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booty, and escaped with a loss of about sixty men.
Phillips's loss was about the same.
Four weeks later, a train of three hundred wagons, on the way from
Kansas with supplies for Fort Blunt, under a convoy of ten cavalry companies, the First Kansas (colored),
Colonel J. M. Williams, eight hundred in number, and about\five hundred Indians led by
Major Forman, was attacked
at the crossing of the
Cabin Creek, in the
Indian Territory, by seven hundred Texans and some Creeks, led by a Confederate Indian chief named Standwatie.
The assailants were repulsed, and fled in haste, leaving forty of their dead and nine wounded on the field.
The Union loss was twenty-three.
The train pressed forward, and reached Fort Blunt in safety, followed immediately afterward by
General Blunt, who arrived there from
Fort Scott,
one hundred and, seventy-five miles distant, by a forced march during five days, just in time to meet great peril that threatened the post.
That peril consisted of a force of Confederates, estimated at six thousand strong, under
General Cooper.
They were then at
Honey Springs, behind
Elk Creek, about twenty-five miles south of Fort Blunt, where they were waiting for three regiments from
Texas, under
General Cabell, to join them in an attack on the post.
Blunt had heard of this peril, and hence his rapid march.
He was informed that the
Texans would arrive on the 17th, so he marched at once upon
Cooper's camp, with three thousand troops, infantry and cavalry, and twelve light cannon, to assail him before his re-enforcements should come up. He left the fort at midnight, and at ten o'clock the next day
he attacked
Cooper in two columns, led respectively by
Colonels Phillips and
Judson, his cavalry, dismounted, acting as infantry on each flank, with carbines.
At the end of, two hours hard fighting the
Confederates gave way. They were pursued through the woods into an open prairie, and scattered in wild disorder, leaving one hundred and fifty of their number dead, and seventy-seven of them prisoners, with a disabled gun and two hundred small-arms.
The number of their wounded was estimated at four hundred.
Blunt lost seventy-seven men, of whom seventeen were killed.
Within an hour after
Cooper fled,
Cabell came up with his Texans, nearly three thousand strong.
He did not think it prudent to attack the victorious
Nationals, so during that night he moved rapidly southward, and disappeared beyond the
Canadian River, when the
Union force returned to Fort Blunt.
In the mean time guerrilla bands were becoming exceedingly active in
Blunt's rear.
One of these, led by
Colonel Coffey, went up from
Northern Arkansas, and struck
the Sixth Missouri Cavalry,
Colonel Catherwood, at
Pineville, in
Southwestern Missouri; but he was beaten, and driven away with great loss.
His retreat was so precipitate, that he left behind him his wagons and supplies, and about two hundred men killed, wounded, and prisoners.
At the same time a most savage raid was made into
Kansas from
Missouri, by a band of desperadoes collected in the western part of the latter State, and led by a human fiend under the assumed name of
Quantrell.
His followers numbered about three hundred.
They gathered secretly, and then swept swiftly and stealthily over the border toward
Lawrence, whose inhabitants were mostly
Unionists.
They entered that town just at daybreak,
and awakened the
