atched to Helena for
re-enforcements, and Colonel Hudson, with the remainder of the Phalanx
troops, reached them at night too late to be of any assistance, as the
confederates did not follow the retreating column.

Two days later, Colonel Hudson, with all the available men of the two
Phalanx regiments,--60th, 56th and a detachment of the 3rd Phalanx
artillery, with two cannons,--went down the Mississippi and up the White
river, disembarked and made a three days march across the country, where
the enemy was found entrenched. The Phalanx, after a spirited contest,
drove them out of their works, burned their store, captured a few Texas
rangers and returned to Helena. In March, 1865, the 60th Regiment was
ordered to join Brig.-Gen. Reynolds' command at Little Rock, where the
regiment was brigaded with the 57th, 59th and 83rd Phalanx regiments.
The brigade was ordered to Texas overland, but the surrender of General
Lee to Grant obviated this march. The gallant 60th was mustered out at
Davenport, Iowa, on the 2nd of November, 1865, "where," says Sergeant
Burton, the regimental historian, "they were greeted by the authorities
and the loyal thousands of Iowa."

Kansas has undoubtedly the honor of being the first State in the Union
to _begin_ the organization of negroes as soldiers for the Federal army.
The State was admitted into the Union January 29, 1861, after a long
reign of hostilities within her borders, carried on by the same
character of men and strictly for the same purpose which brought on the
war of the Great Rebellion. In fact, it was but a transfer of
hostilities from Missouri and Kansas to South Carolina and Virginia.
Missouri and the South had been whipped out of Kansas and the territory
admitted into the Union as a free State. This single fact was accepted
by the South as a precursor of the policy of the incoming Republican
administration, and three Southern senators resigned or left the United
States Senate before the vote was taken for the admission of Kansas. The
act of admitting Kansas as a free State, was the torch that inflamed the
South, and led to the firing upon Fort Sumter the following April. The
men of Kansas had long been inured to field service, and used to
practice with Sharps' rifles. The men of Kansas, more than in any other
State of the Union, had a right to rush to the defence of the Federal
government, and they themselves felt so.

On the 9th of February, eleven days after the admission of