Fort Leavenworth: "Queen of the Frontier Posts"

Fort Leavenworth: "Queen of the Frontier Posts". Tour Stop #1. , Colonel Henry Leavenworth, a lawyer by education but a soldier by choice, arrived here on May 8, 1827, with 188 officers and men of the 3rd Infantry to establish an outpost on the Missouri River., Because of the toll taken by malaria on the 3rd Infantry, the regiment had to be replaced with the 6th Infantry in 1829. The 6th Infantry provided the first military escort to the Annual Merchants Caravan on the Santa Fe Trail. In 1834 the first mounted troops arrived here. The U.S. Regiment of Dragoons conducted expeditions each year through the Great Plains in an effort to keep peace between the Indians and ensure the safety of the wagon trains heading West., During the Mexican War, 1846-1848, Fort Leavenworth was a major base of operations against Mexico. It was here that the Army of the West was assembled under General Stephen Watts Kearney., Fort Leavenworth became not just a Headquarters, but also the major supply depot and center for the military overland freight business supplying most of the forts throughout the West., The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 changed the earlier treaties with the Indians by opening this area to white settlement. Because of this, Fort Leavenworth's peacekeeping mission was greatly complicated. Now the Army had to protect the new settlers from the Indians while keeping peace among the settlers. During the era of Bleeding Kansas, the first blood of the Civil War was spilled in Kansas Territory over the slavery versus free state issue., During the Civil War, Fort Leavenworth was a receiving and training center for recruits. The war came closer in October 1864, when Confederate Forces under General Sterling Price moved toward Fort Leavenworth. Some of the Federal Forces who defeated him at the Battle of Westport, outside Kansas City, came from Fort Leavenworth., In 1864, because of continuing Indian unrest, authority was granted for recruiting Confederate prisoners of war to serve with the Army. They were known as "The Galvanized Yankees". Some 5,000 volunteered, under the condition they were used only against the Indians and not their former comrades. In 1865, Fort Leavenworth served as a staging area for these soldiers.