"Price Raid" Painting

This battle, which involved almost 10,000 Union troops, was part of a series of events known as "the Price Raid."

Confederate troops under General Sterling Price had moved north into Missouri in September. Union forces pushed them west to the vicinity of Kansas City, where the opposing armies clashed at Lexington and at the Big and Little Blue Rivers. Price was defeated at Westport on October 23 and forced to retreat south along the Missouri-Kansas border.

This painting depicts the taking of Union prisoners by Confederate forces following the Battle of the Blue on October 22. The artist was Samuel Reader, quartermaster in the Second Kansas State Militia. Reader, born in Pennsylvania in 1836, had moved to Kansas with his family in 1855. From his teenage years until his death in 1914, he diligently kept a journal, often punctuating his narrative with small watercolor sketches.

Reader was among fifty members of the regiment taken prisoner at the Battle of the Blue. He soon managed to escape by posing as a Confederate soldier. A four-day walk brought him home to Indianola, just north of Topeka, where he recorded these adventures in his journal.

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