6th Kansas Cavalry in the Civil War.
Fort Henning, Kansas, was one of three blockhouses erected near Fort Scott during the Civil War.
In spring or early summer 1864, work began on a complex of forts and earthworks to protect roads leading into the town of Fort Scott. By the end of the summer, soldiers had constructed three forts—Fort Blair, Henning, and Insley. They also guarded the quartermaster’s building, hospital, and ordnance stores.
Fort Insley, the largest fort, defended the town’s northwestern approaches. Fort Blair, the second largest fort, covered the southern roads into town.
Fort Henning, one of these blockhouses, stood at the corner of Scott Avenue and First Street, on the site afterward occupied by the post office building. Captain William Holcke, a United States Army engineer, supervised its construction and also oversaw the erection of the other two blockhouses.
The smallest of the three blockhouses, Fort Henning, was a two-story octagonal structure constructed of rough wood planks 14 feet across. It had ports on both floors for cannons or rifles. Log palisades, earthworks, and wide, deep ditches surrounded it.
The old Fort Scott Hospital is now a Visitor’s Center by Kathy Alexander.
Under Lieutenant C.H. Haynes’s command, troops of the Sixth Kansas Cavalry Regiment garrisoned the fort. All three blockhouses helped guard Fort Scott when Confederates under Major General Sterling Price passed through the area in October 1864, near the end of their failed raid into Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas.
If the forts saw combat, it was limited to exchanging fire with bushwhackers.
After the Civil War ended, Forts Henning and Insley were torn down.
Fort Scott closed in October 1865.
Some years after the war, Dr. W.S. McDonald purchased Fort Blair and moved it to the lot immediately south of his residence so it could be preserved as a historical relic of the war. On December 3, 1904, a flag was raised over old Fort Blair in its new location with appropriate ceremonies. That blockhouse still exists today.
©Kathy Alexander/Legends of America, updated October 2026.
Also See:
Sources:
Blackmar, Frank W.;Â Kansas: A Cyclopedia of State History, Vol. I; Standard Publishing Company, Chicago, IL 1912.
Kansas Forts During the Civil War
Wikipedia