(This story first appeared in the Summer 2011 issue of Show-Me Missouri. Kris Lokemoen, who wrote for Show-Me Missouri for 10 years, died in 2018.)
by KRISTEN LOKEMOEN
The November, 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as United States President led to the secession of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. On April 12, 1861 the first shots of the Civil War were fired by southern forces on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. That led to the secession of Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina.
Missouri’s Constitutional Convention had met in March and voted 98-1 to remain in the union, but not to provide men or arms to either side should war break out. This made the state neutral—officially. In reality, however, there was virtually no one in Missouri who was neutral, and events early on in the war would only harden people’s attitudes. The strongly divided feelings among its populace made Missouri the third most active state in terms of battles and skirmishes fought on its soil during the Civil War.
The Camp Jackson Affair – May 10, 1861
After the fall of Fort Sumter, Lincoln put out a call for 75,000 men. When Missouri’s new governor, Claiborne Fox Jackson, received Lincoln’s request for troops from Missouri, Jackson replied: “Not one man will the state of Missouri furnish to carry on any unholy Crusade.”
In St. Louis, Frank Blair, a Congressman and brother of Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, joined with Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon to start raising troops for the Union cause, in which both staunchly believed. Their greatest success came from the city’s German immigrants who were strongly anti-slavery. Many Missourians considered the actions of Blair and Lyon to be unconstitutional, and there was also great antipathy on the part of many towards the Germans.
Across the state in Kansas City, pro-southern men had raided the Liberty Arsenal. Lyon’s fear was that the St. Louis Arsenal, which held a much larger supply of arms, would be their next target, so he had most of the arsenal’s holdings transferred across the river to Illinois.
As governor, Jackson was the head of the Missouri Militia, and in early-May he chose to set up a camp for maneuvers about six miles west of the St. Louis Arsenal. The men named their encampment Camp Jackson in the governor’s honor.
On May 10, Lyon and Blair, with a force of 6,000 marched on Camp Jackson and captured the 669 men there. When they refused his demand to take an oath of allegiance to the United States, he marched the men downtown to the Arsenal between lines of armed German guards.
Many people watching this march considered it humiliating to the men of the Missouri Militia. Civilians started hurling stones and insults at Lyon’s troops.
“Damn the Dutch!” they yelled at the Germans. Then one of the Union soldiers was shot and killed, and the other troops reacted, shooting first above the crowd and then into it. At least twenty-eight people were killed, including a baby in its mother’s arms. Dozens more were wounded.
The Camp Jackson Affair has been termed by some as “the greatest military blunder of the Civil War.” Missouri was a crucial state to both sides and this action further solidified anti-Union feelings on the part of many and, more importantly, turned others who had been neutral or pro-Union to the other side. Among the latter was Sterling Price.
The 1st Battle of Boonville – June 17, 1861
Nathaniel Lyon’s promotion to Brigadier General and commander of all Union forces in Missouri helped to push the state into further conflict. Not the most accommodating of men, Lyon insisted that he would kill every man, woman and child in the state who stood in the way of his dealing with the Rebels as he saw fit.
In early June, Governor Jackson and Gen. Sterling Price, now head of the State Guard, returned to Jefferson City, hoping to take control of the capital. When that feat looked to be impossible, they continued up the Missouri River to Boonville. Lyon and his troops followed via steamboat. By the time that Lyon reached the town, Price had left the area. Some of the Confederates, under the command of Gen. Mosby Parsons, had been instructed to take position in Tipton, twenty miles to the south.
The result was a brief skirmish in Boonville on the morning of June 17. It was an easy victory for Lyon. Fighting for the rebels were the 500 men in State Guard Col. John Marmaduke’s company. Jackson and his men observed from a mile away, but never entered the battle. Marmaduke had no artillery support, as it was all in Tipton with Parsons. Lyon’s men quickly established their superiority and Marmaduke’s men retreated so fast that the battle gained the nickname “The Boonville Races.”
While not significant as a battle, the skirmish was important from a strategic standpoint. It at least temporarily defeated the secessionist cause in central Missouri and kept the state in the Union.
The Battle of Carthage – July 5, 1861
The Battle of Carthage matched a relatively small but well-trained and well-armed Union troop against thousands of Confederate soldiers, many of whom had no weapons, no uniforms and no real idea of how to act in combat.
