Today was a fun, hilly ride through scenic terrain. Not much to report on the Lewis and Clark front on this stretch, but I witnessed some very interesting Civil War history.
I visited the battleground upon which the battle of Lexington took place in September 1861. The history of the Civil War in Missouri is an interesting one. It seems that in Missouri there effectively was a civil war within the Civil War. Although Missouri was a officially a Union state, The Missouri State Guard was a strong confederate army that at the time was operating along the Missouri River. Under command of General Price. The Missouri State Guard routed the Federal forces in the Battle of Lexington.
The most interesting aspect of the battle was that the Missouri State Guard made advances by using large, impenetrable hemp balls for cover and rolling them toward the fort until the federal forces had expended all of their ammunition.
The Missouri legislature provided no leadership. One group of state legislators was meeting separately and voting to secede from the Union while a second group of legislators met on their own and pledged allegiance to the Union.
This sounds a lot like how the US Congress operates these days!
The divisions in Missouri still had not resolved themselves by 1863. Missouri sent thousands of troops to fight on both sides of the Battle of Vicksburg. Even though Missouri was officially a Union state, one of the stars on the Confederate flag represented Missouri.
The geographic division in Missouri seemed to be on somewhat of an an East – West basis. People in western Missouri, where there were more slaves, tended to support the Confederacy, and people in the East, particularly in St. Louis which had a large German population, tended to support the Union.
The photo below is of the Anderson House at the battle of Lexington, which later served as a hospital during the Civil War.
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