By Scott Meeker
smeeker@joplinglobe.com
There’s not much to see on the property at the northeast corner of Fountain and Peace Church roads.
There’s a dilapidated house, and what once may have been vibrant red paint is now peeling away from the wood. A nearby barn and other small structures are in similar disrepair. The surrounding acreage is filled with trees and overgrowth that make walking through the area difficult.
It’s neither clean nor pretty — but neither were the events that unfolded at the site more than 145 years ago.
People like their history to be clean and pretty, said Steve Cottrell, a Carthage resident who has written several books about local history, including “The Civil War in the Ozarks.” Perhaps that’s why what happened at the site has been largely forgotten, he said.
During two turbulent days in May 1863, it was the epicenter of a chain of events that left many dead and set a large swath of western Jasper County ablaze.
“You think of the war on terror and what’s going on in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Cottrell. “But this isn’t the first time we’ve been through this sort of thing. Guerrilla warfare actually took place in our own backyard at one time.”
At a dedication program set for 10 a.m. today on the property, the site’s historical significance will be discussed in addition to plans to turn it into a permanent Civil War memorial.
Regiment ambushed
“I know not, Mr. Commander, in all human history, to any given thousand men in arms, has there been committed a work at once so proud, so precious, so full of hope and glory as the work committed to you.”
Those words were spoken by Massachusetts Gov. John A. Andrew on May 18, 1863, while presenting the regimental flags to Col. Robert Gould Shaw, commander of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment — one of the first black units formed after the Emancipation Proclamation.
The 54th, immortalized in the 1989 movie “Glory,” is often thought of as the first black fighting regiment during the Civil War.
But on that same day — May 18, 1863 — a foraging party made up of black Union troops was sent from its post near Baxter Springs, Kan., to gather food.
The party was formed primarily by members of the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry and was accompanied by several mounted white soldiers from the 2nd Kansas Volunteer Battery.
The 1st Kansas regiment was composed of slaves turned soldiers, recruited the previous summer from Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Indian Territory. Though the unit had been officially mustered into the Army earlier that year at Fort Scott, Kan, it already had seen action in 1862 north of Fort Scott and in Bates County, Mo.
On that day in 1863, the mission was to be a relatively easy one.
“They were simply sent out to gather food for their hungry camp,” said Cottrell. “It was not a very large detachment.”
The foraging party entered Jasper County and began gathering corn at a farm near the village of Sherwood. The farm was owned by the family of William Rader.
“Joplin wasn’t established until eight years after the war,” said Cottrell. “During the war, there were several communities, farms and groups of settlers in the county. Sherwood was the third largest community in the county, and the Rader farm was one of the farms in the outlying area.”
Members of the 1st Kansas unit were unaware that they had been tracked by Maj. Tom Livingston and a guerrilla band of about 70 Southern sympathizers. As the Union troops continued gathering food, having set their guns aside, they were surrounded by the guerrillas, who opened fire.
Fifteen black soldiers were shot and killed. Most of the regiment’s white escorts escaped on horseback, though three were chased down and also killed.
The following day, Union reinforcements from Baxter Springs arrived at the Rader farm, where they found the bodies of the soldiers.
The brutality was horrific, according to Steve Weldon, Jasper County archivist.
“Their skulls had been broken with clubs, and they had been stripped and horribly mutilated, according to reports,” Weldon said.
Retaliation
At the order of Col. James Williams — the regiment’s white commander — the bodies were placed in the Rader house and burned. Joining them was a Southern sympathizer who had been found nearby. He was shot and then burned with the Union soldiers in the makeshift funeral pyre.
Then, Williams ordered that Sherwood and other surrounding communities be burned to the ground.
“It was horrendous,” said Cottrell. “There was over a score of casualties, killed and wounded. A whole town was wiped from the face of the Earth.”
The events marked an ugly turn in the war, Weldon said.
“Before that, there had been some effort at give-and-take, civility and the exchange of prisoners between the two sides,” he said. “After this, any attempt at neutrality was gone, and all bets were off. There was a basic effort on both sides to just burn each other out. The general attempt to at least respect one another ended.”
Weldon said Livingston, who led the guerrilla band, had taken one of the black soldiers prisoner and refused a Union request for a prisoner exchange. That soldier also was killed.
When word of that soldier’s execution reached federal troops, a Confederate soldier being held at Fort Lincoln — located north of Fort Scott — was marched outside and executed in retaliation.
“The story is fascinating in that there were no clean hands here,” Weldon said. “There was brutality on both sides.”
Reconciliation
Today, a monument at Fort Scott National Cemetery notes the names of those killed on the Rader farm near Sherwood.
The dead from the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry were Henry Aggleson, Green Allen, John Booth, Edward Cockerell, William Grisby, Frank Haze, Milton Johnson, William Knight, Dennis Lyons, George Mitchell, Minor Porter, William Smith, George Webb, Peter White and Riley Young. The three white soldiers from the 2nd Kansas Volunteer Battery who were killed were Garrett Cameron, Joseph Endecott and Van Renseller Hancock.
But there is nothing to mark the actual site where the battle took place.
A monument just west of the site of the old Rader farm will serve not just as a memorial for the dead on both sides, but as something of a “reconciliation park,” said Vince Lindstrom, director of the Joplin Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“When I first came to town about two years ago, I had a meeting with Brad Belk (director of the Joplin Museum Complex), and he took me for a ride and showed me where the massacre took place and where Sherwood had been burned out,” Lindstrom said.
He said that with the sesquicentennial anniversary of the Civil War set to begin in 2011, talk began about trying to purchase the property and create a monument. The effort to purchase the five-acre site included help from the city of Joplin, the Jasper County Commission and a private donation that will be recognized during today’s dedication.
The land now belongs to Jasper County, having been purchased from absentee owners living in California.
“It was a very significant battle, and there were a lot of firsts,” said Western District Commissioner Darieus Adams. “I think everyone will agree that it was quite a significant event in the Civil War, and we sure hope that word gets out about how big a piece of history took place here in Jasper County.”
He said the acquisition of the land marks the first county-owned park. Plans include making upgrades to the property and performing an archaeological dig, as well as placing it on the National Register of Historic Places.
Lindstrom said there is much work to be done, but he hopes the memorial park can be under way by 2011.
“In terms of the final outcome, it may take some years to get done,” he said. “But this whole thing is taking on a life of its own.”
Weldon said the memorial will stand as a permanent reminder of the events of those two days and their significance.
“Here is this obscure event that happened in the West during the Civil War that defines the actual horror of the Civil War,” he said. “This will be a wonderful contribution to the 150th anniversary.”
Dedication
A dedication program for the planned historical monument will be held at 10 a.m. today at the corner of Fountain and Peace Church roads. Speakers will include historian and author Steve Cottrell, county Commissioner Darieus Adams, and Joplin Museum Complex director Brad Belk.