The Union troops were under the command of Col. Franz Sigel, a German-American who had been schooled in the European methods of combat and was a close ally of Lyon’s. Many of the men under him were also German-born immigrants from St. Louis. Sigel’s goal was to halt the progress of Governor Jackson and Brigadier General James Rains, who had joined forces in Lamar for a total of nearly 6,000 men. Former United States Senator David Rice Atchison (Missouri’s “president for a day” in 1849) had also joined in the fight.
The men, led by Jackson, who had no military commission, were progressing to the southwest, intending to meet up with Sterling Price and his troops. The fear on the Union side was that the rebels’ combined numbers would grow so big that the Confederate forces would be able to take control of Missouri.
On the night of July 4, Sigel and his men camped out at Carter Spring near Carthage, while Jackson and his troops were located about eighteen miles to the north. Early the next morning, Sigel headed north, Jackson south and they met at Dry Fork Creek, about nine miles outside Carthage. The two sides engaged in a one-hour artillery duel and then Sigel started to pull back as Jackson tried to surround him. Sigel had hoped for Gen. Nathaniel Lyon to attack Jackson from the rear, but that never happened.
The battle would be fought over a ten-mile area from its beginnings all the way back to Carthage, where the fighting was carried on from house to house. Sigel withdrew from Carthage that evening and is considered the loser. He failed to stop Jackson from joining Price and did retreat from the field of battle. However, his men were outnumbered nearly five to one and Sigel’s superior military expertise helped to keep his troop losses low.
The Battle of Carthage was a morale builder for the Missouri State Guard who declared it a victory. In the morning after the battle, Jackson met up with Major Gen. Sterling Price, who assumed command of all of the Missouri troops. Price returned with the men to Cowskin Prairie, an encampment in the area where Missouri, Arkansas and Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) came together. There the troops would be trained to become soldiers. A larger, bloodier fight was looming.
The Battle of Athens – August 5, 1861
Far removed from all of that action was the town of Athens, a prosperous river port on the Des Moines River in the northeast corner of Missouri. Settled primarily by southerners, Athens and the surrounding area was a hotbed of pro-Confederacy sympathizers.
That fact didn’t sit well with David Moore, a merchant in the Clark County town of Union. Moore, a ruthless, hard-talking man with military experience gained from fighting in the Mexican-American War, gathered up around 500 pro-Union Home Guard troops and took control of Athens on July 24. Local homes and businesses were seized.
Early on the morning of August 5, Col. Martin Green led 3,000 pro-South troops, including two of David Moore’s sons, into Athens to retake the town. Despite their overwhelming numbers, however, and despite Moore being surrounded on three sides by the enemy and on the fourth side by the Des Moines River, it was the Home Guard that would be victorious. Green’s men were not well trained. After just two hours, with fifty soldiers killed or wounded, they were in full retreat.
Athens never recovered from the bitter feelings engendered by the battle. All that remains of the town today is what is included in the Battle of Athens State Historic Site. As to Moore and Green, both would go on to become Brigadier Generals in the Civil War. Moore, fighting for the Union, lost a leg at Shiloh. Green, fighting for the Confederacy, was killed at Vicksburg.
Battle of Wilson’s Creek – August 10, 1861
Meanwhile, back in Southwest Missouri, Price’s forces had grown to around 12,000 men. Troops from Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas had joined him and others were waiting just across the border. Lyon had also acquired additional troops from other states—Iowa and Kansas—but some of his men had only signed up for three months. When they left in the early summer, his roster shrank to 6,000. Lyon set up camp near Springfield, a pro-Union town, and searched for Price.
The two men and their armies would find each other along the banks of Wilson’s Creek ten miles to the southwest of Springfield on the morning of August 10, 1861. Colonel Sigel, Lyon’s subordinate, suggested that the Union forces be divided in two so that they could attack the rebels from opposite sides. Sigel’s plan was risky, dividing a Union force that was already half as small as that of the Confederates.
Lyon’s troops traveled from Springfield on the evening of August 9, pausing around 1 a.m. for some rest. They could see the lights of the enemy campfires burning not far away.
At dawn on the morning of August 10, the Union cannon went off. The battle was on. They had caught the enemy somewhat by surprise, although rebel foragers had seen them coming and had returned to camp to alert the Confederates. Word was sent to Price who was having breakfast about a mile away. He had intended to attack Lyon on this same day.
