Skirmish at Island Mound... Colored Troops...

5fish

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This is the first engagement were a Colored Troop Regiment was involved in the fight...


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The Skirmish at Island Mound was a skirmish of the American Civil War, occurring on October 29, 1862, in Bates County, Missouri. The Union victory is notable as the first known event in which an African-American regiment engaged in combat against Confederate forces during the war. Made up mostly of former slaves who had escaped from Missouri and Arkansas, the regiment was recently trained in Kansas. They were outnumbered in the skirmish, but stood their ground and fought with "desperate bravery,"[1] as headlined by The New York Times. This Kansas regiment was later made part of the Union Army as United States Colored Troops. The state acquired property here in 2011 and the area has been preserved since 2012 as the Battle of Island Mound State Historic Site.

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Union casualties were 8 killed (1 white officer, 6 black, 1 Cherokee) and 11 men wounded. Among the dead were Captain A.G. Crew of Co. A.; Corp. Joseph Talbot, Privates Samuel Davis, Thomas Lane, Marlon Barber, Allen Rhodes, Henry Gash, all of Co F; and John Six-Killer of Seaman's Battalion.[1][2] Guerrilla losses are unknown, although some Kansans at the time claimed up to 40 killed.[6] The action was reported in The New York Times by a correspondent who had accompanied the Kansas unit.[1][7] The heroic action of the African Americans was headlined as "desperate bravery;" and Bill Truman told supporters in Butler that the blacks had fought "like tigers."[1] The African Americans were fighting for their freedom, to ensure they never went back to slavery, and they knew the guerrillas would give them no quarter, having promised to kill blacks rather than take them prisoner.[8]

The unit's bravery attracted national attention, as some observers had doubted whether former slaves would make good soldiers. In 1863 the United States Colored Troops were established. On December 13, 1864, the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteers were redesignated as the 79th United States Colored Troops.[

Here is more detail account...


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The small skirmish that occurred on October 29, 1862, at Island Mound in Bates County, Missouri, was significant because it marked the first time during the American Civil War that a regiment of African American soldiers saw combat. The 1st Kansas Colored Volunteers who fought at Island Mound were in Kansas service prior to the Emancipation Proclamation’s implementation on January 1, 1863, but not in U.S. service because the Lincoln administration was reluctant to enroll black troops and risk tipping Union slave states, including Missouri, toward the Confederacy.

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Major Benjamin Henning, the commanding officer at Fort Scott, ordered the 1st Kansas into Bates County on Sunday, October 26, 1862, in response to bushwhacker attacks along the border. They were ordered to move on the guerrilla nest at Hog Island. Captain Henry Seaman commanded the expedition into Bates County with 11 other officers and approximately 240 men in the 1st Kansas, and finally, six scouts from the 5th Kansas Cavalry. The following day, October 27, the 1st Kansas occupied the Enoch Toothman farm, questioned the family and found out that the guerrillas numbered approximately 400. The Kansans dug makeshift fortifications and turned the Toothman domicile into a blockhouse they called Fort Africa. The bushwhackers also knew of the 1st Kansas’s presence, and the sides attempted to gauge the opposition’s strength with long-range skirmishing on Tuesday, October 28


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Although not a major fight, the Skirmish at Island Mound proved to be an ominous harbinger for the Confederacy: black soldiers had been blooded on the battlefield for the Union cause, and they proved to be up to the task. Although the Emancipation Proclamation—first announced by President Lincoln on September 22, 1862—would not go into effect until January 1, 1863, the Skirmish at Island Mound laid to rest questions about whether African Americans could or would fight. They could and did, with over 186,000 African Americans eventually fighting for the Union to end slavery. The 1st Kansas was redesignated the 1st Regiment Kansas Volunteer Infantry (Colored) when it entered federal service on January 13, 1863, and was one of the first African American units in federal service. Sadly, though, the two black commissioned officers in the 1st Kansas, Captain William Matthews and Lieutenant Patrick Minor, were forced to give up their commissions upon entry into federal service.


 
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