

An antislavery ad. Courtesy of the Kansas State Historical Society.

A Bleeding Kansas poster. Courtesy of the Kansas State Historical Society.

Southern chivalry: argument versus club. Courtesy of John Magee.

Forcing Slavery Down the Throat of a Freesoiler. Courtesy of John Magee.

The question now was whether to declare the election a fraud and call for a new one. Governor Reeder had been threatened bodily and might be killed if he were to completely overturn the election, so he decided to call it valid but threw out