Most of the heaviest fighting took place on what became known as “Bloody Hill,” a 170-foot broad eminence that dominated the landscape. By 9 a.m., General Lyon had been shot twice and his horse had been shot from underneath him. Sigel and his men had not joined in the main attack. Positioned at the Sharp farm nearby, he thought that Lyon was winning, but didn’t really know. Confusion caused by the men’s uniforms would also prove costly. Some of Lyon’s men were dressed in gray, as were the Confederate troops from Louisiana. As the latter marched toward Sigel, the German’s men refused to shoot at them, believing them to be friendlies. The Louisianans took advantage of the situation and mowed down many of Sigel’s men. Others fled from the scene.
Despite his injuries, Nathaniel Lyon mounted another horse to lead another charge, waving his hat and encouraging his men. From a nearby thicket, a shot was fired, entering the General’s chest. This injury was fatal, making Lyon the first Union general to die in the Civil War. His body was taken to the nearby Ray House (one of two original structures still standing on the battlefield.)
An hour later a group of 5,000 Confederates launched their third attack along Bloody Hill. Now under the command of Major Samuel Sturgis, the Union troops let loose their artillery. Men on both sides burrowed in the grass to escape the assault.
By 11:30 that morning, troops were tired and hungry, and ammunition was getting low for the Union. Furthermore, Sturgis had received no word or assistance from Sigel. The Union troops started to withdraw back to Springfield. By the time the Confederates launched a fourth attack, they found that they had the battlefield to themselves. After just six hours, the Battle of Wilson’s Creek was over.
Between the two sides, losses of close to 16 percent were suffered, one of the highest rates of the Civil War. The home of John and Roxanna Ray would serve as a field hospital for both sides. The family had hid in the basement during the battle. It would take over a week to bury all of the dead. For Nathaniel Lyon, it would take nearly a month for his body to reach its final resting place in his home state of Connecticut.
General Price and his ever-growing army would move north to Lexington where he would win his next great victory in mid-September. It would also be the last significant victory for the Confederates in Missouri in 1861. The fighting, however, didn’t stop. It just grew more personal and more violent as the war progressed.
Missouri was truly “a house divided.”
by KRISTEN LOKEMOEN
The November, 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as United States President led to the secession of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. On April 12, 1861 the first shots of the Civil War were fired by southern forces on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. That led to the secession of Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina.
Missouri’s Constitutional Convention had met in March and voted 98-1 to remain in the union, but not to provide men or arms to either side should war break out. This made the state neutral—officially. In reality, however, there was virtually no one in Missouri who was neutral, and events early on in the war would only harden people’s attitudes. The strongly divided feelings among its populace made Missouri the third most active state in terms of battles and skirmishes fought on its soil during the Civil War.
The Camp Jackson Affair – May 10, 1861
After the fall of Fort Sumter, Lincoln put out a call for 75,000 men. When Missouri’s new governor, Claiborne Fox Jackson, received Lincoln’s request for troops from Missouri, Jackson replied: “Not one man will the state of Missouri furnish to carry on any unholy Crusade.”
In St. Louis, Frank Blair, a Congressman and brother of Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, joined with Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon to start raising troops for the Union cause, in which both staunchly believed. Their greatest success came from the city’s German immigrants who were strongly anti-slavery. Many Missourians considered the actions of Blair and Lyon to be unconstitutional, and there was also great antipathy on the part of many towards the Germans.
Across the state in Kansas City, pro-southern men had raided the Liberty Arsenal. Lyon’s fear was that the St. Louis Arsenal, which held a much larger supply of arms, would be their next target, so he had most of the arsenal’s holdings transferred across the river to Illinois.
As governor, Jackson was the head of the Missouri Militia, and in early-May he chose to set up a camp for maneuvers about six miles west of the St. Louis Arsenal. The men named their encampment Camp Jackson in the governor’s honor.
On May 10, Lyon and Blair, with a force of 6,000 marched on Camp Jackson and captured the 669 men there. When they refused his demand to take an oath of allegiance to the United States, he marched the men downtown to the Arsenal between lines of armed German guards.
Many people watching this march considered it humiliating to the men of the Missouri Militia. Civilians started hurling stones and insults at Lyon’s troops.
