More Attention for the Trans-Mississippi

Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize winner, Steven Hahn has authored “Slave Emancipation, Indian Peoples, and the Projects of a New American Nation-State” that appears in the most recent issue of The Journal of the Civil War Era. “Hahn argues for considering emancipation in the South and the destruction of Indian sovereignties in the Trans-Mississippi West as related projects for nation building. They represented, in Hahn’s words, ‘Wars of the Rebellions.’ And they suggest that Reconstruction unfolded as a national project, not only a southern one” (p. 305). When a “big name” writes about a topic, other scholars follow in their wake. As I mentioned in an earlier posting, increased attention is being paid to the trans-Mississippi during the Civil War era. Can’t wait to see what else gets published about the trans-Mississippi in upcoming years.

"Hell with the fires burned out"

In early August 1864, skirmishing occurred around Petersburg, Virginia, the Confederate garrisons at Fort Gaines and Fort Morgan surrendered in Mobile Bay, both sides took a short break in the Atlanta campaign, and in Dakota Territory a Union force made one of the most horrific marches of the war. Brigadier General Alfred Sully aptly called the march through the Badlands, “Truly hell with the fires burned out.” Sioux Indians attacked the force for three days as it marched through the arid canyon 

land region. Admittedly, I used to view these Indian wars as totally separate and distinct from the Civil War, but in recent years my perspective has broadened. As Paul L. Beck points out in his recent book, Columns of Vengeance: Soldiers, Sioux, and the Punitive Expeditions, 1863-1864, the strategy and tactics used in the campaigns were like those employed in other theaters of the war, and operations in the eastern theaters impacted these campaigns against the Indians. Recently, I picked up a used copy of Gregory F. Michno’s Encyclopedia of Indian Wars: Western Battles and Skirmishes, 1850-1860 and found it fascinating to note that entries for the war years make up almost 30% of the book. This conflict was not just one between the Blue and the Gray.

African-Americans and Combat in the Trans-Mississippi

An alert reader sent me information about two more accounts of African-Americans experiencing combat in the early days of the war. Elizabeth Keckley, a mulatto, worked as a seamstress for Mary Todd Lincoln and became Mary Todd’s confidante as well. Keckley detailed her life story as a slave and White House employee in Behind the Scenes; Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Fours Years in the White House (1868). What I didn’t realize is that Keckley had a son that was killed at the battle of Wilson’s Creek on August 10, 1861. Historian James S. Price has documented this on his Freedom by the Sword: A Historian’s Journey Through the American Civil War Era blog. George W. D. Kirkland’s service, then, is an early example of a mulatto serving in the Union Army. There is also a possibility that a small number of runaway slaves experienced combat during a skirmish at Boonville, Missouri, on September 13, 1861. James F. Thoma wrote a short article about this episode titled “The Negro Soldier in the Second Battle of Boonville: The Earliest Combat Soldier.” 

"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.