Previously
Published in: North South Trader’s Civil War Magazine,
Volume 30, No. 3, 2004
http://www.nstcivilwar.com/
In recent years Civil War historians have
begun to turn their attention to the long-neglected campaigns of the
Trans-Mississippi Theatre. It is a refreshing turn of events for those of us
who never tire of reading Civil War books and yet are bored with endless
rewrites of the famous battles of the east.
The books on these western actions are
introducing America to a new cast of characters whose deeds are no less worthy
of ink than those who are familiar to us as family. Although smaller in size,
the actions of that theatre were often more bitter and fierce than their
eastern counterparts. Emotions ran high and hatreds ran deep between factions
who had been foes for years. Battles frequently ended with no quarter asked
or granted.
Oklahoma native Steven L. Warren has shined
history’s spotlight on one such little-known western battle, the Second Battle
of Cabin Creek. Three days before the main battle, on September 16, 1864,
Confederate generals Richard Gano and Stand Watie, commanding a ragtag force
of 2,000 Texan and Indian Rebels, engaged a detachment of the 1st
Kansas Colored Regiment at Flat Rock. The unlikely alliance of Watie’s
Indians and Gano’s Indian fighters together under one flag against Union black
troops is difficult to conceive. Such was the nature of that arena of the
war.
At Cabin Creek the Confederates ambushed and
captured a large supply train of some 300 wagons and nearly 2,000 horses and
mules in one of the most successful raids of the Trans-Mississippi Theatre.
Confederate Major General Edmund Kirby-Smith would later call it “one of the
most brilliant raids of the entire war.”
Mr. Warren has been relic hunting and
studying the Civil War for many years and has coupled that passion with his
career experience as a journalist to author this work. In addition to the
traditional avenues of research, he spent many hours tramping the battlefield
and interviewing many descendants of the battle’s participants from both
sides, Union and Confederate.
