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★ 125 ★ Chapter Ten Confederate Atrocities and Steele’s Retreat Confederate soldiers killed many of the First Kansas men who lay wounded on the battlefield at Poison Spring. The wounded Yankees’ comrades met the same fate in the previous racial massacre at Sherwood, Missouri. Williams, infuriated by reports from survivors, yet unable to do anything about it, wrote in this report, “Many wounded men belonging to the First Kansas Colored Volunteers fell into the hands of the enemy, and I have the most positive assurances from eye-witnesses that they were murdered on the spot.”1 Major Ward backed up Williams in his own report: “we were obliged to bring our wounded away as best we could, as the rebels were seen shooting those that fell into their hands.”2 An Arkansas Confederate soldier, probably in Cabell’s Brigade, wrote home: “If the negro was wounded our men would shoot him dead as they were passed and what negroes that were captured have . . . since been shot.”3 The Choctaw Confederates went upon a gory rampage across the battlefield, scalping the casualties (whether live, dead, black, or white), and mutilating their bodies.4 To avoid the gruesome fate of their comrades , a few of the wounded lay on the battlefield feigning death until dark, then quietly crawled away. All who remained were murdered. General Cabell recorded that his men killed eighty stragglers.5 Multiple reports by Confederate soldiers supported allegations that Union casualties on the battlefield were executed—some were even systematically 126 ★ James M. Williams run over by wagons captured from the Federal column.6 An Arkansas newspaper later reported that Confederate Indians had buried white Union officers face down in disrespect, then buried one black soldier upright to his waist as a headstone, and another upside down to serve as footstone for each of the white Union officers.7 The bias and contempt the white Confederates held for black Union soldiers were widespread. Many years later, for example, an elderly pensioner (who had been a young Confederate soldier in that battle) recollected his impression that the black soldiers must have been placed on the Yankee front line to serve as breastworks. To consider the black men as soldiers, or humans even, was beyond many people’s comprehension—such was the bias of the time.8 Three days after the battle, a detachment from the Eighteenth Iowa returned to the Poison Spring battlefield to bury their dead. They had fought valiantly, and took heavy casualties. While there, they buried six white officers and eighty black soldiers from the First Kansas in addition to their own. The commander of the Iowans, Major J.K. Morey, wrote, “The white dead were scalped and all were stripped of clothing, which was worn by the rebels. To add insult to the dead officers of the colored regiment; they were laid on their faces, and a circle of dead soldiers made around them.”9 The murders of these black and white Union men, coupled with other atrocities, leave little doubt that what had been a fierce, but one-sided battle had ended as a massacre. Many accused DeMorse’s Confederates of acting out in vengeance against the black soldiers. Instead of taking prisoners, they exacted retribution for their humiliating defeats in previous engagements with Williams’ black soldiers . Interestingly, the First Kansas Colored Volunteers never committed any such atrocities on Confederate troops in those contests. At Honey Springs, not one of DeMorse’s men, whether captured or wounded, met death at the hands of the Kansas soldiers.10 Anne Bailey, in her article, “Was There a Massacre at Poison Spring?” noted that the mix of Confederate soldiers at Poison Spring could have contributed mightily to the zeal with which they set about obliterating the First Kansas Colored Infantry. The brigade under Colonel Charles DeMorse included the Twenty-Ninth, Thirtieth, and Thirty-First Texas Cavalry regiments . All were noted for their lack of discipline, and the Twenty-Ninth and Thirtieth had been humiliated in previous engagements with the First Kansas. Confederate Atrocities and Steele’s Retreat ★ 127 Further, General Marmaduke’s command was made up of Missouri troops, who nursed intense hatred for Kansans following five years of antebellum conflicts between Kansas and Missouri over Kansas’ future as a slave or free state.11 General Cabell’s Arkansans were generally irate at the black soldiers, and Cabell had been embarrassed by his failure to get his reinforcements to the Confederates at both Cabin Creek and Honey Springs in...

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