The Battle For Fort Blair

In the winter of 1863, William C. Quantrill, a former Kansas school teacher who led a guerrilla army responsible for outrages around Lawrence and Kansas City, including the Lawrence Massacre, turned toward Baxter Springs after hearing of the fort there and on October 6th launched a surprise attack with about 300 men. Two days earlier, Lieutenant James B. Pond had arrived at the post with a mountain howitzer and part of Company C, Third Wisconsin Cavalry, and assumed command over a garrison that also included one company of the Second Kansas Colored Infantry under Lieutenant Cook and Company D, Third Wisconsin Cavalry. The log-and-earth fort had embankments about 4 feet high, its west wall had been removed because the camp was too small, Pond's tent stood 200 yards west while works were being extended to include it, the cooking camp lay about 200 feet south near a large spring, and the howitzer had been placed outside the north wall. That morning Pond had sent 60 men out to forage, leaving only about 70 to 95 men at the fort, half of them off duty because of illness, and the garrison was wholly unprepared when the attack began while Pond was in his tent and many soldiers were eating lunch near the spring. Pond ordered his men into the fort, and many had to break through enemy ranks standing between the fort and the dining area. Rebel and Union troops crowded the fort, but the defenders quickly drove the attackers from the camp; with Pond firing his twelve-pound howitzer and the troops maintaining rapid fire, the guerrillas retreated to the trees and stream near the fort, apparently unaware how few defenders they faced. Pond reported nine killed and sixteen wounded, credited the Second Kansas Colored Infantry with helping repulse the assault, and most of the wounded were from that regiment. Company A of the Second Kansas Colored Infantry had entered United States service on August 11, 1863, under Captain Samuel Sanders and First Lieutenant Ralph Cook, later became the 83rd United States Colored Infantry after 1864, and at Baxter Springs faced its first real test. Lieutenant Cook was among the few men killed in the attack, and Pond later praised the Second Kansas as the true heroes of the Battle of Fort Blair.

Baxter Springs, Kansas · United States