Border War Encyclopedia

Read encyclopedia entries that describe and analyze significant people, places, and events of the Civil War on the Western Border. Each of these have been written by scholars or their advanced graduate students and edited by Drs. Bryan Le Beau and Jason Roe.

View the complete bibliography of works about the Civil War on the Western Border used on this site »

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Author: Matthew E. Stanley

The 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry (later the 79th U.S. Colored Infantry) was an African American regiment that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. The regiment was organized prior to the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and without federal authorization, thus becoming the first black unit to see combat alongside white soldiers during the war in October 1862.

Author: Deborah Keating

As the violence between free-state and proslavery factions increased along the Missouri-Kansas border, one family placed itself in the vortex of the conflict. Florella Brown Adair and her husband, Samuel Lyle Adair moved to the Kansas Territory from Ohio as missionaries of the Congregationalist Christian Church.

Author: Matthew E. Stanley

William T. Anderson was one of the most notorious Confederate guerrillas of the Civil War. Operating against Unionists in the midst of the guerrilla war in Missouri and Kansas, he was a leading figure in the infamous Lawrence Massacre and the Centralia Massacre, gaining the nickname “Bloody Bill” for the perceived savagery of his exploits.

Author: Claire Wolnisty

Daniel R. Anthony was a man of strong abolitionist convictions who aggressively voiced his opinions as the postmaster, mayor, and dominant newspaper publisher in Leavenworth, Kansas. While Anthony’s contentious and radical nature isolated some of his contemporaries, he helped shape the territory of Kansas into a free state.

Author: Zachary Stewart Garrison

A proponent of westward expansion and a prominent proslavery Democrat in the state of Missouri, David Rice Atchison led the call for slavery’s extension into the Kansas and Nebraska territories.

Author: Terry Beckenbaugh

The Battle of Black Jack, fought on June 2, 1856, just outside of modern-day Baldwin City, Kansas, proved to be a watershed moment in United States history as the pro- and antislavery forces fought what some historians consider the first unofficial battle of the Civil War during “Bleeding Kansas.”

Author: Terry Beckenbaugh

The Battle of Boonville on June 17, 1861, was one of the earliest battles of the Civil War. With the federal victory, the Union gained control of the Missouri River Valley and forced the pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard (MSG) into the southwestern corner of the state, cutting the latter off from recruits north of the Missouri River.

Author: Terry Beckenbaugh

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.

Author: Tony O’ Bryan

The Battle of Lone Jack occurred in Jackson County, Missouri over the weekend of August 15-17, 1862, as a result of the Union attempting to wrest military control over the border region from the hands of the bushwhackers.

Author: Terry Beckenbaugh

The Battle of Mine Creek, fought on October 25, 1864, was a devastating defeat for Major General Sterling Price’s Confederate Army of Missouri.

Author: Christopher Rein

By the summer of 1856, the debate over whether or not the territory of Kansas would become a free or slave state erupted into widespread violence, including John Brown’s killing of proslavery settlers in the Pottawatomie Massacre and the sacking of the Free-State stronghold of Lawrence, Kansas. Pro- and antislavery factions gathered men into paramilitary units and sought out their opponents across the territory and in neighboring Missouri.

Author: Terry Beckenbaugh

The Battle of the Little Blue, fought just east of Independence in Jackson County, Missouri, on October 21, 1864, was part of Sterling Price’s “Missouri Expedition” and a prelude to the larger and more decisive Battle of Westport two days later.

Author: Terry Beckenbaugh

As the war turned against the Confederacy in late 1864, Confederate Major General Sterling Price led his cavalry forces on an epic raid into Missouri, hoping to install secessionist Thomas Reynolds as state governor in Jefferson City and to establish the Confederate state government’s legitimacy. Presumably, the loss of a border state would impede President Lincoln’s chances for reelection the following month and give the Confederacy an opportunity to negotiate a peaceful settlement. At the Battle of Westport, however, Price’s Raid (or Price’s “Missouri Expedition”) came to an inglorious climax.

Author: Ian Spurgeon

The Battle of Wilson’s Creek on August 10, 1861, was the first major engagement of the Civil War west of the Mississippi River. It pitted a smaller but aggressive Union army against a numerically superior force of Confederate soldiers and pro-secessionist Missouri State Guard for the future of Missouri. Despite surprising the Confederates that morning, the federals withdrew by mid-day in the face of repeated Southern counterattacks.

