Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Understanding The Civil War More Clearly

I'm thinking Mary Chestnut's wartime journals are a must-read, so vividly does that woman's personality spring off of the pages

Meanwhile, specific to Missouri, it was claimed around here that Missouri at first asserted a sort of armed neutrality, and later tipped her hand when invaded by Lincoln's armies.

Some truth in that, except that even before that the Governor's Missouri State Guard was early on drilling in preparation of joining the Confederacy, even having Jeff Davis covertly send a couple of 12 pounders to batter down the walls of the state armory to access the rifles therein. The Unionist Wide Awakes, who occupied the armory, then launching a pre-emptive strike to arrest 'em.

The real problem for the Confederates later on being that Missouri was on the whole a Union-majority state.

I got a lot of photos of the surprisingly pretty Wilson's Creek Battlefield, and I'll post 'em later. August 1861 General Nathaniel Lyon siezed the initiative and stole a march on even so august (in Texas) a luminary as General Ben McCulloch and surprised 12,000 Confederates with less than half that number of men.

Why a classic pincer movement failed, tho perfectly executed against the Confederates as it was, had much to do with the fact that the Iowa troops present were wearing grey, causing fatal confusion to the Union side at a critical turn in the battle.

Lyon, already wounded twice, died early-on while leading his men. That both sides kept at it for five hours on a hundred degree August Missouri day, is testimony to both.

Technical Confederate victory but a strategic loss, the hammer blow stalled out their momentum on this first year of the war,and they were unable to follow up against the retreating Federals.



Birdwatcher