Missouri in the Civil War
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Missouri in the Civil War was a border state that sent men, generals, and supplies to both opposing sides, had its star on both flags, had state governments representing each side, and endured a neighbor-against-neighbor intrastate war within the larger national war.
By the end of the Civil War, Missouri had supplied nearly 110,000 troops for the Union Army and about 40,000 troops for the Confederate Army. There were battles and skirmishes in all areas of the state, from the Iowa and Illinois border in the northeast to the edge of the state in the southeast and southwest on the Arkansas border. Counting minor engagements, actions and skirmishes, Missouri saw over 1,200 distinct fights. Only Virginia and Tennessee exceeded Missouri in the number of clashes within the state boundaries.
The biggest battle in the war west of the Mississippi River was the Battle of Westport at Kansas City in 1864.
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[edit] Pre-war
[edit] Missouri Compromise
Missouri was initially settled by slave-holding Southerners coming up the Mississippi River and Missouri River. Missouri entered the Union in 1821 as a slave state following the Missouri Compromise of 1820, in which it was agreed that no state north of Missouri's southern border with Arkansas could enter the Union as a slave state. Maine entered the Union as a free state in the compromise to counter Missouri.
[edit] Bleeding Kansas
One of the biggest areas of concerns for Missouri slave-holders was a Federal law that decreed that if a slave physically entered a free state, he or she was free. The Underground Railroad, in which slaves gained their freedom by heading north, was already becoming established in the state. The slaveholders were particularly concerned about the prospects of the entire western border becoming a conduit for the Underground Railroad if those new states entered the U.S. as free states. In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act nullified the Missouri Compromise and said the two states could decide on their own whether to enter as a free or slave state. The result was a de facto war between pro-slavery residents of Missouri (called Border Ruffians and Kansas free staters to influence how Kansas entered the Union. Most of these conflicts involved attacks and murders of individuals on both sides, with the Sacking of Lawrence by pro-slavery forces and the Pottawatomie Massacre by John Brown (abolitionist)) being the most notable. Kansas initially approved a pro-slavery constitution called the Lecompton Constitution, but, after the U.S. Congress rejected it, the state approved a free-state Wyandotte Constitution.
[edit] Dred Scott Decision
Against the background of Bleeding Kansas, the case of Dred Scott, a slave who in 1846 sued in St. Louis, Missouri, for his freedom because he had been taken to a free state, reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court in 1857 ruled that slaves would not be free simply if they entered a free state, negating the earlier Federal law. While the decision helped calm the skirmishes between Missouri and Kansas residents, it was to enrage abolitionists and ratchet up the vitriolic rhetoric that was to lead to the war.
[edit] Pony Express
With war storm clouds brewing in 1860, the government sought to communicate quicker with San Francisco, California. In 1860 it took 25 days for a message to reach the coast from Missouri. The firm of Russell, Majors and Waddell proposed to do it in 10 days with a relay system of horses from what was then the furthest west terminus of a railroad at St. Joseph, Missouri. The resulting Pony Express began operations on April 3, 1860. Ulysses S. Grant's first commission in the Civil War was to protect the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, which was delivering its mail.
[edit] Armed neutrality
By 1860, Missouri's initial southern settlers had been supplanted with a more diversified non-slave holding population, including many German and Irish immigrants. With war seeming inevitable, Missouri thought it could stay out of the conflict by remaining in the Union, but staying neutral—not giving men or supplies to either side and pledging to fight troops from either side who entered the state. The policy was first put forth in 1860 by outgoing Governor Robert Marcellus Stewart, who had Northern leanings. It was reaffirmed by incoming Governor Claiborne Jackson, who had Southern leanings. A Constitutional Convention to discuss secession was convened with Sterling Price presiding. The delegates voted to stay in the Union and supported the neutrality position.
In the United States presidential election, 1860, Abraham Lincoln received only 10 percent of the state's votes, while 71 percent favored either John Bell (Tennessee politician) or Stephen A. Douglas, both of whom wanted the status quo to remain (Douglas was to narrowly win the Missouri vote over Bell—the only state Douglas carried) with the remaining 19 percent siding with Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge.
[edit] Civil War
Conflicts and battles in the war were divided into three phases, starting with the Union eviction of Governor Jackson and pursuit of the Sterling Price and his Missouri State Guard in 1861; a period of neighbor-versus-neighbor bushwhacking guerrilla warfare from 1862 to 1864; and finally Sterling Price's attempt to retake the state in 1864.
[edit] Eviction of Governor Jackson
[edit] Camp Jackson Affair
Missouri's neutrality was tested in a conflict of over the St. Louis Arsenal. The Union Army under Nathaniel Lyon seized the arsenal and moved its supplies to Illinois. At the same time, Governor Jackson called up the Missouri National Guard under Brig. Gen. Daniel M. Frost for maneuvers in suburban St. Louis at Camp Jackson. These maneuvers were perceived by Lyon as an attempt to seize the arsenal. On May 10, 1861, Lyon attacked the guard and paraded them as captives through the streets of St. Louis and a riot erupted. Lyon's troops, comprised mainly of German immigrants, opened fire on the attacking crowd killing 28 and injuring 100.
The next day, the Missouri General Assembly authorized the formation of a Missouri State Guard with Sterling Price as its commander to resist invasions from either side (but initially from the Union army). William S. Harney, Federal commander of the Department of the West, moved to quiet the situation by agreeing to the Missouri neutrality in the Price-Harney Truce. However Abraham Lincoln overruled the truce agreement and relieved Harney of command and replaced him with Lyon. On June 11, 1861, Lyon, in a meeting with Jackson, demanded that Missouri honor Lincoln's demand for troops from the state. Jackson refused and Lyon said he would enforce the order. After Jackson was escorted from the lines, Lyon began a pursuit of Jackson and Price and his elected state government through the Battle of Boonville and Battle of Carthage (1861). Jackson and the pro-Confederate politicians fled the state and set up a government-in-exile recognized by the Confederacy, but powerless inside Missouri.
