The Westport Historical Society and the Westport Branch Library present Daniel Smith: Climax on the Border, Battle of Westport 1864

Speaker's Reception follows at the Harris Kearney House, 40th & Baltimore

Title of Talk: Climax on the Border - Battle of Westport, October 21-23, 1864

Summary: Daniel L. Smith, chairman of the Monnett Battle of Westport Fund, will review the circumstances that caused the Federal and Confederate forces numbering more than 30,000 troops to clash for two days in October 1864 along the Blue River and Brush Creek in what has become Kansas City. You will learn that a contemporaneous newspaper report of an event in Platte County Missouri was the main reason that Confederate General Sterling Price brought his army to the western border of Missouri. Smith will also explore whether the Confederate attacks that left behind approximately 3000 casualties were viable military actions or doomed from the outset. The talk will bring to light the fact that much of modern day Kansas City sits atop an enormous Civil War battlefield covering 35 square miles.

Bio: Mr. Daniel Smith is an attorney, historian, and chairman of the Monnett Battle of Westport Fund. As a fifth generation Kansan and native of Linn County, Kansas, he became acquainted with the Civil War along the Missour-Kansas border at an early age. Smith graduated from the University of Kansas in 1973, and then from Duke Law School in 1976. He is a past president of the Linn County Kansas Historical Society and a lifetime member of the Kansas State Historical Society.