Civil War Archaeology in the Trans-Mississippi West
Civil War Archaeology in the Trans-Mississippi West
The Civil War formally opened with the firing on Fort Sumter, but fighting started many years earlier west of the Mississippi as political factions took up arms in order to settle the issue over slave and free states. Eastern Kansas was the scene of a series of armed clashes in the late 1850s that presaged the sectional violence of the American Civil War. Between 1861 and 1865, over two thousand battles and skirmishes were fought in the trans-Mississippi West, which saw many firsts: the first use of Native American units fighting on both sides, the first Native American authorized units fighting against one another, and the first combat actions by organized and state-authorized African-American troops. Much of what occurred was between Union soldiers sent west to act as security forces to protect overland trail traffic as well as mail and telegraph routes. A significant sample of each of these site types has been investigated archaeologically. This chapter places the Civil War in the west in historical context and reviews the role and value of the archaeological work there.
Keywords: eastern Kansas, sectional violence, African-American troops, Native American units, trans-Mississippi Westmail routes, telegraph routes, historical archaeology
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