Missouri in the Civil War

Bloody Bill Anderson, one of Missouri's most infamous Bushwackers

Few states were as violently divided about the Civil War as Missouri. A state whose very formation was the progenitor of the “Missouri Compromise” that served to settle growing dissention between free and slave states, Missouri was from its very beginning a state at odds over the tensions that wold result in the Civil War.

Settled by slave owners seeking viable farmlands, Missouri was at its inception a largely Southern state. When Missouri earned statehood in 1821, it was as part of the Missouri Compromise, which held that no state above Missouri’s northern border would be accepted into the Union as a slave state. The disagreements about slavery that came to the fore with each state admitted into the Union during the early 1800s were ingrained into the fledgling state of Missouri, as the slave-holders who’d come up the Mississippi River to settle Missouri were joined by settlers from the North who did not support the peculiar institution.

At the outset of the Civil War, it became obvious that the differences in opinion that were represented by the Missouri populace would make civil war especially hostile in the state. Missouri sent men and supplies to both the Union and Confederate armies, despite the fact that the state had vowed to remain neutral. This neutrality would be sorely tested from within and without Missouri’s borders during the grueling years of the Civil War.

Early in the war, Missouri came under Union governmental provision following disagreements with Union officers and the state’s Southern-sympathizing governor, Claiborne Fox Jackson. Jackson was removed from office and exiled from the state, and a provisional government of Union officers was appointed. This resulted in the formation of a Missouri State Guard, a Confederate-leaning organization that claimed to protect the state from invasion by either Union or Confederate troops.

With these battles going on in the state government, it was only natural that Union and Confederate troops would meet in Missouri. While there were many skirmishes, the largest battle, the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, which came as a result of Governor Jackson’s removal, occurred on August 10, 1861. The Missouri Home Guard, aided by the Confederate army, defeated Federal troops, but the victory meant little in the end; soon bloody disagreements between neighbors would erupt throughout the state.

Guerrilla warfare in Missouri brought the war closer to home for many than in any other state in either the Confederacy or the Union. In the years between 1862 and 1864, Western Missouri was beset by guerrilla warfare between Southern-sympathizing Home Guard troops and Bushwhackers who fought bitterly with Jayhawkers and Federal troops. These battles spread throughout the state, but in regularity in the northern part of the state. These battles often pitted neighbor against neighbor, and would involve entire families, women and children included. Some of the most notorious outlaws of the nineteenth century, including the James Gang, were involved in these guerrilla uprisings.

The Civil War was a brutal and bloody time in the history of Missouri. Despite the state’s declared neutrality, sympathies for both causes were found throughout the state, resulting in battles that raged across Missouri, with neighbors going to combat against one another.