After the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, pro-slavery Missourians and free-state Kansans fought over whether Kansas would enter the Union as a slave or free state in a conflict known as Bleeding Kansas. When the Civil War began in 1861, most residents of Bates County, Missouri, supported the Confederacy, and because the county bordered Kansas, guerrilla warfare from both states was rampant. Federal authorities considered the Toothman family, who had come to Missouri from Virginia, Southern sympathizers. John Toothman, the 23-year-old son of Enoch and Christina Toothman, rode with local bushwhacker Bill Turman and joined in the ambush of a Union foraging party on May 15, 1862, in which three Federal soldiers were killed; he was later arrested and confined at Fort Lincoln, Kansas. Guerrillas often sought refuge on Hog Island, formed by the Marais-des-Cygnes River, and in October 1862 the First Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry was ordered into Bates County to break up rebel encampments there. The Kansas troops occupied the Toothman home about two and a half miles north of Hog Island, camped around the house, used fence rails for fortifications, and named the position Fort Africa, while women of the household were questioned and the adult men stayed away. Later evidence has left unanswered questions about the farm, Fort Africa, and the Battle of Island Mound: an 1859 land survey showed no structures on the property, but a house stood there by 1862; archaeologists using historical research, metal detecting, geophysical survey, and excavation have tried to locate the house site, and they have uncovered the site of a Methodist Episcopal Church shown on an 1875 plat map, built around 1870 and probably gone by the 1930s.