The start of 1862 witnessed the federals in their most precarious position of the war in Missouri. Sterling Price’s Missouri State Guard (MSG) controlled the interior of the state – including large sections of the strategically vital Missouri River Valley. Guerrillas ran rampant through the interior as well. It was up to the newly-installed commander of the Department of the Missouri, Major General Henry W. Halleck to restore the Union’s fortunes in the states. Halleck was not idle over the holiday season of 1861, as he instructed Brigadier General Samuel R. Curtis, commander of the recently-formed Federal Army of the Southwest, on his plans for the upcoming campaign season.
By an act of Congress, the all-African American 10th U.S. Cavalry regiment (along with five other regiments stationed elsewhere in the West) is formed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Throughout his career, Union General Nathaniel Lyon exhibited a violent, hair-trigger temper and proved a contentious and nearly unpromotable subordinate, challenging authority at all levels. He is best known for his role in preserving Union control of Missouri in the early parts of the war, a cause for which he gave his life.
Kansas was officially opened to white settlers in 1854, and settlers, lured by promises of cheap land and easy wealth, rushed to the area. As settlements grew behind the westward movement of the frontier line, the federal government built roads and forts to accommodate the migration and to protect and assist the travelers along the trails that led southwest to Santa Fe and Denver, and northwest to Salt Lake City and The Dalles in Oregon. Fort Riley, Kansas, built on the Santa Fe Trail near the confluence of the Kansas and Republican Rivers in 1855, was one of those forts.
Claiborne Fox Jackson, the pro-Confederate governor of Missouri at the outset of the Civil War, was born in rural Fleming County, Kentucky on April 4, 1806. The son of a moderately prosperous tobacco farmer and slaveholder, Jackson received only slight formal education before migrating with three older brothers in 1826 to Franklin, Missouri, where he engaged in business.
Lands of the Shawnee Indians are put up for sale to white settlers in Kansas, largely removing the native population from the area of the Shawnee Methodist Mission in Johnson County, Kansas.
Kansas lands of the Peoria, Kaskaskia, Wea, and Piankashaw tribes are put up for sale to white settlers, again with the claim that these are "surplus" lands.
Lands held by the Delaware Indians in Kansas Territory are put up for sale to white settlers, continuing the displacement of Native Americans out of the territory.
