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Tracing the origins and history of Missouri Confederate units that served during the Civil War is nearly as difficult as comprehending the diverse politics that produced them. Deeply torn by the issues that caused the conflict, some Missourians chose sides enthusiastically, others reluctantly, while a number had to choose out of sheer necessity, for fence straddling held no sway in the state after the fighting began. The several thousand that sided with the Confederacy formed a variety of military organizations, some earning reputations for hard fighting exceeded by few other states, North or South. Unfortunately, the records of Missouri's Confederate units have not been adequately preserved—officially or otherwise—until now. James E. McGhee is a highly respected and widely published authority on the Civil War in Missouri; the scope of this book is startling, the depth of detail gratifying, its reliability undeniable, and the unit narratives highly readable. McGhee presents accounts of the sixty-nine artillery, cavalry, and infantry units in the state, as well as their precedent units and those that failed to complete their organization. Relying heavily on primary sources, such as rosters, official reports, order books, letters, diaries, and memoirs, he weaves diverse materials into concise narratives of each of Missouri's Confederate organizations. He lists the field-grade officers for battalions and regiments, companies and company commanders, and places of origin for each company when known. In addition to listing all the commanding officers in each unit, he includes a bibliography germane to the unit, while a supplemental bibliography provides the other sources used in preparing this unique and comprehensive resource.
Claiborne Fox Jackson (1806-1862) remains one of Missouri's most controversial historical figures. Elected Missouri's governor in 1860 after serving as a state legislator and Democratic party chief, Jackson was the force behind a movement for the neutral state's secession before a federal sortie exiled him from office. Although Jackson's administration was replaced by a temporary government that maintained allegiance to the Union, he led a rump assembly that drafted an ordinance of secession in October 1861 and spearheaded its acceptance by the Confederate Congress. Despite the fact that the majority of the state's populace refused to recognize the act, the Confederacy named Missouri its twelfth state the following month. A year later Jackson died in exile in Arkansas, an apparent footnote to the war that engulfed his region and that consumed him. In this first full-length study of Claiborne Fox Jackson, Christopher Phillips offers much more than a traditional biography. His extensive analysis of Jackson's rise to power through the tangle that was Missouri's antebellum politics and of Jackson's complex actions in pursuit of his state's secession complete the deeper and broader story of regional identity--one that began with a growing defense of the institution of slavery and which crystallized during and after the bitter, internecine struggle in the neutral border state during the American Civil War. Placing slavery within the realm of western democratic expansion rather than of plantation agriculture in border slave states such as Missouri, Philips argues that southern identity in the region was not born, but created. While most rural Missourians were proslavery, their "southernization" transcended such boundaries, with southern identity becoming a means by which residents sought to reestablish local jurisdiction in defiance of federal authority during and after the war. This identification, intrinsically political and thus ideological, centered--and still centers--upon the events surrounding the Civil War, whether in Missouri or elsewhere. By positioning personal and political struggles and triumphs within Missourians' shifting identity and the redefinition of their collective memory, Phillips reveals the complex process by which these once Missouri westerners became and remain Missouri southerners. Missouri's Confederate not only provides a fascinating depiction of Jackson and his world but also offers the most complete scholarly analysis of Missouri's maturing antebellum identity. Anyone with an interest in the Civil War, the American West, or the American South will find this important new biography a powerful contribution to our understanding of nineteenth-century America and the origins--as well as the legacy--of the Civil War.
This book contains both a history of the First and Second Missouri Confederate Brigades as well as a personal memoir of the Civil War.
During the Civil War, only Virginia and Tennessee saw more action than Missouri. Ulysses S. Grant first proved his ability there. Sterling Price, a former governor of Missouri, sided with the Confederacy, raised an army and led it in battle all over the state. Notorious guerrilla warriors "Bloody" Bill Anderson and William Quantrill terrorized communities and confounded Union military commanders. Brian Warren and Joseph "Whit" McCoskrie provide a chronological overview of more than three hundred of the documented engagements that took place within Missouri's borders, furnishing photos, maps, biographical sketches and military tactics.
Extracted From Missouri Historical Review V57, No. 1, October, 1962.
In this important new contribution to the historical literature, Amy Fluker offers a history of Civil War commemoration in Missouri, shifting focus away from the guerrilla war and devoting equal attention to Union, African American, and Confederate commemoration. She provides the most complete look yet at the construction of Civil War memory in Missouri, illuminating the particular challenges that shaped Civil War commemoration. As a slaveholding Union state on the Western frontier, Missouri found itself at odds with the popular narratives of Civil War memory developing in the North and the South. At the same time, the state’s deeply divided population clashed with one another as they tried to find meaning in their complicated and divisive history. As Missouri’s Civil War generation constructed and competed to control Civil War memory, they undertook a series of collaborative efforts that paved the way for reconciliation to a degree unmatched by other states. Acts of Civil War commemoration have long been controversial and were never undertaken for objective purposes, but instead served to transmit particular values to future generations. Understanding this process lends informative context to contemporary debates about Civil War memory.
