Freedom by the Sword - US Army Center Of Military History

Arkansas, Indian Territory, and Kansas, 1863–1865 237
Tahlequah, the capital of the Cherokee Nation. On a hill overlooking the old site,
they laid out a fortified position that they named after the district commander, Maj.
Gen. James G. Blunt. 19
Pro-Union refugees flocked to the Union outpost in northeastern Indian Territory,
as they did along the Mississippi River. Refugees and troops alike required
rations, and federal wagon trains soon began rolling toward Fort Gibson. The closest
supply depot was at Fort Scott, Kansas, one hundred sixty miles to the north.
On 26 June, the 1st Kansas Colored left Baxter Springs and joined a train headed
for Fort Gibson. The regiment was part of a 1,600-man reinforcement that would
increase Union strength in the Indian Territory by 65 percent. 20
The ox teams plodded south, covering the hundred miles between Baxter
Springs and Fort Gibson at a rate of ten or twelve miles a day. They neared Cabin
Creek, almost halfway to their destination, on 1 July. About noon, the men of
the escort found a Confederate force on the opposite bank commanding the ford.
Recent heavy rains made the creek too deep to cross, so the train circled its wagons
and waited while Colonel Williams consulted with the senior officers of the
rest of the escort, which included a battalion of the 3d Indian Home Guards and
companies of white soldiers from Colorado, Kansas, and Wisconsin regiments.
They decided to move their artillery pieces—three twelve-pounders and two sixpounders—to
cover the ford and to try to cross on the following day. 21
The next morning at 8:00, the guns opened fire on places beyond the creek
where the enemy had been seen the day before. When one of the Indian companies
tried to cross, small-arms fire erupted from the undergrowth that lined the
shore where the Confederates had moved during the night. Colonel Williams saw
the Union advance retreat “somewhat confusedly” and ordered artillery fire on
the enemy’s new position as well as rifle fire from three companies of the 1st
Kansas Colored that had been about to wade the creek. Not long after 9:00, the
infantry companies were able to cross in chest-deep water, losing three or four
men wounded. The Confederates withdrew from the underbrush and formed line
of battle some four hundred yards from the creek, but a charge by one company
of Union cavalry broke them, as much to Williams’ surprise as anyone’s, and the
entire six companies of federal mounted troops chased them from the field. The
wagon train then crossed the creek and arrived at Fort Blunt, some fifty miles to
the south, three days later. 22
General Blunt himself arrived on 11 July and resolved to move against the
brigade that Colonel Williams had defeated before the Confederates could reinforce
it. Characteristically, each side overestimated the strength of the other; Blunt
thought that his opponent, Brig. Gen. Douglas H. Cooper, commanded six thousand
men, which another Confederate general reported as “much more than the
number which [Cooper] has had together at any time.” Cooper reckoned Blunt’s
19 OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 1, p. 349, and pt. 2, pp. 190, 256, 266, 276. Robert W. Frazer, Forts of
the West: Military Forts and Presidios, and Posts Commonly Called Forts, West of the Mississippi
River to 1898 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), p. 121.
20 OR, ser. 1, vol. 22, pt. 1, p. 379, and pt. 2, pp. 283, 300, 337, 342, 416, 478.
21 Ibid., pt. 1, pp. 380, 382, and pt. 2, p. 478.
22 Ibid., pt. 1, pp. 380–81 (quotation, p. 380).