Battle Cry of Freedom

by James M. McPherson

  In his inaugural address as governor on January 5, 1861, Jackson had told Missourians: "Common origin, pursuits, tastes, manners and customs . . . bind together in one brotherhood the States of the South. . . . [Missouri should make] a timely declaration of her determination to stand by her sister slave-holding States."23 The lieutenant governor, speaker of the house, and a majority of the controlling Democratic party in the legislature took the same position. The unionism of the state convention elected to consider secession had frustrated their hopes. In the aftermath of Sumter, however, Jackson moved quickly to propel Missouri into the Confederacy. He took control of the St. Louis police and mobilized units of the pro-southern state militia, which seized the small U. S. arsenal at Liberty, near Kansas City. On April 17, the same

  22. CWL, IV, 523; Sprague, Freedom under Lincoln, chaps. 16–18; Charles B. Clark, "Suppression and Control of Maryland, 1861–1865," Maryland Magazine of History, 54 (1959), 241–71.

  23. William E. Parrish, Turbulent Partnership: Missouri and the Union, 1861–1865 (Columbia, Mo., 1963), 6–7.

  day that the governor spurned Lincoln's call for troops, he wrote to Jefferson Davis asking for artillery to assist in the capture of the St. Louis arsenal. On May 8 several large crates labeled "marble" but containing four cannons and ammunition arrived in St. Louis from Baton Rouge—where earlier they had been seized from the federal arsenal in that city. The artillery soon appeared in a grove on the edge of St. Louis, "Camp Jackson," where the southern militia was drilling.

  Blair and Lyon matched Jackson's every move. Lyon mustered into federal service several regiments organized by the German American population, the hard core of unionism in St. Louis. To reduce the danger of secessionist capture of surplus arms in the arsenal, Lyon and Blair arranged for the secret transfer of 21,000 muskets across the river to Illinois. Word of the plan leaked out, and an excited crowd gathered at the wharf on the evening of April 25. Lyon decoyed them by sending a few boxes of ancient flintlock muskets to a docked steamboat where an Illinois militia captain pretended to wait for them. The mob seized the boxes and triumphantly bore them away. At midnight the 21,000 modern muskets crossed the Mississippi on another steamboat.

  Lyon was not content to remain on the defensive and allow passions to cool, as conditional unionists advised. He decided to capture the 700 militiamen and their artillery at Camp Jackson. On May 9 he made a personal reconnaissance by carriage through the camp disguised in a dress and shawl as Frank Blair's mother-in-law. The next day he surrounded Camp Jackson with four regiments of German Americans and two companies of regulars. The militia surrendered without firing a shot. The shooting started later. As Lyon marched the prisoners through the city, a raucous crowd lined the road and grew to dangerous size. Shouting "Damn the Dutch" and "Hurrah for Jeff Davis," the mob threw brickbats and rocks at the German soldiers. When someone shot an officer, the soldiers began firing back. Before they could be stopped, twenty-eight civilians and two soldiers lay dead or dying, with uncounted scores wounded. That night mobs roamed the streets and murdered several lone German Americans. Next day another clash took the lives of two soldiers and four civilians.

  Panic reigned in St. Louis, while anger ruled the state capital at Jefferson City, where the legislature quickly passed Governor Jackson's bills to place the state on a war footing. The events in St. Louis pushed many conditional unionists into the ranks of secessionists. The most prominent convert was Sterling Price, a Mexican War general and former governor, whom Jackson appointed as commander of the pro-southern militia. Missouri appeared headed for a civil war within its own borders. Moderates made one last effort to avert fighting by arranging a June 11 conference between Jackson and Price on one side and Blair and Lyon (now a brigadier general) on the other. Jackson and Price offered to disband their regiments and prevent Confederate troops from entering Missouri if Blair and Lyon would do the same with respect to Union regiments. After four hours of argument about these terms, Lyon rose angrily and declaimed: "Rather than concede to the State of Missouri for one single instant the right to dictate to my Government in any matter . . . I would see you . . . and every man, woman, and child in the State, dead and buried. This means war."24

  Lyon was as good as his word. Four days after this conference he occupied Jefferson City. Price's militia and the legislature abandoned the capital without resistance. They withdrew fifty miles up the Missouri River to Boonville, where Lyon relentlessly pursued and drove them from the town on June 17 after a skirmish with few casualties. Price's defeated forces retreated all the way to the southwest corner of Missouri by early July, with the unionists close on their heels. Lyon became the North's first war hero. With little outside help he had organized, equipped, and trained an army, won the first significant Union victories of the war, and gained control of most of Missouri.