Author: Deborah Keating

George Caleb Bingham was a recognized son of Missouri throughout his life: a reputation that was solidified by his paintings portraying life in the state and on its rivers. While Bingham’s reputation as an artist is widely known, his role in Missouri politics and specifically in the border conflicts of the 1860s is less familiar. The brutality visited on the noncombatants along the Missouri-Kansas border before and during the Civil War appalled Bingham, but despite his strong feelings, he used his paintings to support his political philosophy that the Union must be maintained.

Author: Terry Beckenbaugh

James Gillpatrick Blunt was a major figure in the Civil War in Kansas and Missouri. Blunt was a jayhawker during the “Bleeding Kansas” period and later rose to become a major general in the U.S. Army, winning several key victories. He is most famous for his roles in the battles of Prairie Grove and Honey Springs, as well as the part he played in repulsing Sterling Price’s 1864 cavalry raid. Blunt was the only major general from Kansas during the Civil War.

Author: Jeremy Prichard

The “Bogus Legislature” refers to Kansas Territory’s first governing body, established in 1855. Free-Soil and antislavery supporters in the area provided the moniker after widespread accounts of fraudulent voting in the March 30, 1855, election that selected the assembly’s initial members. The nickname stuck, and the partisan rift surrounding the two-year legislative session played a prominent role in the early years of Bleeding Kansas.

Author: Tony O’ Bryan

Amid the contentious and sometimes violent territorial elections, held to determine whether Kansas would elect Free-State or proslavery state politicians and legislatures, many proslavery Missourians living along the border staked claims in Kansas Territory, while others organized secret societies that helped transport and pay proslavery families to migrate and vote in the upcoming Kansas election.

Author: Matthew E. Stanley

John Brown was an American abolitionist who believed in using violent methods to eradicate slavery in the United States. He is most famous for leading an attack on a federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in 1859. Although unsuccessful in his aim of overthrowing slavery in the American South, Brown’s raid and his subsequent execution fueled tensions in the national debate over slavery in the United States. Historians credit Brown, his raid, and the public debates surrounding his trial and legacy with hastening Southern secession and the Civil War.

Author: Deborah Keating

Two days after James Buchanan was inaugurated the 15th president of the United States, the Supreme Court issued the Dred Scott decision, opening all American territories to slavery until the time came to seek admission as a state. Buchanan, sympathetic to the Southern cause despite being Northern born, wanted a ruling that supported “popular sovereignty,” a concept introduced in the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) that allowed the settlers of Western territories—rather than the U.S. Congress—decide their status as slave or free states upon admission to the Union.

Author: Tony O’ Bryan

The “bushwhackers” were Missourians who fled to the rugged backcountry and forests to live in hiding and resist the Union occupation of the border counties. They fought Union patrols, typically by ambush, in countless small skirmishes, and hit-and-run engagements.

Author: Deborah Keating

Thomas Carney, the second governor of Kansas, was a pivotal player in political maneuverings during the early weeks and months of Kansas statehood and served the state as its second governor during the last tumultuous years of the Civil War. His efforts to protect the state of Kansas and support the war effort during his tenure earned him the sobriquet: “The War Governor.”

Author: Claire Wolnisty

On September 27, 1864, roughly 80 guerrillas under the command of William T. “Bloody Bill” Anderson stopped a train outside of Centralia, Missouri. They then asked for a volunteer from among the Union soldiers on the train. Fully expecting to be executed, Sergeant Thomas M. Goodman stepped forward. Instead of killing the sergeant, however, the guerrillas shot the line of 22 unarmed Union soldiers.

Author: Tony O’ Bryan

Beginning in April 1863, Union officers began rounding up females suspected of providing aid and support to Confederate guerillas in the Western border region and placing them in makeshift jails in Kansas City. When one of these overcrowded prisons collapsed on August 13, 1863, it killed and maimed several female relatives of the guerrillas. Although the direct cause of the collapse remains unclear, it is certain that the disaster helped seal the fate of many men in Lawrence, Kansas, eight days later.