On April 22, 1842, soldiers from the recently abandoned Fort Wayne arrived at the site that would become Fort Scott, in the Osage Cuestas section of eastern Kansas. The Army had left Fort Wayne partly to placate the Cherokee, who objected to a military post in their territory, and partly to better defend settlers against Osage raiding parties. Captain Thomas Swords, the post quartermaster, faced a daunting construction challenge: the Kansas prairie had few trees. He had only two bricklayers and three carpenters. Wood was available, but the mill sat far enough away that transport consumed entire days. Freak accidents destroyed much of the lumber intended for construction. By 1844, only one of five planned officer duplexes had been completed. Yet when Colonel George Croghan inspected the fort that year, he rated it "above average" compared to other frontier installations -- a verdict that says something about the rough standards of the 1840s frontier.

Fort Scott's most volatile chapter began in 1854, when the Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise and reopened the question of whether Kansas would permit slavery. Pro-slavery Missourians poured across the border to sway the vote. Free-soil settlers from New England arrived with equal determination. Most residents within the town of Fort Scott supported slavery, but those in the surrounding countryside leaned free-soil. The result was not political debate but guerrilla warfare: murders, attempted arsons, and running skirmishes that made Bleeding Kansas one of the bloodiest preludes to the Civil War. The old fort's buildings, now in civilian hands, stood at the center of this storm. The conflict previewed the larger violence to come and demonstrated that the question of slavery could not be settled by popular sovereignty alone.

When the Civil War erupted in 1861, the Union Army reclaimed Fort Scott and transformed it into a major military post. The Army took over several city blocks for commissary and quartermaster operations, renting properties from civilian owners. Troops from Indiana, Iowa, Colorado, Ohio, and Wisconsin flowed through, either garrisoning the fort or pressing on to fight in Missouri, Arkansas, or Indian Territory. Fort Scott became one of the few installations in the country that recruited and trained Black soldiers for the United States Colored Troops -- men who would fight to end the very institution that Bleeding Kansas had violently contested just years earlier. After the war ended, the Army auctioned off its holdings in October 1865 and departed.

The Army returned once more in January 1870, but this time its mission had an ironic twist. The Post of Southeast Kansas, based at Fort Scott, was sent to protect railroad workers and construction crews -- not from Indians, but from settlers. The railroads had received government land grants for development, and squatters who had homesteaded along the rights-of-way feared eviction. The settlers lumped soldiers and railroad men together as enemies. Conflicts with remaining Indian populations and former Confederate insurgents using the old rebel cause as cover for robbery added to the disorder. By spring 1873, the Army withdrew for good. The fort's buildings deteriorated for nearly a century before the National Park Service began restoration in 1965. Today, 20 historic structures survive around the original parade ground, alongside five acres of restored tallgrass prairie.