  But he had stirred up a hornets' nest. Although guerrilla bands would have infested Missouri in any case, the polarization of the state by Lyon's and Blair's actions helped turn large areas into a no-man's land of hit-and-run raids, arson, ambush, and murder. Confederate guerrilla chieftains William Quantrill, "Bloody Bill" Anderson, and George Todd became notorious bushwhackers. Their followers Jesse and Frank James and Cole and Jim Younger became even more famous—or infamous—after the war. Unionist "Jayhawker" counterinsurgency forces, especially the Kansans led by James Lane, Charles Jennison, and James Montgomery, matched the rebel bushwhackers in freebooting tactics. More than any other state, Missouri suffered the horrors of internecine warfare and the resulting hatreds which persisted for decades after Appomattox.

  None of this fighting dislodged Union political control of most of the state. This control was exercised in a unique manner. The governor and most of the legislature had decamped. The only unionist body with some claim to sovereignty was the state convention that had adjourned

  24. Thomas L. Snead, The Fight for Missouri from the Election of Lincoln to the Death of Lyon (New York, 1886), 199–200.

  in March after rejecting secession. On July 22, therefore, a quorum of the convention reassembled, constituted itself the provisional government of Missouri, declared the state offices vacant and the legislature nonexistent, and elected a new governor and other state officials. Known as the "Long Convention" (to establish the analogy with the Long Parliament of the English Civil War), the convention ruled Missouri until January 1865, when a government elected under a new free-state constitution took over.

  Meanwhile Claiborne Jackson called the pro-southern legislature into session at Neosho near the Arkansas border. Less than a quorum showed up, but on November 3, 1861, this body enacted an ordinance of secession. The Congress in Richmond admitted Missouri as the twelfth Confederate state on November 28. Although Missouri sent senators and representatives to Richmond, its Confederate state government was driven out of Missouri shortly after seceding and existed as a government in exile for the rest of the war.

  Nearly three-quarters of the white men in Missouri and two-thirds of those in Maryland who fought in the Civil War did so on the side of the Union. Kentucky was more evenly divided between North and South; at least two-fifths of her white fighting men wore gray. Kentucky was the birthplace of both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. Heir to the nationalism of Henry Clay, Kentucky was also drawn to the South by ties of kinship and culture. Three slave states and three free states touched its borders. Precisely because Kentucky was so evenly divided in sentiment and geography, its people were loath to choose sides. A month after Lincoln's call for troops, the legislature resolved that "this state and the citizens thereof shall take no part in the Civil War now being waged [but will] occupy a position of strict neutrality."25

  Kentuckians took pride in their traditional role as mediator between North and South. Three times Henry Clay had devised historic sectional compromises: in 1820, 1833, and 1850. In 1861 Clay's successor John J. Crittenden had tried to devise a fourth. Even as late as May 1861, Kentucky unionists still believed that Critten
den's compromise offered the best hope to save the Union. Governor Beriah Magoffin appealed to the governors of the three midwestern states on Kentucky's northern border for a conference to propose mediation between the warring parties. He sent emissaries to Tennessee and Missouri for the same purpose. If all six states formed a united front, thought Magoffin, they

  25. Lowell Harrison, The Civil War and Kentucky (Lexington, 1975), 9.

  could compel North and South to make peace. But the Republican midwestern governors, busy mobilizing their states for war, refused to have anything to do with the idea, while Tennessee soon made its commitment to the Confederacy. A border states conference held in Frankfort on June 8 attracted delegates from only Kentucky and Missouri. They adjourned in futility after passing unnoticed resolutions.