“Damn the Dutch!” they yelled at the Germans. Then one of the Union soldiers was shot and killed, and the other troops reacted, shooting first above the crowd and then into it. At least twenty-eight people were killed, including a baby in its mother’s arms. Dozens more were wounded.
The Camp Jackson Affair has been termed by some as “the greatest military blunder of the Civil War.” Missouri was a crucial state to both sides and this action further solidified anti-Union feelings on the part of many and, more importantly, turned others who had been neutral or pro-Union to the other side. Among the latter was Sterling Price.
The 1st Battle of Boonville – June 17, 1861
Nathaniel Lyon’s promotion to Brigadier General and commander of all Union forces in Missouri helped to push the state into further conflict. Not the most accommodating of men, Lyon insisted that he would kill every man, woman and child in the state who stood in the way of his dealing with the Rebels as he saw fit.
In early June, Governor Jackson and Gen. Sterling Price, now head of the State Guard, returned to Jefferson City, hoping to take control of the capital. When that feat looked to be impossible, they continued up the Missouri River to Boonville. Lyon and his troops followed via steamboat. By the time that Lyon reached the town, Price had left the area. Some of the Confederates, under the command of Gen. Mosby Parsons, had been instructed to take position in Tipton, twenty miles to the south.
The result was a brief skirmish in Boonville on the morning of June 17. It was an easy victory for Lyon. Fighting for the rebels were the 500 men in State Guard Col. John Marmaduke’s company. Jackson and his men observed from a mile away, but never entered the battle. Marmaduke had no artillery support, as it was all in Tipton with Parsons. Lyon’s men quickly established their superiority and Marmaduke’s men retreated so fast that the battle gained the nickname “The Boonville Races.”
While not significant as a battle, the skirmish was important from a strategic standpoint. It at least temporarily defeated the secessionist cause in central Missouri and kept the state in the Union.
The Battle of Carthage – July 5, 1861
The Battle of Carthage matched a relatively small but well-trained and well-armed Union troop against thousands of Confederate soldiers, many of whom had no weapons, no uniforms and no real idea of how to act in combat.
The Union troops were under the command of Col. Franz Sigel, a German-American who had been schooled in the European methods of combat and was a close ally of Lyon’s. Many of the men under him were also German-born immigrants from St. Louis. Sigel’s goal was to halt the progress of Governor Jackson and Brigadier General James Rains, who had joined forces in Lamar for a total of nearly 6,000 men. Former United States Senator David Rice Atchison (Missouri’s “president for a day” in 1849) had also joined in the fight.
The men, led by Jackson, who had no military commission, were progressing to the southwest, intending to meet up with Sterling Price and his troops. The fear on the Union side was that the rebels’ combined numbers would grow so big that the Confederate forces would be able to take control of Missouri.
On the night of July 4, Sigel and his men camped out at Carter Spring near Carthage, while Jackson and his troops were located about eighteen miles to the north. Early the next morning, Sigel headed north, Jackson south and they met at Dry Fork Creek, about nine miles outside Carthage. The two sides engaged in a one-hour artillery duel and then Sigel started to pull back as Jackson tried to surround him. Sigel had hoped for Gen. Nathaniel Lyon to attack Jackson from the rear, but that never happened.
The battle would be fought over a ten-mile area from its beginnings all the way back to Carthage, where the fighting was carried on from house to house. Sigel withdrew from Carthage that evening and is considered the loser. He failed to stop Jackson from joining Price and did retreat from the field of battle. However, his men were outnumbered nearly five to one and Sigel’s superior military expertise helped to keep his troop losses low.
The Battle of Carthage was a morale builder for the Missouri State Guard who declared it a victory. In the morning after the battle, Jackson met up with Major Gen. Sterling Price, who assumed command of all of the Missouri troops. Price returned with the men to Cowskin Prairie, an encampment in the area where Missouri, Arkansas and Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) came together. There the troops would be trained to become soldiers. A larger, bloodier fight was looming.
The Battle of Athens – August 5, 1861
Far removed from all of that action was the town of Athens, a prosperous river port on the Des Moines River in the northeast corner of Missouri. Settled primarily by southerners, Athens and the surrounding area was a hotbed of pro-Confederacy sympathizers.
