"New Directions" in Scholarship: The Trans-Mississippi

Civil War History, a quarterly journal, has once again published an article about the trans-Mississippi. “Nations Colliding: The Civil War Comes to Indian Territory” by Troy Smith is touted as one of the “new directions in the study of the American Civil War that are helping to reshape the field” (277). The article “explores the formal wartime alliance between the so-called Five Civilized Tribes and the Confederate States of America, a topic about which even many Civil War specialists know comparatively little” (277). With the upcoming publication of Mary Jane Warde’s When the Wolf Came: The Civil War and the Indian Territory and some other recent publications, I sense an uptick in serious scholarship about the trans-Mississippi. 

Locust Grove: A More Historic Skirmish Than You Realized

The men of the 54^th Massachusetts Colored Infantry fought in a skirmish on James Island, South Carolina, on July 16, 1863, making them the first African-American soldiers to experience combat during the Civil War. Right? Well, not quite… perhaps the first were the men of the African Brigade (the 9^th Louisiana Infantry, the 11^th Louisiana Infantry, and the 1^st Mississippi) as they engaged in a ferocious defense against Confederate soldiers at Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana, on June 7, 1863? No… It must be the portion of the 1^st Kansas Colored Infantry that served at Island Mound, Missouri, on October 29, 1862. But, no, that is wrong also.

Some of you may recall that I posted a piece on October 4, 2011, about the skirmish at Locust Grove, Indian Territory. In the short posting, I used the skirmish at Locust Grove to illustrate how even “small” events could have important consequences, but the skirmish at Locust Grove was significant in yet another way. The First Indian Home Guard, made up mostly of refugee Creek and Seminole Indians from the Indian Territory, also had in its ranks 25-30 African Creeks. These men, some of them former slaves in the Creek Nation, were mustered in during the spring of 1862 in refugee camps in Kansas. The First Indian Home Guard was primarily responsible for the Union victory at Locust Grove, therefore earning the African Creeks in that unit the distinction of being the "first... regularly mustered blacks in the federal army” to experience combat during the war according to Dr. Gary Zellar (“Occupying the Middle Ground, 55). Now, in case you want to quibble that Locust Grove was a mere skirmish, and it doesn't really "count," bear in mind that the First Indian Home Guard also fought at Prairie Grove, a major battle, on December 7, 1862. When do you think a movie will be made about these men?

For further information about the African Creeks see the following:

Zellar, Gary. African Creeks: Estelvste and the Creek Nation. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007.

Zellar, Gary. “Occupying the Middle Ground: African Creeks in the First Indian Home Guard, 1862-1865.” Chronicles of Oklahoma. V. 76 (No. 1, 1998): 48-71.

Trans-Mississippi Losses: Union Troops

William F. Fox’s Regimental Losses In The American Civil War, 1861-1865 (1898) contains a great amount of interesting statistical data. Near the end of his book, I recently reexamined a table titled “Total Deaths and Percentages By States,” and I extracted part of the data and placed it in the table below. For starters, the statistics below pertain only to Union enlistments, and I have deleted his statistics relating to Veteran Reserves, Regular Army, as well as several other categories. Curious about losses from the trans-Mississippi and how they compared to eastern states, I have highlighted the states and territories from west of the Mississippi. Regrettably, reliable data from the Confederate states are unavailable.

Source: Fox, William F. Regimental Losses In The American Civil War, 1861-1865. (Albany, NY: Brandow Printing Co., 1898), pp. 526-527.

State/Territory	Total deaths	Troops furnished; three years standard	Percent of total deaths
Indian Nations	1,018	3,530	28.8
Tennessee	6,777	26,394	25.6
Kentucky	10,774	43,550	24.7
Arkansas	1,713	7,836	21.8
Alabama	345	1,611	21.4
Louisiana	945	4,654	20.3
Vermont	5,224	26,355	19.8
Michigan	14,753	76,218	19.3
Iowa	13,001	68,118	19.0
Maine	9,398	49,635	18.9
Indiana	26,672	150,177	17.7
Missouri	13,885	78,035	17.7
New Hampshire	4,882	29,150	16.7
Wisconsin	12,301	73,865	16.6
Florida	215	1,290	16.6
Illinois	34,834	210,043	16.5
Kansas	2,630	16,624	15.8
Ohio	35,475	225,669	15.7
Pennsylvania	33,183	214,427	15.4
West Virginia	4,017	27,518	14.5
Mississippi	78	545	14.3
Massachusetts	13,942	98,803	14.1
Minnesota	2,584	18,554	13.9
New York	46,534	334,784	13.8
New Jersey	5,754	44,398	12.9
Maryland	2,982	24,954	11.9
Connecticut	5,354	45,181	11.8
North Carolina	360	3,156	11.4
Delaware	882	7,888	11.1
Nebraska Territory	239	2,175	10.9
Rhode Island	1,321	13,688	9.6
Colorado Territory	323	3,697	8.7
Texas	141	1,632	8.6
New Mexico Terr.	277	4,432	6.2
District of Columbia	290	6,546	4.4
California	573	15,725	3.6
Nevada Territory	33	1,080	3.0
Dakota Territory	6	206	3.0
Oregon Territory	45	1,773	2.5
Washington Terr.	22	964	2.2