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The Kansas Black volunteer regiment was finally officially brought into Federal service in 1863 as the First Kansas Colored Volunteers and saw extensive duty in the East as was mentioned in the movie "Glory".
In the Indian Territory, of what is now Oklahoma, Indians were recruited by both the North and the South. Tribal hatreds created by earlier Indian relocations and removals had split tribal loyalties and as a result they chose different sides in the War.
In 1862, Stand Watie and his Cherokee battalion from the Indian Territory was making its way into Missouri to fight for the Confederate cause.
Jim Lane of Kansas was concerned about the defense of the Kansas border and called on President Lincoln to allow him to raise Indian units to defend against the Cherokee battalion that was across the Southeast Kansas border.
Lincoln finally agreed, and two Indian regiments, one Creek and the other Cherokee, were formed. They enlisted about 15 hundred Indians and supplemented their forces with additional units of White soldiers.
They were a rag-tag looking organization. The uniforms that were issued by the Federal government seemed to be either too large or too small. Their faces were painted like plains Indians. They went after Stand Watie, who soon thought twice about engaging the newly formed Kansas Indian unit and headed back to the Indian Territory. Without firing a shot the Indian volunteers captured Tahlequah, Stand Watie's Cherokee capital. Of the 3,530 Indians that ultimately fought for the Union, more than a thousand were killed. An extremely high number for any troop unit in the conflict.
On the Western border between Missouri and Kansas the war was down right brutal and personal.
The years of border hatred that came from "Bleeding Kansas" continued... only this time it had a new name - "Guerilla Warfare"
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The winter of 1859-60 saw the issue of slavery take on the national attention of both full-blood and mixed-bloods alike. .....Fueled by the Baptist Jones' opposition to slavery and ignited by the full-blown disfranchisement, the Keetoowah Society became Northern sympathizers and abolitionist among the slave-owning mixed-bloods
Principal Chief John Ross, ever aware of his full blood power base, resolved to remain neutral in the American Civil War, then looming on the horizon.
Through the pressures of Stand Watie, a Cherokee Confederate General and Treaty party leader, and the almost total abandonment of the Cherokee Nation by Federal troops, Ross signed a treaty with the Confederacy and joined the war. Almost immediately after signing the Confederate treaty, Ross denounced it as a fraud.
With such great pressures from the outside, the Cherokee Nation fractured along many lines. The old hatreds from the removal broke to the surface with a fury. Many murders were committed in the name of warfare that were really nothing more than revenge killings.
Stand Watie and his troops rampaged through the Cherokee country killing and pillaging his OWN people and burning the homes of those he blamed for the deaths of his relatives, Major Ridge, John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot, all signers of the removal treaty.
Full bloods fled north into Kansas, while mixed-bloods, with their slaves, fled south into Texas, leaving the Cherokee Nation ripe for the picking. The Cherokees returned home after the war to a scene of total devastation. The Cherokee Nation was now totally divided along blood lines and political sympathies. Full bloods controlled the government under acting Principal Chief, Watt Pegg. The mixed-bloods demanded consideration and recognition of their chief, Stand Watie.
The full bloods wanted the National government turned back over to John Ross and abhorred the thought of Stand Watie as chief.
At least the real Stand Watie realized the rebs lost the Civil War and threw in his bow and arrow. These nuts on here are still demanding civil war in America.