That fact didn’t sit well with David Moore, a merchant in the Clark County town of Union. Moore, a ruthless, hard-talking man with military experience gained from fighting in the Mexican-American War, gathered up around 500 pro-Union Home Guard troops and took control of Athens on July 24. Local homes and businesses were seized.
Early on the morning of August 5, Col. Martin Green led 3,000 pro-South troops, including two of David Moore’s sons, into Athens to retake the town. Despite their overwhelming numbers, however, and despite Moore being surrounded on three sides by the enemy and on the fourth side by the Des Moines River, it was the Home Guard that would be victorious. Green’s men were not well trained. After just two hours, with fifty soldiers killed or wounded, they were in full retreat.
Athens never recovered from the bitter feelings engendered by the battle. All that remains of the town today is what is included in the Battle of Athens State Historic Site. As to Moore and Green, both would go on to become Brigadier Generals in the Civil War. Moore, fighting for the Union, lost a leg at Shiloh. Green, fighting for the Confederacy, was killed at Vicksburg.
Battle of Wilson’s Creek – August 10, 1861
Meanwhile, back in Southwest Missouri, Price’s forces had grown to around 12,000 men. Troops from Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas had joined him and others were waiting just across the border. Lyon had also acquired additional troops from other states—Iowa and Kansas—but some of his men had only signed up for three months. When they left in the early summer, his roster shrank to 6,000. Lyon set up camp near Springfield, a pro-Union town, and searched for Price.
The two men and their armies would find each other along the banks of Wilson’s Creek ten miles to the southwest of Springfield on the morning of August 10, 1861. Colonel Sigel, Lyon’s subordinate, suggested that the Union forces be divided in two so that they could attack the rebels from opposite sides. Sigel’s plan was risky, dividing a Union force that was already half as small as that of the Confederates.
Lyon’s troops traveled from Springfield on the evening of August 9, pausing around 1 a.m. for some rest. They could see the lights of the enemy campfires burning not far away.
At dawn on the morning of August 10, the Union cannon went off. The battle was on. They had caught the enemy somewhat by surprise, although rebel foragers had seen them coming and had returned to camp to alert the Confederates. Word was sent to Price who was having breakfast about a mile away. He had intended to attack Lyon on this same day.
Most of the heaviest fighting took place on what became known as “Bloody Hill,” a 170-foot broad eminence that dominated the landscape. By 9 a.m., General Lyon had been shot twice and his horse had been shot from underneath him. Sigel and his men had not joined in the main attack. Positioned at the Sharp farm nearby, he thought that Lyon was winning, but didn’t really know. Confusion caused by the men’s uniforms would also prove costly. Some of Lyon’s men were dressed in gray, as were the Confederate troops from Louisiana. As the latter marched toward Sigel, the German’s men refused to shoot at them, believing them to be friendlies. The Louisianans took advantage of the situation and mowed down many of Sigel’s men. Others fled from the scene.
Despite his injuries, Nathaniel Lyon mounted another horse to lead another charge, waving his hat and encouraging his men. From a nearby thicket, a shot was fired, entering the General’s chest. This injury was fatal, making Lyon the first Union general to die in the Civil War. His body was taken to the nearby Ray House (one of two original structures still standing on the battlefield.)
An hour later a group of 5,000 Confederates launched their third attack along Bloody Hill. Now under the command of Major Samuel Sturgis, the Union troops let loose their artillery. Men on both sides burrowed in the grass to escape the assault.
By 11:30 that morning, troops were tired and hungry, and ammunition was getting low for the Union. Furthermore, Sturgis had received no word or assistance from Sigel. The Union troops started to withdraw back to Springfield. By the time the Confederates launched a fourth attack, they found that they had the battlefield to themselves. After just six hours, the Battle of Wilson’s Creek was over.
Between the two sides, losses of close to 16 percent were suffered, one of the highest rates of the Civil War. The home of John and Roxanna Ray would serve as a field hospital for both sides. The family had hid in the basement during the battle. It would take over a week to bury all of the dead. For Nathaniel Lyon, it would take nearly a month for his body to reach its final resting place in his home state of Connecticut.
General Price and his ever-growing army would move north to Lexington where he would win his next great victory in mid-September. It would also be the last significant victory for the Confederates in Missouri in 1861. The fighting, however, didn’t stop. It just grew more personal and more violent as the war progressed.
Missouri was truly “a house divided.”