  In theory, neutrality was little different from secession. "Neutrality!!" exclaimed a Kentucky unionist in May 1861. "Why, Sir, this is a declaration of State Sovereignty, and is the very principle which impelled South Carolina and other States to secede." Lincoln agreed—in theory. But he, like other pragmatic unionists, recognized that neutrality was the best they could expect for the time being. The alternative was actual secession. For several weeks after the surrender of Fort Sumter, Breckinridge Democrats filled the state with rhetoric about southern rights, solidarity with sister states, and the like. Thousands of Kentuckians began filtering into Tennessee to join Confederate units. Although Governor Magoffin formally rejected Jefferson Davis's call for troops as he had rejected Lincoln's, Magoffin sympathized with the South and secretly permitted Confederate recruiting agents to enter the state. Even some Kentucky unionists declared that if northern soldiers tried to coerce the South, "Kentucky should promptly unsheath her sword in behalf of what will then have become her common cause." Sensitive to the delicate balance of opinion in his native state, Lincoln assured Kentucky unionist Garrett Davis on April 26 that while "he had the unquestioned right at all times to march the United States troops into and over any and every State," he had no present intention of doing so in Kentucky. If the state "made no demonstration of force against the United States, he would not molest her."26

  Lincoln carried this promise to the extreme of allowing an immense trade through the state to the Confederacy. Horses, mules, food, leather, salt, and other military supplies, even munitions, entered Tennessee via Kentucky. Many Yankees denounced this trade (even as others quietly counted their profits from it). Midwestern governors and the army soon halted most river shipments by placing armed steamboats and artillery along the Ohio River. But the Louisville and Nashville Railroad continued to haul trainloads of provisions from Kentucky to Confederate supply centers in Tennessee. Even though Lincoln had declared a blockade

  26. E. Merton Coulter, The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky (Chapel Hill, 1926), 92, 44; CG, 37 Cong., 2 Sess., Appendix, 82–83.

  of Confederate ports, he hesitated to impose a land blockade against Kentucky lest he violate her "neutrality." Not until August 16, after state elections had shown that unionists were in firm control of Kentucky, did Lincoln issue a proclamation banning all trade with the Confederacy. Even this did not entirely halt the trade, but at least it made such commerce illegal and drove it underground.27

  Lincoln's forbearance toward Kentucky paid off. Unionists became more outspoken, and fence-sitters jumped down onto the Union side. The legacy of Henry Clay began to assert itself. Unionist "home guard" regiments sprang up to counter the pro-southern "state guard" militia organized by Governor Magoffin. Union agents clandestinely ferried 5,000 muskets across the river from Cincinnati to arm the home guards. Ken-tuckian Robert Anderson, of Fort Sumter fame, established Union recruiting camps for Kentucky volunteers on the Ohio side of the river to match the Confederate camps just across the Tennessee line. At a special election on June 20, unionists won more than 70 percent of the votes and gained control of five of Kentucky's six congressional seats.28 This balloting understated pro-Confederate sentiment, for many southern-rights voters refused to participate in an election held under the auspices of a government they rejected. Nevertheless, the regular election of the state legislature on August 5 resulted in an even more conclusive Union victory: the next legislature would have a Union majority of 76 to 24 in the House and 27 to 11 in the Senate.

  This legislative election marked the beginning of the end of neutrality in Kentucky. Military activities along the state's borders soon forced the new legislature to declare its allegiance. Several northern regiments were stationed in Cairo, Illinois, at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. An equally large Confederate force occupied northwest Tennessee, fewer than fifty miles away. Key to the control of the Mississippi

  27. Coulter, Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky, 73; CWL, IV, 486–87. Lincoln's proclamation was an implementation of legislation enacted July 13, 1861, forbidding trade with the Confederate states.