Guerrilla warfare, border fights, and unorganized skirmishes are all too often the only battles associated with Missouri during the Civil War. Combined with the state’s distance from both sides’ capitals, this misguided impression paints Missouri as an insignificant player in the nation’s struggle to define itself. Such notions, however, are far from an accurate picture of the Midwest state’s contributions to the war’s outcome. Though traditionally cast in a peripheral role, the conventional warfare of Missouri was integral in the Civil War’s development and ultimate conclusion. The strategic battles fought by organized armies are often lost amidst the stories of guerrilla tactics and bloody combat, but in The Civil War in Missouri, Louis S. Gerteis explores the state’s conventional warfare and its effects on the unfolding of national history. Both the Union and the Confederacy had a vested interest in Missouri throughout the war. The state offered control of both the lower Mississippi valley and the Missouri River, strategic areas that could greatly factor into either side’s success or failure. Control of St. Louis and mid-Missouri were vital for controlling the West, and rail lines leading across the state offered an important connection between eastern states and the communities out west. The Confederacy sought to maintain the Ozark Mountains as a northern border, which allowed concentrations of rebel troops to build in the Mississippi valley. With such valuable stock at risk, Lincoln registered the importance of keeping rebel troops out of Missouri, and so began the conventional battles investigated by Gerteis. The first book-length examination of its kind, The Civil War in Missouri: A Military History dares to challenge the prevailing opinion that Missouri battles made only minor contributions to the war. Gerteis specifically focuses not only on the principal conventional battles in the state but also on the effects these battles had on both sides’ national aspirations. This work broadens the scope of traditional Civil War studies to include the losses and wins of Missouri, in turn creating a more accurate and encompassing narrative of the nation’s history.
Civil War Missouri stood at the crossroads of America. As the most Southern-leaning state in the Middle West, Missouri faced a unique dilemma. The state formed the gateway between east and west, as well as one of the borders between the two contending armies. Moreover, because Missouri was the only slave state in the Great Interior, the conflicts that were tearing the nation apart were also starkly evident within the state. Deep divisions between Southern and Union supporters, as well as guerrilla violence on the western border, created a terrible situation for civilians who lived through the attacks of bushwhackers and Jayhawkers. The documents collected in Missouri’s War reveal what factors motivated Missourians to remain loyal to the Union or to fight for the Confederacy, how they coped with their internal divisions and conflicts, and how they experienced the end of slavery in the state. Private letters, diary entries, song lyrics, official Union and Confederate army reports, newspaper editorials, and sermons illuminate the war within and across Missouri’s borders. Missouri’s War also highlights the experience of free and enslaved African Americans before the war, as enlisted Union soldiers, and in their effort to gain rights after the end of the war. Although the collection focuses primarily on the war years, several documents highlight both the national sectional conflict that led to the outbreak of violence and the effort to reunite the conflicting forces in Missouri after the war.
Over one thousand Civil War engagements were fought in Missouri, and the conflict could not be quarantined from civilian life. In the countryside, the wives and mothers of absent soldiers had to cope with marauders from both sides. Children saw their fathers and brothers beaten, hanged or shot. In the cities, a cheer for Jeff Davis could land a young boy in jail, and a letter to a sweetheart in the Confederate army could get a girl banished from the state. Women volunteered to care for the flood of wounded and sick soldiers. Slavery crumbled and created new opportunities for black men to serve in the Union army but left their families vulnerable to retaliation at home. The turbulence and bitterness of guerrilla war was everywhere.
As a border state, Missouri was coveted by both the Union and the Confederacy at the beginning of the Civil War. Missourians took sides, with politicians trying to either keep Missouri in the Union or trying to secede and join the ranks of the Confederate States. In the end, the Show Me State remained with the Union but was given an honorary status in the Confederacy, even being represented with a star on the Confederate flag. Fighting soon erupted in the state, causing Missourian to fight Missourian-a sort of civil war within a civil war. The largest battle fought in Missouri was the Battle of Wilson's Creek, August 10, 1861, where Union forces under Nathaniel Lyon and Franz Sigel attacked Confederate forces under Ben McCulloch in the early-morning hours. While Wilson's Creek allowed the Confederates to retain control of the southwestern portion of the state, they soon retreated to Arkansas. While in Arkansas, Confederate forces made forays and raids into Missouri. Missouri troops were brigaded together and fought in both the Trans-Mississippi and Western theaters. Battles included Pea Ridge, Arkansas; Corinth, Iuka, Big Black River, and Vicksburg, Mississippi; Pleasant Hill and Jenkins' Ferry, Arkansas; New Hope Church and Allatoona, Georgia; and Franklin and Nashville, Tennessee. Major battles in Missouri during the war include Belmont, Carthage, Independence, Lexington, Little Blue River, Newtonia, Springfield, and Wilson's Creek. The following men from Missouri became generals in the Confederate Army: John S. Bowen, John B. Clark, Jr., Francis Marion Cockrell, Daniel, M. Frost, Martin E. Green, John Sappington Marmaduke, Mosby Monroe Parson, Sterling Price, Joseph O. Shelby, andJohn G. Walker. The end of the war found most of the Missourians in Alabama, where they were surrendered and paroled, eventually making their way home.