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143 six v Kansans and Antislavery Kansas entered the Union with its antislavery reputation firmly established by the Bleeding Kansas ideological struggle of the 1850s. For many of the state’s activists, war had long been expected and indeed was welcomed. In 1862, for instance, E. B. Whitman wrote that had it not been for “our successful struggle in Kansas the nation would never have been in the throes of deliverance from the monster slavery, as she is to day.”1 As a result, it should come as no surprise that some Kansans were at the forefront of both “liberating” slaves and recruiting African Americans for service in the Union army. The effort to free slaves began informally—as in the territorial period, Kansans crossed the border to rescue Missouri slaves. By September 1861, the provisional governor of Missouri, Hamilton R. Gamble, had warned President Lincoln that something had to be done about this antislavery activity. Moreover, Gamble was worried that Kansans were arming African Americans to cross into Missouri and commit depredations. With a rumored Southern force seventy thousand strong forming in Arkansas to invade his state, Gamble did not want to have to be “diverting a portion of my force from this necessary object to the slaying of negro invaders and their associates.”2 Gamble was right to be concerned. Although there would be no Negro invasion, Kansas’s citizens were spiriting some of Missouri’s slave population into their state. By November 1861, Lane’s Brigade had “scores of Negroes in ranks as teamsters, cooks, even soldiers.” In November, two of the brigade’s chaplains, H. H. Moore and H. D. Fisher, escorted “a black brigade of 160 wagons filled with Negroes into Kansas.”3 Senator James H. Lane wanted to persuade Lincoln to accept the African American troops he was raising in Kansas. Although he had been explicitly told by both the president and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that the United States would not accept any such troops, Lane persisted. By August 1862, the First Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment had been organized at Fort Scott, Kansas. But the lack of enthusiasm in the White House was mirrored by potential recruits. In part, their reluctance to enlist was due to Lane’s poor offer: the $10 per month offered was less than that given to white soldiers, while the certificates of freedom extended to African Americans were particularly worthless, as residence in Kansas meant these 144 kansas’s war men were already free. To fill the regiment, an attempt was even made to kidnap slaves from across the eastern border, but these men were recovered by the Missouri militia.4 Most of the recruits who formed the First Kansas Colored Infantry were not from the state, and many had been coerced into enlisting. Commanded by Colonel James M. Williams, the First Kansas Colored Infantry was largely made up of fugitive slaves from Arkansas and Missouri. Even though they had not yet been mustered into service, this regiment was the first black unit to engage the enemy. In October 1862, they fought a skirmish at Island Mound, Missouri, against a unit of Confederate guerrillas that resulted in the first combat deaths of black soldiers in the Civil War. A detachment of 225 faced 500 and, in driving off the Confederates, 10 members of the First Kansas were killed and another 12 were wounded. A few weeks later, on January 13, 1863, the regiment was formally mustered into federal service. Although Benjamin Butler had formed three regiments of black soldiers for the Union, they had been recruited in New Orleans. Thus, the First Kansas Colored Infantry was the first black regiment recruited in the North. The First Kansas Colored Infantry served in Missouri, Indian Territory, and Arkansas. It became the Seventy-ninth U.S. Colored Troops on December 13, 1864. The state also raised the Second Kansas Colored Infantry as well as an independent battery.5 The Second Kansas Colored Infantry served mainly in Arkansas; in December 1864 it became the Eighty-third U.S. Colored Troops. Like many black troops throughout the Union army, service carried a particular risk—that Confederates would not respect their uniforms and would refuse to take them as prisoners of war. During the battle of Poison Spring, Arkansas, in April 1864, of the 438 men and officers who joined the battle, the First Kansas Colored Infantry lost 117, and another 65 were wounded in the engagement. As its commander, James Williams, reported...

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