Free-State victory The Battle of Fort Titus occurred during conflicts in the Kansas Territory between abolitionist and pro-slavery militias prior to the American Civil War.

Fort Titus was a fortified log cabin with gun loopholes built into its walls to allow it to be defended from the inside.

In January 1856, to counter those sympathetic to the expansion of slavery, Free-State advocates illegally elected Charles L. Robinson as Territorial Governor of Kansas under the Topeka Constitution.

From the spring of 1856 until September, Robinson and several other free-state leaders, including the son of abolitionist John Brown, were held in custody in Camp Sackett.

Since it was known that free-state men at times garrisoned in another nearby fortified residence, known as Judge Wakefield's house, this became the focus of retaliation for the destruction of Fort Saunders.

At 2 A.M. on August 16 pro-slavery partisans, including Henry T. Titus, attacked Wakefield's fortress home, but they were unable to take it.

Titus had a force of at least twenty-one men, including thirteen German stonemasons from nearby Lecompton, Kansas, with him.

The Camp Sacket commander, Maj. John Sedgwick, moved toward Fort Titus to stop the battle, but it was over before troops arrived.

[10] A correspondent for The New York Times wrote the following, dated Lawrence, Sunday, August 17, 1856, after the battle: When the advance guard of the Free-State forces arrived at Judge Wakefield's, on the California road, they were fired upon by a company of Pro-slavery men under Col. Titus.

Some of the prisoners taken with him participated in this sack and assisted in destroying the presses of the Herald of Freedom and of the Free-State, and throwing the type in the river.

Bickerton, when he pointed his cannon sat the walls of the cabin, calmly announced that he should give them a new edition of the Herald of Freedom.