The First To Serve

The 1^st Kansas Colored Infantry was mustered January 13^th 1863 into the Union Army.

Six companies or one battalion of the 1^st Kansas Colored Infantry was mustered into Union service January 13^th 1863 at Fort Scott, Kansas.  They were place under the command of Colonel James M Williams of the 5^th Kansas Cavalry.  The regiment was recruited without Union authorization by James H Lane a Union recruiter for the Kansas territory.  It took only 60 days to raise the 500 men.

The 1^st saw duty with the Department of Kansas, participating in actions at Cabin Creek, Island Mound, Baxter Springs, Elk Creek, Honey Springs, and Steele’s Camden Expedition among others.  They were also attached to Armstrong’s Battery of Light Artillery.  No other Kansas regiment saw more casualties then the 1^st.  They had 178 men killed and 166 die of disease.

The 1^st Kansas Colored Infantry stopped being on December 13^th 1864, when it became the 79^th United States Colored Infantry.

If you’re interested, this web site has more information on the First Kansas,  First to Serve

A Raid In Retaliation

Confederate leader William Clarke Quantrill led a raid on Lawrence, Kansas August 21st 1863, which became known as the Lawrence Massacre.


Lawrence, Kansas was at the beginning of the Civil War a target for those who were pro-slavery. It was a strong hold for those known as Jayhawker’s, people who were abolitionist and pro-Union to use as a base for making raids into neighboring Missouri.

Confederate William Clarke Quantrill’s attack on the town was in retaliation for these raids, particularly one made on Osceola, Missouri in September 1861. In this attack on Osceola, led by Senator James H Lane, nine men were executed. Quantrill had planned the attack carefully, and organized many independent Guerrilla groups to converge on Lawrence, Kansas in the pre-dawn hours of August 21st 1863. Somewhere between 300 and 450 men descended on Lawrence. They set fire to the town, burning down all but two businesses and about a quarter of the buildings. They killed 185 to 200 males in town and raided for over four hours. By nine in the morning Quantrill’s Raiders where on there way out of what was left of the town of Lawrence. One of the targets of the raid, Senator James H Lane escaped by running out into a cornfield, hiding in his nightshirt.

Another web site that might be of interest to you is Quantrill's Raid The Lawrence Massacre Battle of Lawrence

The Power Of One Vote

On May 8th 1907 Edmund Gibson Ross, whose vote kept Andrew Johnson from being impeachment, died in New Mexico.

Edmund Gibson Ross was born December 7th 1826 in Ashland Ohio. He went to work in the newspaper business first in Sandusky Ohio, Milwaukee Wisconsin and Topeka Kansas. While in Kansas he was the editor of the “Tribune” which was the only Free-State paper in the territory. He enlisted in the United Sstates Army as a private in 1862, and was made a major by 1865. After Senator James H Lane committed suicide in 1866, Ross was appointed to fill his term and than was elected to the position as a member of the Republican Party. Ross became the seventh of the seven Republicans to break with the party, and he cast the vote which acquitted President Andrew Johnson in 1868. Ross loss his re-election bid in 1870.

After leaving the Senate, Ross returned to the newspaper business, starting a publication in Coffeyville Kansas. Unfortunately on April 23rd 1872 a tornado that went through Coffeyville destroyed the newspaper office. He was appointed by President Grover Cleveland in 1885 to the position of Governor of the New Mexico Territory, a position he held until 1889. He died May 8th 1907.

President John F Kennedy [at this time a senator] included Edmund Gibson Ross in his 1956 book “Profiles in Courage”.