1st Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment

Service overview

The 1st Kansas Colored Infantry was organized by Senator James Henry Lane at Fort Scott, Kansas and mustered in as a battalion of six companies on January 13, 1863 for three years. Four additional companies were recruited and mustered in between January 13 and May 2, 1863. It mustered in under the command of Colonel James Monroe Williams.

The regiment was recruited without federal authorization and against the wishes of Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. James H. Lane, recruiting commissioner for Kansan territory north of the Kansas River, on August 4, 1862, authorized raising the regiment. Recruiting officials enlisted black men across eastern Kansas, most of whom were formerly enslaved in Missouri. Some were emancipated, and many had escaped to freedom. It was the first African-American regiment to see combat during the Civil War, in the skirmish at Island Mound, in Bates County, Missouri, in October 1862. The regiment's Company D had three black officers, William D. Matthews and his two lieutenants, Henry Copeland and Patrick Minor, who were not allowed commissions as officers when the regiment was formally mustered into the Union army.

The regiment was attached to Department of Kansas to June 1863.

Maj. Gen. James G. Blunt, commander of the Union forces at the Battle of Honey Springs, was particularly impressed by the performance of the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry at that engagement. They repulsed a Confederate charge, inflicting many casualties, and, after Colonel Williams was badly wounded, continued to fight and made an orderly withdrawal. Afterwards, he wrote: "I never saw such fighting as was done by the Negro regiment....The question that negroes will fight is settled; besides they make better soldiers in every respect than any troops I have ever had under my command."

The 1st Kansas Colored Infantry ceased to exist on December 13, 1864, when it became a U.S. Army unit. Its designation was changed to the 79th Regiment Infantry U.S. Colored Troops. Also attached to the regiment at some point was Armstrong's Battery Light Artillery, a unit for which few details are known.

In popular culture

In 2011, quilt artist and educator Marla Jackson worked with junior high students in Lawrence, Kansas to produce a collaborative and commemorative quilt on the 1st Kansas Infantry. The quilt, along with several others by Jackson that evoked similar themes, was displayed at the Spencer Museum of Art.

Notes

References

• Dyer, Frederick H. A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion (Des Moines, IA: Dyer Pub. Co.), 1908.
• Official Military History of Kansas Regiments During the War for the Suppression of the Great Rebellion (Leavenworth: W. S. Burke), 1870.
• Spurgeon, Ian Michael. Soldiers in the Army of Freedom: The 1st Kansas Colored, the Civil War's First African American Combat Unit (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press), 2014. ;Attribution

References

1. Moore, Frank. ''The Rebellion Record'', v. 6, (G.P. Putnam, 1863), pp. 52-54
2. Urwin, Gregory J. W.. (2000). "Civil War Arkansas: Beyond Battles and Leaders". [[University of Arkansas Press]].
3. Barker, Kimberly. "Historian spotlights the story of the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry in Civil War series". Joplin Globe.
4. [http://americancivilwar.com/statepic/ok/ok007.html Honey Springs, Elk Creek, Shaw's Inn - Civil War Oklahoma American Civil War July 17, 1863."] {{Webarchive. link. (November 12, 2014 Retrieved August 25, 1863.)
5. [https://www.nps.gov/fosc/learn/historyculture/firsttoserve.htm "First to Serve."] National Park Service. Fort Scott National Historic Site." Retrieved August 30, 2014.
6. Fox, William Freeman. (1889). "Regimental losses in the American Civil War, 1861-1865 : a treatise on the extent and nature of the mortuary losses in the Union regiments, with full and exhaustive statistics compiled from the official records on file in the state military bureaus and at Washington". Albany, N.Y. : Albany Publishing Co..
7. (21 July 2011). "The First Colored Troops of Kansas {{!}} Exhibitions {{!}} Spencer Museum of Art".