Kansas 5th Cavalry (Union)

Helena

Lt. Gen. Theophilus Holmes, Confederate commander in Arkansas, sought to relieve Union pressure on Vicksburg, Mississippi as the army of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant besieged that strategic city. Holmes won approval for a plan to assault the Union-held river town of Helena, Arkansas, 170 miles north of Vicksburg, with a combined force of about 7,600 men. About 4,000 Union soldiers were in Helena under the command of Maj. Gen. Benjamin Prentiss. Four artillery batteries defended the town, surrounded on the la…READ MORE

Byram's Ford

Maj. Gen. Sterling Price's Confederate Army of Missouri headed towards Kansas City, Missouri and Fort Leavenworth, hoping to capture Missouri for the South in the weeks prior to Abraham Lincoln's reelection in 1864. Union Maj. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis's Army of the Border, in and around Westport, was blocking Price's movement, while Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton's provisional cavalry division was pressing Price's rearguard. On October 22nd, Maj. Gen. James G. Blunt's division held a defensive position on the we…READ MORE

CaptainJames H. Young

ColonelThomas Moonlight

Major GeneralJames G. Blunt

Westport

The Battle of Westport, fought October 21-23, was the largest battle west of the Mississippi River and the decisive battle of Confederate Gen. Stirling Price's 1864 Missouri campaign. Directions guide the visitor to the first of twenty-five narrative markers on a 32-mile, self-guided automobile tour and a self-guided walking tour of Byram's Ford and the Big Blue Battlefield. Each marker provides directions to the next stop on the tour. A written brochure is available from the Battle of Westport Visitor Cen…READ MORE

Mine Creek

About six miles south of Trading Post, Kansas, where the Marais de Cygnes cavalry engagement had occurred earlier in the day, the Union brigades of Col. Frederick Benteen and Col. John Phillips, of Maj. Gen. Alfred Pleasonton's Provisional Cavalry Division, overtook a retreating Confederate cavalry column from Maj. Gen Sterling Price's Army of Missouri crossing Mine Creek. The rebels, stalled by their 500-wagon supply train crossing the rain-swollen ford, formed a line of about 7,000 men on the north side…READ MORE

Second Battle of Newtonia

Confederate Maj. Gen. Sterling Price's Army of Missouri was in full retreat following its defeats at Westport on the Big Blue River outside of Kansas City on October 23rd, and at Mine Creek in Kansas on October 25th. On October 28th, it stopped to rest about two miles south of Newtonia, Missouri where another battle had been fought two years prior. Soon, five brigades in the pursuing cavalry division of Brig. Gen. James G. Blunt's Union force arrived. Blunt's cavalrymen caught the Rebels by surprise and at…READ MORE