1st Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment

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1st Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment
ActiveAugust 4, 1862 – December 13, 1864
DisbandedDecember 13, 1864
CountryUnited States
AllegianceUnion
BranchInfantry
SizeRegiment
EquipmentAustrian and Prussian muskets[1]
EngagementsAmerican Civil War

The 1st Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment was an infantry regiment that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. It was the first black regiment to be organized in a northern state to see combat during the Civil War. At the Battle of Poison Spring, the regiment lost nearly half its number, and suffered the highest losses of any Kansas regiment during the war.

Service overview

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The 1st Kansas Infantry (Colored) was organized by the work of Senator James Henry Lane at Fort Scott, Kansas and mustered in as a battalion of six companies on January 13, 1863 for three years.[2] Four additional companies were recruited and mustered in between January 13 and May 2, 1863. It mustered in under the command of Colonel James Monroe Williams.

James Monroe Williams, Colonel of 1st Kansas Colored Infantry

The regiment was recruited without federal authorization and against the wishes of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. James H. Lane, recruiting commissioner for Kansas territory north of the Kansas River, on August 4, 1862, authorized raising the regiment. Recruiting officials enlisted black men across eastern Kansas, most of whom were formerly enslaved in Missouri. Some were emancipated, and many had escaped to freedom. It was the first African-American regiment to see combat during the Civil War, in the skirmish at Island Mound, in Bates County, Missouri, in October 1862. The regiment's Company D had three black officers, William D. Matthews and his two lieutenants, Henry Copeland and Patrick Minor, who were not allowed commissions as officers when the regiment was formally mustered into the Union army.

The regiment was attached to Department of Kansas to June 1863. District of the Frontier, Department of Missouri, to January 1864. Unattached, District of the Frontier, VII Corps, Department of Arkansas, to March 1864. 2nd Brigade, District of the Frontier, VII Corps, to December 1864.

Maj. Gen. James G. Blunt, commander of the Union forces at the Battle of Honey Springs, was particularly impressed by the performance of the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry at that engagement. They repulsed a Confederate charge, inflicting many casualties, and, after Colonel Williams was badly wounded, continued to fight and made an orderly withdrawal. Afterwards, he wrote: "I never saw such fighting as was done by the Negro regiment....The question that negroes will fight is settled; besides they make better soldiers in every respect than any troops I have ever had under my command."[3]

The 1st Kansas Colored Infantry ceased to exist on December 13, 1864, when it became a U.S. Army unit and its designation was changed to the 79th Regiment Infantry U.S. Colored Troops.[4][5] Also attached to the regiment at some point was Armstrong's Battery Light Artillery, a unit for which few details are known.

Detailed service

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Duty in the Department of Kansas October 1862, to June 1863. Action at Island Mound, Missouri, October 27, 1862. Island Mound, Kansas, October 29. Butler, Missouri, November 28. Ordered to Baxter Springs April 1863. Scout from Creek Agency to Jasper County, Missouri, May 16–19 (detachment). Sherwood, Missouri, May 18. Bush Creek May 24. Near Fort Gibson May 28. Shawneetown, Kansas, June 6 (detachment). March to Fort Gibson, Cherokee Nation, June 27-July 5, with supply train. Action at Cabin Creek July 1–2. the Battle of Honey Springs, July 17. At Fort Gibson until September. Lawrence, Kansas, July 27 (detachment). Near Sherwood August 14 Moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas, October, then to Roseville December, and duty there until March 1864. Horse Head Creek February 12, 1864. Roseville Creek March 20. Steele's Camden Expedition March 23-May 3. Prairie D'Ann April 9–12. Poison Springs April 18. Jenkins' Ferry April 30. March to Fort Smith, Arkansas, May 3–16, and duty there until December. Fort Gibson, September 16. Cabin Creek September 19. Timber Hill November 19.

Casualties

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The regiment lost at least 344 men during service; 5 officers and 173 enlisted men were killed or mortally wounded, 1 officer and 165 enlisted men died of disease. No other Kansas regiment lost more men than the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry.[citation needed]

Commanders

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  • Colonel James Monroe Williams
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In 2011, quilt artist and educator Marla Jackson worked with junior high students in Lawrence, Kansas, to produce a collaborative and commemorative quilt on the topic of the 1st Kansas Infantry.[6] The quilt, along with several others by Jackson that evoked similar themes, was displayed at the Spencer Museum of Art.

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ Moore, Frank. The Rebellion Record, v. 6, (G.P. Putnam, 1863), pp. 52-54
  2. ^ Barker, Kimberly. "Historian spotlights the story of the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry in Civil War series". Joplin Globe. Retrieved 2018-11-08.
  3. ^ Honey Springs, Elk Creek, Shaw's Inn - Civil War Oklahoma American Civil War July 17, 1863." Archived November 12, 2014, at the Wayback Machine Retrieved August 25, 1863.
  4. ^ "First to Serve." Archived 2012-01-18 at the Wayback Machine National Park Service. Fort Scott National Historic Site." Retrieved August 30, 2014.
  5. ^ Fox, William Freeman (1889). "VI. THE COLORED TROOPS — HISTORY OF THEIR ORGANIZATION — THEIR LOSSES IN BATTLE AND BY DISEASE.". Regimental losses in the American Civil War, 1861-1865 : a treatise on the extent and nature of the mortuary losses in the Union regiments, with full and exhaustive statistics compiled from the official records on file in the state military bureaus and at Washington. Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection. Albany, N.Y. : Albany Publishing Co. p. 53. ... in August, 1862, recruiting for a colored regiment was commenced in Kansas, and over 600 men were soon mustered in. The regiment, however, was not mustered into the United States service until January 13, 1863. It was then designated the First Kansas Colored Volunteers, but its name was changed, in December, 1864, to the 79th United States Colored Infantry.
  6. ^ "The First Colored Troops of Kansas | Exhibitions | Spencer Museum of Art". www.spencerart.ku.edu. 21 July 2011. Archived from the original on 2015-12-20. Retrieved 2016-01-25.

References

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  • Dyer, Frederick H. A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion (Des Moines, IA: Dyer Pub. Co.), 1908.
  • Official Military History of Kansas Regiments During the War for the Suppression of the Great Rebellion (Leavenworth: W. S. Burke), 1870.
  • Spurgeon, Ian Michael. Soldiers in the Army of Freedom: The 1st Kansas Colored, the Civil War's First African American Combat Unit (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press), 2014.
Attribution
  • Public Domain This article contains text from a text now in the public domain: Dyer, Frederick H. (1908). A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion. Des Moines, IA: Dyer Publishing Co.
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