Mine Creek Battlefield marks 150 years (VIDEO)

The battle site is peacefully deceptive – crickets chirp as a gentle breeze rustles over the tallgrass prairie.

But nearly 150 years ago, this land was engaged in a bloody tug-of-war. This was where Union troops routed the Confederates from Kansas.

Forever.

At the Mine Creek Battlefield State Historic Site, students from the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth still study the guerrilla tactics of the Kansas and Missouri border wars – and specifically the Battle of Mine Creek – for use in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Unlike their predecessors, they arrive by Black Hawk helicopter, not by horse.

The Battle of Mine Creek lasted only an hour on Oct. 25, 1864, but it was the largest battle of uniformed troops fought on Kansas soil.

“This is a battle that equals the battles of the Civil War fought in the East but it never gets the kind of press,” said Kansas historian and documentary filmmaker Ken Spurgeon. “Virginia takes great pride in their battlefields. Why not Kansas?”

Arnold Schofield, one of the foremost Civil War historians in the region, tells the story of Gen. Sterling Price’s Army of the Missouri and how it invaded Kansas with 8,000 troops and 500 wagons in a column that stretched for 11 miles.

It is a David and Goliath story about how Union forces, with only 2,600 soldiers, soundly defeated the Confederates in what has been called the second-largest cavalry battle of the Civil War.

The buildup

The Civil War took a toll on Kansans in 1863 and 1864 with its ferocity and violence.

William Quantrill’s most infamous raid occurred on Aug. 21, 1863, when he and his Confederate raiders sacked Lawrence. On his orders, they aimed to kill “every man big enough to carry a gun.”

Quantrill’s raiders killed 150 abolitionists – or those they believed opposed slavery – all of them men.

He would make more raids into Kansas, one resulting in the Baxter Springs massacre of Oct. 6, 1863, in which 101 Union soldiers were killed.

Kansans did their own share of creating tensions along the Missouri border.

There was the September 1861 sacking and raiding of Osceola, Mo., by Kansas Jayhawkers. Decades later, President Harry Truman – who grew up in Independence, Mo. – would often tell the story of how Kansas Jayhawkers stole his family’s silverware, killed his family’s hogs and burned the hay and barns.

And, in the summer of 1863, Union soldiers began rounding up friends and relatives of known or suspected Confederate guerrillas and putting them in Kansas City, Mo., jails.

By the time Confederate Gen. Price made his march into Missouri and Kansas, tensions were at an all-time high.

Price had been ordered to go into Missouri and Kansas to gather badly needed supplies for the Confederate Army. He also hoped to capture St. Louis and Jefferson City, Mo., and establish a Confederate governor, Schofield said.

“Price’s campaign in 1864 is one of the longest overland campaigns in the war,” Schofield said. “It covers between 1,500 and 1,800 miles.

“His orders say if he is forced to withdraw from Missouri, he is to go into the enemy state of Kansas and wreak as much devastation and havoc as he can.”

He does.

The early morning hours

On Oct. 25, 1864, Price began moving his troops at 2 a.m. near Trading Post, Kan., a few miles from the Kansas-Missouri border in Linn County.

As rain fell, Union troops rapidly advanced behind the Confederate column.

At daybreak, Union artillery bombarded two mounds at Trading Post, where the Confederate Army was retreating. Confederate engineers quickly barricaded a ford along the nearby Marais des Cygnes River and the Confederates set up a rear guard, which temporarily delayed the Union troops for the next 12 miles.

Many of Price’s troops were new recruits, Schofield said. So were their mules and horses. They carried antiquated guns. And in the battle, they made a stand at the bottom of a sloping prairie landscape near the creek.

The Union troops, Schofield said, carried 1863 Sharps percussion cap breach loaders, Spencer repeating rifles and two or three six-shot revolvers.

At Mine Creek, Price’s wagons got bogged down in a z-shaped ford on the banks of the creek. One of Price’s generals, John Marmaduke, was ordered to not surrender any of the wagons. One wagon at a time was hauled by chains up the creek as the Union troops begin to advance. After the war, Marmaduke would become governor of Missouri.

Union Lt. Col. Frederick Benteen – who would later become famous for his actions at the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876 for not coming to Custer’s aid – aggressively led his own Union troops of the 4th Brigade into battle at Mine Creek.

“Benteen is lieutenant colonel of the 10th Missouri,” Schofield said. “He has the 10th Missouri in front, and he wants the glory.”

With him was John Phillips’ 1st Brigade of the Union Cavalry as well as a battalion of the 2nd Kansas Cavalry. The charge was sounded.

“Forget John Wayne. Forget Hollywood. There is no riding a horse 100 yards at a full gallop,” Schofield said. “They first start with a walk, then a trot, then a lope or canter before getting to the last 50 yards. Then, you fly as fast as you can.

“From the Confederate perspective, the first thing you are going to see is the head of Union soldiers, then you will see the ears and heads of the horses. You see a blue mass headed toward you. The ground begins to shake under the horses and mules underneath you who begin to dance around you because they aren’t trained for battle.”

The Union soldiers were shoulder to shoulder. Stirrup to stirrup.

As guns fired, the gunpowder smoke was trapped in the valley by the low-hanging clouds, creating a fog of war, causing soldiers’ eyes to burn and tear.

“A rolling blue thunder is rolling down that hill,” Schofield said. “The force of the impact carries the Union troops through the Confederate line. There is the (Confederate) artillery line that Benteen wants to capture.

“He doesn’t capture it. He obliterates it. He doesn’t hit it once. He hits it one, two, three, four, five times and goes right through. The confederate line breaks.”

When the battle ended, the Confederates suffered 300 dead, 250 wounded and 600 prisoners of war.

Union records reported only 15 dead and 94 wounded.

Confederate Pvt. Henry Luttrell would describe the battle this way:

“Cavalry horses are breaking from the enemy’s line and are running riderless across the prairie. … About this time Charley Howard catches a bullet in the fleshy part of his leg. He slings his gun, takes out a handkerchief and binds the wound, then goes on firing again as he remarks that ‘It is better to catch ’em in the leg than in the head.’”

Confederate Brig. Gen. William Cabell was captured, escaped, captured again, escaped again and captured for a third time that day by Union soldiers.

After the battle, Schofield said, there are records that show nearly 200 Confederate prisoners were later shot and buried in a mass grave.

The aftermath

The battle ended all hope of the Confederacy establishing a stronghold in Kansas, said Spurgeon, the Kansas historian.

“To me, it is the way the Confederates are defeated that is such a contrast to what it had been just two to three years earlier,” said Spurgeon, whose great-grandfather, James Wheeler, fought in the battle on the Union side.

“When the Rebs hit the creek and the Yanks run into them, there is no doubt who the aggressor is. It is a fitting end for the final battle in the West.”

This story was originally published October 11, 2014 at 4:05 PM with the headline "Mine Creek Battlefield marks 150 years (VIDEO)."