"A Most Deplorable Condition"

In September 1864, Fort Scott’s chaplain pleaded for aid for more than 200 refugees in camp who lacked shelter, funds, tents, and clothing, describing mothers, dying children, people near death, and deaths during a storm. During the Civil War, the ground in front of Fort Scott witnessed both hope and despair as the post served as a refuge from war, yet conditions there often produced tragedy. The war turned the Fort Scott area into a refugee center for Indians, slaves, free blacks, and white settlers, most of them women, children, and elderly men. Three buildings from the former fort served as hospitals for soldiers and civilians, and tents sometimes sheltered the overflow of sick and wounded, including about twenty sick people removed to a hospital tent in the plaza by Dr. Slocum and the chaplain in 1864.

Fort Scott, Kansas · United States