  28. Most states held their congressional elections in the fall of even-numbered years, as they do today. But because a congressman so elected would not take his seat until thirteen months later, some states, including Maryland and Kentucky, held congressional elections in the odd-numbered year in which that Congress was scheduled to meet. Because Lincoln had called the 37th Congress into special session on July 4, 1861, Maryland and Kentucky had to hold special elections in June, a fortuitous circumstance that gave unionists in both states a chance to demonstrate their majorities and consolidate their control.

  between these two forces was the high bluff at the rail terminal of Columbus, Kentucky. Both rival commanders cast covetous eyes on Columbus, and each feared—correctly—that the other intended to seize and fortify the heights there.

  The Confederate commander was Leonidas Polk, tall and soldier-like in appearance, member of a distinguished southern family, a West Point graduate near the top of his class who had left the army in 1827 to enter the ministry and rise to a bishopric of the Episcopal church. When war came in 1861, he doffed his clerical robes and donned a major general's uniform. An officer of high reputation, Polk never measured up to his early military promise and did not survive the war. The opposing Union commander was Ulysses S. Grant, slouchy and unsoldier-like in appearance, of undistinguished family, a West Point graduate from the lower half of his class who had resigned from the army in disgrace for drunkenness in 1854 and had failed in several civilian occupations before volunteering his services to the Union in 1861. "I feel myself competent to command a regiment," Grant had diffidently informed the adjutant general in a letter of May 24, 1861—to which he received no reply.29 Grant's commission as colonel and his promotion to brigadier general came via the congressman of his district and the governor of Illinois, who were scraping the barrel for officers to organize the un-wieldly mass of Illinois volunteers. A man of no reputation and little promise, Grant would rise to the rank of lieutenant general commanding all the Union armies and become president of the United States.

  Polk moved first to grasp the prize of Columbus. On September 3, troops from his command entered Kentucky and occupied the town. Grant responded by occupying Paducah and Smithland at the mouths of the strategically crucial Tennessee and Cumberland rivers. Both sides had invaded Kentucky, but by moving first the Confederates earned the stigma of aggressor. This converted the legislature from lukewarm to warlike unionism. On September 18 the American flag rose over the capital and legislators resolved by a three to one margin that Kentucky having been "invaded by the forces of the so-called Confederate States . . . the invaders must be expelled."30 Governor Magoffin and Senator Breckinridge resigned to cast their lot with the Confederacy. Other Kentuckians followed them. On November 18 a convention of two hundred delegates passed an ordinance of secession and formed a provisional government,

  29. Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, 2 vols. (New York, 1885), I, 239.

  30. Edward Conrad Smith, The Borderland in the Civil War (New York, 1927), 301.

  which the Congress in Richmond admitted as the thirteenth C
onfederate state on December 10. By the end of the year 35,000 Confederate troops occupied the southwest quarter of Kentucky, facing more than 50,000 Federals who controlled the rest of the state.

  War had finally come to Kentucky. And here more than anywhere else it was literally a brothers' war. Four grandsons of Henry Clay fought for the Confederacy and three others for the Union. One of Senator John J. Crittenden's sons became a general in the Union army and the other a general in the Confederate army. The Kentucky-born wife of the president of the United States had four brothers and three brothers-in-law fighting for the South—one of them a captain killed at Baton Rouge and another a general killed at Chickamauga. Kentucky regiments fought each other on several battlefields; in the battle of Atlanta, a Kentucky Breckinridge fighting for the Yankees captured his rebel brother.

  IV

  The unionism of the fourth border state, tiny Delaware, was never in doubt. For all practical purposes Delaware was a free state. Less than 2 percent of its people were slaves, and more than 90 percent of its black population was free. In January 1861 the legislature had expressed "unqualified disapproval" of secession, and never again considered the question. The state's few slaveholders and Confederate sympathizers lived mainly in the southern counties, bordering Maryland's eastern shore.31

  Each of the four upper South states that seceded contained a large area with little more commitment to slavery and the Confederacy than Delaware—western Virginia, western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and northern Arkansas. The economy and society of two of these upland regions were so distinct from the remainder of their states as to produce wartime movements for separate statehood. West Virginia managed to secede from the Confederacy and rejoin the Union. A similar effort in east Tennessee failed, leaving a legacy of bitterness that persisted long after the war.