Bleeding Kansas and the Civil War and Ft Leavenworth

By 1854 Fort Leavenworth was no longer the last outpost of civilization on the way west. The founding of Fort Riley, some 150 miles nearer the Rockies, meant that the post on the Missouri no longer provided immediate response to Indian raids on travelers crossing the Plains. Indeed, a proposal was made to abandon Fort Leavenworth and several other posts in light of the advancing frontier. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, however, decided that the fort's role as a depot and transportation center justified its continued occupation.

Fort Leavenworth's importance lay in its strategic location on the Missouri River near the eastern terminus of both the Santa Fe and Oregon trails. Throughout the 1850s the fort was the depot where supplies were transferred from steamboats to ox-drawn wagons for the remainder of their journey to such distant southwester garrisons as those at El Paso, Albuquerque, and Fort Union. Upon completion of a military road to Fort Riley, that garrison also became a regular recipient of freight from the Fort Leavenworth warehouses. The valley of Corral Creek just south of the post provided a lush pasture for the thousands of oxen and mules that furnished the motive power for the contractor's wagon fleets. By 1858 the Leavenworth based firm of Russell, Majors, and Waddell had absorbed its competitors and had become the recognized leader in transporting Army goods across the Plains.

Although the frontier was no longer just beyond Fort Leavenworth's boundaries, the post continued to be the starting point for several major military expeditions during the years just prior to the Civil War. In the summer of 1855 a large expedition headed by Brevet Brigadier General William S. Harney gathered at Fort Leavenworth before marching northwest to campaign against the Sioux in present-day Nebraska and South Dakota. Several captured Indian leaders were incarcerated on post for a year before their release in 1856. The following year, 1857, Colonel Edwin Vose Sumner departed Fort Leavenworth in the spring with detachments of the 1st Cavalry and 2d Dragoons in an effort to pacify hostile bands of Cheyenne raiding between the Platte and Arkansas rivers. A few months later an even larger force assembled at the post in preparation for a march into Utah to restore the government's authority over its Mormon inhabitants. Ultimately led by Brevet Brigadier General Albert Sidney Johnston, this expedition received both supplies and reinforcements from Fort Leavenworth in 1858. That same year a large troop movement to the Pacific coast staged through the fort.

While troops from Fort Leavenworth ranged across the Plains to the Great Salt Lake and beyond, the fort on the banks of the Missouri played an equally important role in turbulent events taking place much nearer at hand. After passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in May 1854, Kansas Territory became the site of a violent struggle between proslavery and antislavery factions. The town of Leavenworth, which sprang up just south of the fort, was initially dominated by proslavery groups, like the nearby river towns of Kickapoo and Atchison. Free states concentrated to the west, with their headquarters at Lawrence. Proslavery residents of Missouri contributed to the turmoil by entering Kansas to influence local elections. As the nearest outpost of the federal government, Fort Leavenworth frequently was called upon to preserve the peace.

Upon his arrival in Kansas on October 7, 1854, Territorial Governor Andrew H. Reeder opened an office at Fort Leavenworth, making the post the first territorial capital. The fort's tenure as the seat of government was brief, however, as Reeder and his entourage departed for Shawnee Mission on November 24, 1854. During the following year the war of words between the factions escalated into more serious acts of violence, as both sides heavily armed themselves. Fort Leavenworth played little role in the struggle during 1855, since most of its garrison was campaigning on the Plains with General Harney. In October 1855 Colonel Sumner and most of the 1st Cavalry Regiment took up residence at the post and soon became embroiled in the controversy. Territorial Governor Wilson Shannon, who had replaced Reeder, called upon Sumner in December to support him with troops in a confrontation with free staters at Lawrence. Unwilling to become involved without orders from the War Department, Sumner refused Shannon's request, and the governor had to arrange a truce between the contending parties alone.

The violence in "Bleeding" Kansas reached its peak in 1856. Having received orders to support the governor with force if necessary, Sumner used Fort Leavenworth units to assist civil authorities in carrying out their duties. In April 1856 a detail from the post accompanied the sheriff of Douglas County on his unsuccessful attempt to arrest members of the antislavery faction in Lawrence. Two months later Sumner himself led a detachment into the camp of John Brown and freed several proslavery men being held prisoner there. Yet Sumner's garrison at Fort Leavenworth was too small to disarm the thousand of armed men roaming eastern Kansas, and the toll of death and destruction continued to mount. Sumner himself was not in sympathy with the proslavery attitude of most of the civil authorities, but his orders from Secretary of War Jefferson Davis to support them were clear. Those orders required Sumner and troops from Fort Leavenworth to disperse the illegal free-state legislature at Topeka on July 4, 1856, a task that Sumner called "the most disagreeable duty of my whole life."

