Today in History - October 6th

October 6, 1863 - Battle of Baxter Springs in the American Civil War

The Battle of Baxter Springs, sometimes called the Baxter Springs Massacre, was a minor battle of the American Civil War, fought on October 6, 1863, near the modern-day town of Baxter Springs, Kansas.

In late 1863, the guerrilla band of Quantrill's Raiders travelled south from Kansas along the Texas Road to winter in Texas. Numbering about 400, this group captured and killed two Union teamsters who had come from small Federal Army post called Fort Blair.

Quantrill decided to attack Fort Blair and divided his force into two columns, one under him and the other commanded by a subordinate, David Poole. Poole and his men proceeded down the Texas Road, where they encountered Union soldiers, most of whom were African Americans. They chased and attacked the Union troops, killing some of them before they reached the earth and log fort.

Poole's column then attacked Fort Blair, but the garrison fought them off with the aid of a howitzer. Quantrill's column moved on the post from another direction and happened to encounter a Union detachment escorting Maj. Gen. James G. Blunt as he was in the process of moving his command headquarters from Fort Scott to Fort Smith.

Most of this detachment, including the military band, Maj. Henry Z. Curtis (son of Maj. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis), and Johnny Fry (first official westbound rider of the Pony Express) was killed, but Blunt and a few mounted men escaped and returned to Fort Scott. Blunt was removed from command for failing to protect his column, but he was soon restored. Touted as a massacre by some, Baxter Springs was another of the events that characterized the vicious Kansas-Missouri border warfare.

Battle of Baxter Springs painting

October 6, 1973 Yom Kippur War begins

The Yom Kippur War, Ramadan War or October War (Hebrew: מלחמת יום הכיפורים‎; transliterated: Milkhemet Yom HaKipurim or מלחמת יום כיפור, Milkhemet Yom Kipur; Arabic: حرب أكتوبر‎; transliterated: ħarb October or حرب تشرين, ħarb Tishrin), also known as the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the Fourth Arab-Israeli War, was fought from October 6 to October 26, 1973 by a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria against Israel. The war began with a surprise joint attack by Egypt and Syria on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. Egypt and Syria crossed the cease-fire lines in the Sinai and Golan Heights, respectively, which had been captured by Israel in 1967 during the Six-Day War.^[5]

The Egyptians and Syrians advanced during the first 24–48 hours, after which momentum began to swing in Israel's favor. By the second week of the war, the Syrians had been pushed out of the Golan Heights. In the Sinai to the south, the Israelis struck at the seam between two invading Egyptian armies, crossed the Suez Canal (where the old ceasefire line had been), and cut off the Egyptian Third Army just as a United Nations cease-fire came into effect.

The war had far-reaching implications for many nations. The Arab World, which had been humiliated by the lopsided defeat of the Egyptian-Syrian-Jordanian alliance during the Six-Day War, felt psychologically vindicated by its string of victories early in the conflict. This vindication paved the way for the peace process that followed, as well as liberalizations such as Egypt's infitah policy. The Camp David Accords, which came soon after, led to normalized relations between Egypt and Israel—the first time any Arab country had recognized the Israeli state. Egypt, which had already been drifting away from the Soviet Union, then left the Soviet sphere of influence entirely.

The 1973 War in the Sinai, October 6–15.