TOPEKA (KSNT) – Civil War soldier Moses Banks of the 2nd Kansas State Militia (KSM) can finally rest peacefully thanks to a Holton woman’s campaign to get him a headstone.
Trisha Johnson from Holton has spent the past two years trying to get Civil War soldiers Moses Banks and Ben Hughes headstones in Topeka Cemetery 161 years after their deaths. Johnson’s saga began by accident when she was cleaning headstones in the cemetery, something she does as a hobby. She would often research the men after cleaning their stones, and eventually she came across the 2nd KSM.
“While I was researching the regiment, I found some inconsistencies,” Johnson said. “There was no mention of Banks nor Hughes in much of the historical accounts at the time, except their mention on the Gage Memorial. I went down a rabbit hole of trying to find their bodies and learning about their lives.”
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Johnson said Banks and Hughes were the only two black men who served in the 2nd Kansas State Militia. Born into slavery in Missouri in the late 1830s, the men would eventually escape to freedom in Kansas by the 1860s. They enlisted in October of 1864 to defend Kansas from the threat of invasion by Confederate General Sterling Price during the Battle of Westport near modern Kansas City, Missouri.
“Winning this battle meant something else for Banks and Hughes,” Johnson said. “As runaway slaves, losing meant certain death, even if they survived.”
The battle lasted from the 21st to the 23rd, and the men from Shawnee County participated on the 22nd in a skirmish known as the Battle of Big Blue River. Both men were killed in action that day and buried in Topeka Cemetery with the other men from the 2nd KSM in an unmarked mass grave.
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“Neither man lived long enough to enjoy their freedom, or to watch their children, who were born as slaves, grow up in a world where they were free,” Johnson said in a social media post on Aug. 7. “They died defending Kansas, their adopted state, and more importantly, died fighting so their families, and other black people would never have to live as slaves again.”
Johnson paid for Banks’s headstone out of her own pocket. She has been working with the superintendent at the Topeka Cemetery to help collect documentation of these men’s service to send to the state for a government-issued headstone.
As it stands, Hughes’s headstone is some months away, as he had almost no paperwork at the time of his enlistment. Where Moses’s widow at least filed for pension after his death, Ben had no one to do the same for him.
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Johnson and the Topeka Cemetery are submitting the few documents with his name to the state for approval. When Hughes’s headstone is installed, Johnson will host a public memorial to honor the two men.
“I want people to remember their sacrifice and the importance of the Battle of Westport,” Johnson said. “If they had not stood and fought then and there, Kansas would have been lost.”
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