James Montgomery - Soldier's Lot - Mound City. Ks - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

From the Wikipedia entry on James Montgomery:
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James Montgomery (December 22, 1814 – December 6, 1871) was a Jayhawker during the Bleeding Kansas Affair and a controversial Union colonel during the American Civil War. Montgomery was a staunch abolitionist and used extreme measures against pro-slavery populations.

Early life and Bleeding Kansas
James Montgomery was born to James and Mary Baldwin Montgomery in Austinburg, Ashtabula County, Ohio, on December 22, 1814. He migrated to Kentucky in 1837 with his parents and eventually taught school there. He married, but his first wife died shortly after the wedding, so he married again to Clarinda Evans. They moved to Pike County, Missouri, in 1852, and then to Jackson County and finally Bates County while awaiting the organization of Kansas for settlement.

In 1854 Montgomery purchased land near present day Mound City, Kansas, where he became a leader of local Free-state men and was a fervent abolitionist. In 1857 he organized and commanded a "Self-Protective Company", using it to order pro-slavery settlers out of the region. Conflict with other pro-slavery elements led territorial governor James W. Denver to dispatch U.S. Army soldiers in to restore order. Montgomery at times cooperated with the abolitionist John Brown and considered a raid to rescue Brown after his capture in Virginia, but snow in Pennsylvania upset his plan.

Civil War
On July 24, 1861, Montgomery was commissioned as colonel of the 3rd Kansas Infantry of U.S. Senator James H. Lane's Kansas brigade, with Montgomery as second-in-command of the brigade. Discipline was lacking under Montgomery, and both the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Kansas would be consolidated into the 10th Kansas Infantry in April 1862. Lane's Kansas brigade was notorious for its Jayhawker-style raids into Missouri at the start of the war, particularly the Sacking of Osceola. Noted historian Albert Castel describes Montgomery as a "a sincere, if unscrupulous, antislavery zealot."

Montgomery was authorized to raise a regiment of African-American infantry in January 1863 that would become the 2nd South Carolina (African Descent). Throughout 1863 and part of 1864, Montgomery practiced his brand of warfare in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

In June 1863, Colonel Montgomery commanded a brigade, including his own 2nd South Carolina and the 3rd Rhode Island Heavy Artillery, in operations along the coast resembling his earlier Jayhawk raids. The most famous of his controversial operations was the Raid at Combahee Ferry in which 800 slaves were freed. Montgomery led a raid on the coastal town of Darien, Georgia, which he ordered looted and burned even though it was not defended and had not offered any resistance. Colonel Robert Gould Shaw condemned the action, and in a private letter gave Montgomery's reason for burning the town as "that the Southerners must be made to feel that this was a real war, and that they were to be swept away by the hand of God, like the Jews of old." Montgomery stated to Shaw, "We are outlawed, and therefore not bound by the rules of regular warfare."

Montgomery commanded a brigade in the Battle of Olustee. In September 1864 he resigned his commission and returned to Kansas. He ended his military career as colonel of the 6th Kansas State Militia, active in October of that year during Confederate General Sterling Price's raid.

Postwar
After the war, Montgomery returned to his Linn County, Kansas, farm, where he died on December 6, 1871.

Description: From the Florida History Online website: http://www.unf.edu/floridahistoryonline/montgomery/montgomery.html James Montgomery was born on December 22, 1814 at Ashtabula County, Ohio. He moved to Kentucky as a young man, was educated there, and became a teacher and itinerant preacher of the “Campbellite” version of Protestant Christianity. Subsequently, Montgomery moved to western Missouri, and then to Linn County in the Territory of Kansas. Brian R. Dirck, in “By the Hand of God: James Montgomery and Redemptive Violence,” Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains 27 (Spring-Summer 2004): 100-15, describes Linn County as a complex mixture of “proslavery farmers, freesoilers, U.S. army soldiers and nearby Ottawa Indians, a proslavery colony of Georgians who had emigrated en masse, and their slaves,” and passionate antislavery Kansans that eventually included James Montgomery in their ranks. During the violent episode of American history referred to as “Bleeding Kansas,” James Montgomery’s home was burned and he became an avenging antislavery radical who indiscriminately led “free-soil raids” on “Border Ruffians” from Missouri and merely proslavery Kansans. An inspiring and courageous figure in defense of his moralistic antislavery beliefs, Montgomery earned a reputation as a violent warrior raiding, looting, burning and taking lives, all done with a moralistic certainty justified by command of the Bible and his God. In the summer of 1861, Montgomery joined a regiment of Kansas Union volunteers and was appointed colonel. In early 1863, he was authorized to raise a regiment of black soldiers from among the thousands of former slaves who were escaping to the protection of Union Army lines. As William Apthorp’s manuscript indicates, Colonel Montgomery traveled to Union-occupied Key West, Florida to recruit the first 130 black soldiers of his command. The men were transported to Beaufort, South Carolina, and temporarily merged with the First South Carolina Loyal Volunteers, a newly formed black regiment undergoing training by Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson. During subsequent campaigns in Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida, Montgomery and his men from Key West participated with Higginson and the men of the 1st South Carolina while recruiting former slaves to fill the ranks of the regiment. Two regiments emerged from these activities, the 33rd United States Colored Infantry under Higginson and the 34th USCI under Montgomery. Date of birth: 12/22/1814 Date of death: 12/06/1871 Area of notoriety: Politics Marker Type: Headstone Setting: Outdoor Visiting Hours/Restrictions: Sunrise to Sunset Fee required?: No Web site: [Web Link]

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