By Sara L. Deters
As a history major at the University of Missouri, I've always hoped that Missouri's history would deservedly receive more attention. Mark A. Lause, author of Price's Lost Campaign: The 1864 Invasion of Missouri does just that by exploring the largely ignored events that took place in Missouri during the Civil War. Focused around one military general, Sterling Price, Price's Lost Campaign describes the unsuccessful military raid in Missouri of 1864. Emphasizing guerrilla warfare and how that brutality shaped the political elections in Missouri during 1864 provides cultural as well as political history for the readers out there interested in more than just warfare history.
As a history major at the University of Missouri, I've always hoped that Missouri's history would deservedly receive more attention. Mark A. Lause, author of Price's Lost Campaign: The 1864 Invasion of Missouri does just that by exploring the largely ignored events that took place in Missouri during the Civil War. Focused around one military general, Sterling Price, Price's Lost Campaign describes the unsuccessful military raid in Missouri of 1864. Emphasizing guerrilla warfare and how that brutality shaped the political elections in Missouri during 1864 provides cultural as well as political history for the readers out there interested in more than just warfare history.
Most of what’s written on the Civil War in
Missouri has focused on the early days - before the Federal authorities secured
their hold on the state - or on the
colorful and violent events of the guerilla war in the state.
Although I’ve always had an interest in the
1864 Missouri campaign, I didn’t pursue it seriously until after writing the book Race and Radicalism in the Union Army,
which focused on the efforts of John Brown’s surviving followers to build a
tri-racial Federal army in the Indian Territory--present Oklahoma. It isn’t surprising that such a prospect did
not please the Confederates at all, but I was surprised at the extent to which
the Federal authorities did everything they could to divert it, drain it of
resources, and even to line their pockets from the artificial misfortune
imposed upon the project. By the
conclusion of that book, I had a very different and much dimmer view of the
prospects for a real Reconstruction after the war.
Missouri troops and events in Missouri
generally figured heavily in those operations.
At one point, for example, the Indian brigade essentially took over Neosho as a base--the place had been essentially abandoned. And the fact that the Confederate army ended
the 1864 campaign by retreating south right past a Union Indian brigade
rendered helpless by Federal policies seemed to require another look at the
movements of Price’s Army and his pursuers.
You say that your grandmother passed down stories of her
grandfathers witnessing and participating in the 1864 campaign. Any stories you
wish to share?
Both of her grandfathers and several great
uncles were in the Enrolled Missouri Militia.
However, their wives and children may have seen more of this campaign
than they did. Riders went along those
country roads warning that Confederate columns were on the way and everybody
grabbed what they could and headed out across the fields into the woods. They stayed there for several days. Most of their houses were robbed of anything
not nailed down and vandalized.
The Federal Department of Missouri later made
a great issue about the cold-blooded murder of Major James Wilson and his men
outside of Union, Missouri. This was a
truly horrific act, but there was no mention of the murder of captured members
of the militia the same day only a few miles away, or the previous day in
Union, or in the other days before and after Wilson’s murder. The killing of Union
soldiers, militia or civilians that fell into Confederate hands was a daily
occurrence.
And, yes, it went the other way, too, though
never to the same extent.
Why did the Federals call Price’s army a “raid” instead of a
“campaign?”
The book argues that the Confederates planned
the operation as an invasion to reoccupy as much of Missouri as they could on
the eve of the 1864 presidential elections.
This included taking St. Louis and/or Jefferson City. Union Generals William S. Rosecrans and
Alfred Pleasanton, though, did not think that the Confederacy had that much
life left in it, and originally thought that reports of Price’s presence with a
large army represented a panicked response to a mere raid with no more than a
few thousand men or less. They staked
everything on this mistaken assessment.
Notwithstanding the stories later told that
Pilot Knob alerted St. Louis to the danger and inspired Rosecrans to mobilize
the population in the city’s defense. In fact, Rosecrans and his staff did not
really mobilize city’s militia and continued to discuss this is a “raid,”
almost until the Confederate advance probed the borders of St. Louis county on
September 30. Among other things,
Price’s decision not to attack St. Louis permitted the Federals to continue to
speak disparagingly of the operation as “a raid.”
A few days later, after Price again decided
not to attack a strategic objective at Jefferson City. Thereafter, Confederate goals centered on the
idea of supporting themselves as long as possible in Missouri. Indeed, the campaign proved to be such a
dismal failure that Price and his staff increasingly preferred to have their
achievements viewed in terms of a “raid.”
By the original standards, there was no seizure and occupation of St.
Louis or Jefferson City, but nabbing dozens of farm wagons as you pass through
Saline County might make a raid successful.
What can we learn about Missouri’s role in the Civil War from Price’s Lost Campaign?
I hope that readers of the book will realize
that historians have been making choices about what priorities to place on
aspects of the Civil War. The sectional
tensions between the east and west, perhaps, were secondary only to those
between the North and the South. And
sectional tensions represent a gross oversimplification. The Civil War pit two different ways of
seeing America’s future against each other, but there were also many variations
in those aspirations, especially on the most complex side of the war.
What was the most fascinating part for you during your research?
What always amazes me in doing historical
research is the extent to which we can actually probe the experience of the
rank and file--the soldiers, militia, and civilians touched by the war. Part of this is has to do with new
technologies, such as the digitalization of newspapers, military records, and even
some manuscript collections.
When they digitized the Official Records some years ago, I remember saying that this would
probably enable critical researchers to start putting some holes into the often
conflicting information contained in them.
That process has started. I hope
that, in a way, Price’s Lost Campaign
and the forthcoming Collapse of Price’s
Raid will be able to contribute to this.
Any other projects currently in the works?
I have several books already on the way to
press, including The Collapse of Price’s
Raid: The Beginning of the End in Civil War Missouri (University of
Missouri Press), Free Labor: the Civil
War and the Making of the American Working Class and a book on the politics
of spiritualism in the Civil War years. I
am also finishing a book that grew out of what I learned in the
Trans-Mississippi Civil War and applies it to the Franco-Prussian War,
tentatively entitled The Last Republicans. I have started another on political violence
in the Wild West, aimed at the role of violence in reconstructing and imposing the
two-party system.
3 comments:
شركه عزل فوم بالرياض
أيضاً تسبب في سقوط الطلاء وظهور التشققات، ولكن من الآن لا داعي
للقلق لأن شركة عزل أسطح تقدم لعملائها الكرام في كافة أنحاء المملكة العربية السعودية .
افضل شركة عزل أسطح
شركه تنظيف مكيفات بالرياض
شركه عزل فوم بالدمام
شركه عزل اسطح بالدمام
شركه عزل فوم بالقطيف
شركه عزل فوم بالاحساء
شركه عزل فوم بالجبيل
العالميه الوطنيه
تركيب رخام بعجمان
سباك بعجمان
تاتش
صيانة منازل فى دبى
صيانة فلل فى دبى
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