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," 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.
Captain (soon to be Colonel) James M. Williams had been forming an African-American regiment in Kansas, made up largely of escaped slaves from Missouri, Arkansas, and Indian Territory, and some free blacks. In August 1862, these men were mustered into Kansas militia service as the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteers. The United States was not yet ready to accept black troops in the Union Army. They weren't mustered into United States service until January 13, 1863, after the Emancipation Proclamation. Despite the uncertainty of the regiment's future as a federal military force, Kansas ensured the men were armed with a mix of good Austrian and Prussian muskets with bayonets.
Maj. B.S. Henning ordered Captain Richard G. Ward's 170-man battalion and Captain Henry C. Seaman's 70-man battalion to proceed across the Missouri River to Bates County, Missouri. They were accompanied by members of the 5th Kansas Cavalry serving as scouts, among them some Cherokee and blacks. The objective was to break up a guerrilla army based on Hog Island in the Osage River, near the Toothman homestead and about nine miles on the other side of the Kansas-Missouri border. The area away from the river was largely open tall-grass prairie and farms, without many trees. John Toothman had been identified as a guerrilla and imprisoned at Fort Lincoln, a Civil War prison camp near Fulton, Kansas.
As the Kansans approached on Monday, October 27, the scouts identified a large party ahead as local Confederate guerrillas under Bill Truman and Dick Hancock, as well as Missouri State Guard recruits under Colonel Jeremiah "Vard" Cockrell (all mounted.)
Finding the enemy in greater force than anticipated, the Kansans fortified the Toothman homestead and used fence rails to create breastworks. The soldiers dubbed the works, "Fort Africa." Tuesday passed with occasional skirmishing. The superior range of the Austrian muskets kept the guerrilla cavalry, with lesser arms, at bay.
The American Civil War (1861–1865) was the deadliest conflict in American history, killing an estimated 620,000 to 750,000 soldiers and an unknown number of civilians. The Confederate States of America, formed by eleven seceding Southern states, faced the Union in four years of warfare across 23 states and territories. Major engagements included First and Second Bull Run, Antietam (the bloodiest single day in American history, September 17, 1862), Chancellorsville, Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863), Vicksburg (surrendered July 4, 1863), and Sherman's March through Georgia and the Carolinas (1864–1865). President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, transforming the war's stated purpose to include the abolition of slavery and enabling the enlistment of approximately 180,000 Black men in the United States Colored Troops. Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The war resolved the question of secession and ended American slavery, though Reconstruction would face sustained resistance in its attempt to secure civil rights for formerly enslaved people.
This page covers Linn County Guerrilla Skirmish. A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside historic sites, land records, and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
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