Concluded five years before Wichita was founded, the American Civil War nevertheless influenced our city in ways still evident today.
Several thousand Union veterans of the Civil War made their homes in and around Wichita after the war, part of an influx that earned Kansas the nickname of “The Soldier State.”
They wasted little time once they reached here, jumping into the building of what eventually became Kansas’ biggest city. Their legacy lives on in politics, business, the medical field, place names and more.
“Many had experienced years of mortal combat, been wounded and lost limbs,” said Dr. Alfred Eckes, Jr., a former professor of history at Ohio University who’s researched the topic extensively. “Some had been prisoners of war in notorious, overcrowded and disease-ridden prisons. They were eager to settle on the frontier, start families and begin new lives.”
Eckes, who gave a presentation at the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum earlier this year, said exactly how many veterans settled here isn’t known, but more than 900 veterans of the conflict are buried in just two Wichita cemeteries — Maple Grove and Highland, located across North Hillside from one another. Other cemeteries throughout the area hold Civil War veterans (a list can be found at ksgenweb.org), and still other former soldiers lived here for a time before moving on.
Big battles
Who were these former soldiers who helped shape Wichita?
Eckes said they tended to have experienced the Civil War in a different way than the men who’d settled in eastern Kansas before the war. Many of the latter also eagerly joined the Union forces; after all, their region of the state was known as “Bleeding Kansas” for clashes between pro- and anti-slavery forces. But their regiments spent much of the war fighting Native Americans and chasing Confederate forces through Missouri and Arkansas. “Few saw combat in big battles east of the Mississippi,” Eckes said. “Veterans who came to Wichita were, however, quite different.”
Many of those newcomers had taken part in some of the bloodiest battles of the war, from Gettysburg (51,000 dead and wounded) to Chickamauga (35,000 casualties) and Spotsylvania Court House (30,000). They tended to come from the east and upper Midwest.
John “Big Jim” Steele enlisted as a Pennsylvania teenager, was wounded and then imprisoned in Virginia. Still in his twenties upon reaching Wichita, he became its first justice of the peace, first county clerk and one of its most prominent and politically connected boosters. Steele and his wife moved to Washington State after three of their children died of scarlet fever in March 1877. The children are buried at Highland cemetery.
New York native Milo Bailey Kellogg — for whom Wichita’s main east-west thoroughfare is named – also enlisted young. He fought at Gettysburg, was taken prisoner at the Battle of the Wilderness and then held at the notorious Andersonville prison in South Carolina for nine months. He became Wichita’s first postmaster and invested in real estate before, like Steele, moving west.
One former soldier whose home still stands was Enoch Dodge, a native of Illinois who served with the Army of the Cumberland before coming to Wichita. Dodge played an instrumental role in the development of the Delano neighborhood west of the Arkansas River. The 14-room Queen Victorian house he built at 1406 W. Second St. is on the Wichita Register of Historic Places. According to a short 1888 biographical sketch of Dodge, he was “prominently identified with the Republican Party.”
‘Father of medicine’
The former soldier whose life story, both during and after the war, may be best known is Dr. Andrew Fabrique. An Indiana native, he was attending Tulane College in New Orleans when the war broke out in 1861. Fabrique immediately took a steamship north to enlist in the Indiana infantry. The next year, he was wounded so grievously in fighting at Shiloh that his mother was mistakenly notified of his death. Instead, doctors performed an operation that left his left arm slightly shorter than his right.
After being mustered out, Fabrique re-enlisted and was commissioned as a first lieutenant at age 20. He served as an officer on one of the gunboats that ran past Vicksburg, was promoted to captain and took part in General Sherman’s March to the Sea, suffering a second, less-severe wound at Atlanta. He reached the rank of major and served in the 1865 U.S. expedition to Vera Cruz, Mexico, before leaving the Army.
Fabrique then owned a drug store in Aurora, Illinois, and studied medicine on the side before moving to Wichita with his wife and infant daughter in 1870. Often called the “Father of Medicine and Surgery” here, Fabrique practiced for the next 41 years and founded what became St. Francis Hospital.
Just as fascinating is the story of Jacob McAfee, who had been born a slave in Kentucky before escaping to Ohio and joining the Union Army. Shot in the foot at Petersburg — which left him with a limp the rest of his life — McAfee came west after the war and was among the earliest settlers of Wichita. According to a 1887 article in The Weekly Eagle, headlined “Stranger Than Fiction,” McAfee had recently been contacted by the widow of his former owner, who sent him money to invest in Wichita real estate. McAfee “was greatly elated over this letter and his honest face beamed with joy as he related the incident.” McAfee was said to own 50 residential and commercial buildings and be worth $50,000 at his death in 1918. McAfee’s descendants fought in subsequent U.S. wars and remain prominent members of the community.
Not that all the veterans lived exemplary lives. Former Army scout Jack Ledford became one of the region’s most notorious outlaws, accused of attacking an Army wagon train in 1870. The next year, a U.S. marshal and soldiers tracked him to Wichita, where he died in a spectacular shootout that made news across the country.
Bitterness fades
While most former soldiers who came here had fought for the Union, there was also a contingent of ex-Confederate soldiers. Wichita boasted a branch of the Confederate Association and an organization called the Southern Society.
Former Union soldiers tended to belong to the Republican Party that had elected Abraham Lincoln, setting a political pattern that continues to present times. In the 41 presidential elections since 1864, Kansas has voted Republican 34 times and Democratic six times. Sedgwick County is named for Union Major Gen. John Sedgwick, killed by a Confederate sharpshooter shortly after proclaiming the enemy “couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.”
But as time passed, some former Confederates achieved positions of prominence. For instance, when Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected president in 1914, he appointed John Shields, a former Confederate drummer, as Wichita postmaster. Another, Richard Cogdell, served as chief of police and county sheriff.
“Initially, there was probably some resentment, but over time they were brothers,” Eckes said. “By the Spanish American War (in 1898), most of the bitterness had faded.”
Editor’s note: To view Eckes’ presentation at the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum, visit youtube.com/wichitahistory.
War begot city’s name, too
The Civil War was also indirectly responsible for the name Wichita took.
The Wichita tribe of Native Americans had traditionally made their home in Oklahoma. However, they were loyal to the Union during the war and moved north, to the confluence of the Big and Little Arkansas rivers, to escape attacks by tribes who were loyal to the Confederacy.
Members of the Wichita tribe traded with J.R. Mead, who had established a trading post in the area. When the city was incorporated in 1870, Mead suggested Wichita as its name. Members of the tribe returned to Oklahoma after the war.
