Baxter Springs stood on the Old Military Road linking forts in Kansas Territory, Indian Territory, and Arkansas, and first served as a rest stop for wagon supply trains and their military escorts. During the Civil War, guerrilla Confederate activity in the area led the Union to establish nearby field camps in the spring of 1862, and in August 1863 those camps were replaced by the permanent post of Fort Blair, also called Fort Baxter. The fort, about 100 by 200 feet, was built of logs and an earth embankment about four feet high around a wooden blockhouse. It was garrisoned by the 2nd Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry and later reinforced by Lieutenant James B. Pond and his command, who brought a 12-pound howitzer, giving the post more than 150 men, including nearly 50 African American soldiers. As Pond began enlarging the fort and ordered the west wall removed for expansion, William Quantrill's guerrilla force was moving south after a destructive August 1863 raid on Lawrence, Kansas, where more than 400 raiders killed over 150 men and boys and burned much of the city, prompting Union retaliation in four Missouri border counties. On October 6, 1863, after Fort Blair's cavalry had gone to forage in Missouri, Quantrill's Raiders approached from Missouri to the Military Road, discovered the fort, executed Lieutenant Ralph Cook and a civilian outside it, and split their force, sending about 100 men to attack from the southeast while Quantrill took the other 300 men north. The reduced garrison, surprised while eating lunch below the fort with their rifles inside, ran for the fort under fire, and there the African American soldiers, fighting alongside white soldiers, repelled the attack. Pond arrived with his howitzer and helped drive off the guerrillas, saving the fort with few casualties, and he praised the bravery of the 2nd Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry, including men who fought on despite injuries.
