Contested Crossing

In the frosty darkness before dawn on October 22, 1864, 300 citizen soldiers of the 4th Kansas State Militia crossed Byram's Ford and encamped in a nearby cornfield on the west bank after riding all night from the Main Ford three miles downstream to avoid detection by scouts in Sterling Price's Confederate army on the east side of the Blue River. The regiment included Black soldiers who had escaped bondage in Jackson County, Missouri two years earlier and had left their families and new homes of freedom in Jefferson County, Kansas to help repel the Confederates. At dawn, after only a few hours of sleep, the militia received two Federal wagons loaded with axes and began cutting down the large trees around the ford to block a Confederate advance across the river. As the crossing was obstructed, 800 horse soldiers of Col. Charles Jennison's Kansas 15th Cavalry and 3d Wisconsin Cavalry arrived, and the two light artillery guns that had come with the Kansas militia were placed on the rise later called Bloody Hill. The militia first formed a battle line across the cornfield, then moved beside Jennison's men and the artillery on Bloody Hill behind shallow breastworks made from fence rails. Around 10 AM, the advance of Gen. Jo Shelby's Confederates appeared on the east bluff, and soon Shelby's division of 3000 horse soldiers launched a fierce attack. For three hours, Confederate attempts to cross there were driven back by Federal artillery and rifle fire from Bloody Hill, but by 1:00 PM Shelby's forces crossed downstream and flanked Jennison's position. Confederate rifle fire struck the Federal left flank, forcing Jennison to withdraw west toward Westport by 3:00 PM. After the Federal withdrawal, Shelby's Confederates reopened Byram's Ford, and for the next nine hours their train of 500 wagons crossed there until midnight.

Kansas City, Missouri · United States