This could be called the Battle of Rader Farm, but was more along the lines of a skirmish because of numbers involved. It definitely had racial overtones. It took place May 18, 1813, when a group of black soldiers was ambushed and killed by Confederate guerrillas while foraging.
The site was purchased thanks to a $25,000 donation from Joplin attorneys Edward and Alison Hershewe. It will be turned into a county park and is in time for the sesquicentennial of the war.
FORAGING
Forty members of the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry were on a foraging expedition from a Union camp at Baxter Springs, Kansas, and had just begun gathering corn at the Rader Farm near Sherwood, Mo., when they were attacked by a group of about 70 Southern sympathizrs.
Fifteen blacks were shot and killed on the spot and most of the white escorts escaped, but three were chased down and killed.
Union forces from Baxter Springs arriving the next day found the bodies mutilated. The commander ordered the bodies placed in the Rader house and burned. A Southern sympathizer found nearby was killed and placed in the fire as well. The commander then ordered all communities and homes within five miles destroyed. The town of Sherwood, Jasper County's third largest community was one of these and was destroyed and never rebuilt.
There wasn't even a town of Joplin at the time.
A Little-Known Tale of brutality in the War. --Old B-Runner
The Battle of Fort Fisher, N.C.