[edit] Union provisional government
On July 22, 1861, following the Lyon's capture of the Missouri capital at Jefferson City, another constitutional convention was convened, which declared the Missouri governor's office to be vacant. On July 28, it appointed Hamilton Rowan Gamble as governor of the state and agreed to comply with Lincoln's demand for troops.
[edit] Battle of Wilson's Creek
The biggest battle in the campaign to evict Jackson was the Battle of Wilson's Creek near Springfield, Missouri, on August 10, 1861. The battle marked the first time that the Missourians had sought formal help from the Confederate States of America. There were more than 2,300 casualties between the two sides, including Lyon who was fatally shot. Although Price's army won the battle, he did not pursue the retreating Federals. Subsequently, he launched an invasion into northwestern Missouri to recapture the state, culminating in the Battle of Liberty on September 17. Thereafter, Price began a withdrawal of the main Missouri State Guard units from the state.
Small remnants of the Missouri Guard remained in the state and fight isolated battles throughout the war. Price soon came under the command and control of the Confederates. In March 1862, any hopes for a new offensive in Missouri were crushed in the Battle of Pea Ridge just south of the border in Arkansas. The Missouri State Guard was to stay largely in tact as a unit through the war and was to suffer heavy casualties in Mississippi in the Battle of Iuka and Second Battle of Corinth.
[edit] Fremont Emancipation
John C. Frémont replaced Lyon as commander of the Department of the West. Following the Wilson's Creek battle, he imposed martial law on the state and issued an order freeing Missouri's slaves. Lincoln, fearing the emancipation would enrage other slave states in Union control, granted Governor Gamble's request to rescind the emancipation and ease martial law.
[edit] Confederate Government of Missouri
In October 1861, the remnants of the elected state government that favored the South (including Jackson and Price) met in Neosho, and voted to formally secede from the Union. The measure gave them votes in the Confederate Congress, but otherwise was symbolic since they did not control any part of the state. The capital was to eventually move to Marshall, Texas. When Jackson died in office in 1862, his lieutenant governor, Thomas Caute Reynolds, succeeded him.
[edit] Guerrilla warfare
The Battle of Wilson's Creek was the last large scale engagement in the state until Price returned in 1864 in a last ditch attempt to capture the state. Between 1862 and 1864, the western parts endured guerrilla warfare in which partisan rangers and Bushwhackers battled Jayhawkers and Union forces. Although guerrilla warfare occurred throughout much of the state, most of the incidents occurred in northern Missouri and were characterized by ambushes of individuals or families in rural areas. These incidents were particularly nefarious because of their vigilante nature that was outside command and control and often pitted neighbor against neighbor.
Among the more notorious incidents of guerrilla warfare were the Sacking of Osceola, burning of Platte City and the Centralia Massacre. Among the famous bushwhackers were Quantrill's Raiders and Bloody Bill Anderson.
[edit] General Order No. 11
In 1863 following the Sacking of Lawrence in Kansas, Union General Thomas Ewing, Jr. accused farmers in rural Missouri of either instigating the attack or supporting it. He issued General Order No. 11 which forced the evacuation of all residents of rural areas of the four counties (Jackson, Cass, Bates and Vernon) south of the Missouri River on the Kansas border to leave their property, which was then burned. The order applied to farmers regardless of loyalty, although those who could prove their loyalty to the Union could stay in designated towns and those who could not were exiled entirely. Among those forced to leave were Kansas City, Missouri, founder John Calvin McCoy and its first mayor, William S. Gregory.
[edit] Price's Raid
With the Confederacy clearly losing the war in 1864, Sterling Price reassembled his Missouri Guard and launched a last gasp offensive to take Missouri. However, Price was unable to repeat his 1861 victorious campaigns in the state. Striking in the southeastern portion of the state, Price moved north, and attempted to capture Fort Davidson but failed. Next, Price sought to attack St. Louis but found it too heavily fortified and thus broke west in a parallel course with the Missouri River. The Federals attempted to retard Price's advance through both minor and substantial skirmishing such as at Glasgow and Lexington. Price made his way to the extreme western portion of the state, taking part in a series of bitter battles at the Little Blue, Independence, and Byram's Ford. His Missouri campaign culminated in the battle of Westport in which over 30,000 troops fought, leading to the defeat of the Southern army. The Missourians retreated through Kansas and Indian Territory into Arkansas, where they stayed for the remainder of the war.
[edit] Reconstruction
Since Missouri had remained in the Union, it did not suffer the worst aspects of Reconstruction. The Democrats were to return to being the dominant power in the state by 1873. Newspapers in the state were vehement in their opposition to national Radical Republican policies. The outlaws James-Younger gang was to capitalize on this and become folk heroes as they robbed banks and trains while getting sympathetic press from the state's newspapers—most notably the Kansas City Times. Jesse James, who killed with bushwacker Bloody Bill Anderson at Centralia, was to excuse his murder of a resident of Galltin, during a bank robbery, saying he thought he was killing Samuel P. Cox, who had hunted down Anderson after Centralia. Indignation over the Missouri governor's reward for the assassination of James led to former Confederate General John S. Marmaduke being elected governor in 1882.
[edit] Bibliography
- Parrish, William E. A History of Missouri, Volume III: 1860 to 1875 (1973, reprinted 2002) (ISBN: 0826201482)