Sumner's sentiments soon became known in Washington, where it was decided he needed closer supervision. As a result, the headquarters of the Department of the West temporarily was transferred to Fort Leavenworth from St. Louis in July 1856, with Brevet Major General Persifor F. Smith in command. During Smith's tenure, which lasted until April 1857, the violence in Kansas continued, unchecked by the handful of troops patrolling from Fort Leavenworth. The soldiers could do no more than protect the territorial legislature while it met at Lecompton and provide escort for the newest territorial governor, John W. Geary. By spring 1857 even this minimal service was no longer available from Fort Leavenworth, as Geary discovered when he appealed for protection. Civil strife in Kansas had once again taken second place to campaigning on the Plains.

As the decade of the 1850s came to a close, free-state elements gradually gained control of Kansas, and the turmoil subsided momentarily. Fort Leavenworth continued to be the departure point both for punitive expeditions against the Plains Indians as well as regularly scheduled supply trains destined for Army posts in the distant southwest. The increased activity at the fort led to the construction of additional stables, barracks, and officers' quarters by workmen imported from the East. In 1858 an ordnance depot was established at Fort Leavenworth. Two years later the ordnance depot had become an arsenal covering 138 acres, with its own imposing set of stone buildings. In somewhat modified form, these buildings are the present-day Sherman and Sheridan halls.

With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Fort Leavenworth's arsenal and large stocks of military supplies made the post a valuable prize to Confederate sympathizers just across the river in Missouri. Fearing that his small command would be insufficient to protect the government property, the post commander, Captain William Steele, in April 1861 accepted the services of three small militia companies from the town of Leavenworth. Steele's plight was recognized by his superiors in St. Louis, who ordered Colonel D. S. Miles to bring several companies of infantry from Fort Kearny to augment the Fort Leavenworth garrison. Upon his arrival on April 29, 1861, Miles assumed command of the post and quickly discharged the local volunteers, believing his force to be sufficient to hold the post "against any rabble or detached secessionists" in the vicinity. Having secured Fort Leavenworth for the Union, Captain Steele resigned his commission in May and joined the Confederate Army, eventually attaining the rank of brigadier general.

The part played by Fort Leavenworth in the Civil War was important but generally unexciting. In June 1861 the post again became the headquarters of the Department of the West, but only for a brief time. More important, the post served as an enrolling center and training camp for Kansas volunteer units. All or part of six cavalry regiments and four infantry regiments were organized and equipped at Fort Leavenworth or nearby Camps Lincoln and Lyon before joining the Union armies in field service. By summer 1862, all units of the Regular Army had departed, and the post was garrisoned by volunteer troops from Kansas, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Colorado until the end of the war. For five months in 1862 and all of 1864, it served as the headquarters of the Department of Kansas, first under Brigadier General James G. Blunt and later under Major General Samuel R. Curtis. Although troops stationed at Fort Leavenworth periodically chased guerrilla bands marauding nearby, they usually arrived too late to punish the raiders. The most famous raid, W. C. Quantrill's assault on Lawrence in August 1863, found the fort's garrison totally without mounted troops, although some Ohio cavalrymen temporarily at the post were hastily mounted, armed, and sent in fruitless pursuit.

Large-scale military operations did not occur near Fort Leavenworth until the fall of 1864, when Confederate Major General Sterling Price invaded Missouri with 12,000 men. Forced out of the eastern part of the state by superior federal forces, Price turned westward toward Kansas City and Leavenworth. From his headquarters at Fort Leavenworth, Major General Curtis marshaled his units into the Army of the Border which took position southeast of Kansas City. Earthworks were hastily constructed at both Fort Leavenworth and the nearby town to provide a last-ditch defense, but they proved to be unnecessary as Curtis, aided by troops from the Department of Missouri, defeated Price on October 23, 1864, at the battle of Westport. Fort Leavenworth, which had provided most of the weapons for the Kansas militia that took part in the campaign, was no longer in danger; Price's retreat ended the Confederate threat to the Kansas frontier.