Missouri was founded specifically as a slave state back in 1820 in the start of a pattern of admitting both a slave and a free state to the union to maintain a congressional balance between pro and anti-slavery factions. The state was then heavily settled by slave-owners who took advantage of the readily-available bottomlands along both the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. Unlike the rest of the slave states, however, Missouri was along the prime western migration corridor, and migrants arriving from the south were soon joined and outnumbered by migrants from both the eastern United States and Europe. Many of these arrivals had no interest in slavery, and even when they did not finds themselves at odds with the plantation owners, they formed a distinctly different culture from them, with different needs and philosophies of life. Based on economic differences alone, the new subsistence farmers and the plantation owners were already quite at odds with another. Then, in 1854, neighboring Kansas was opened up to settlement under the concept of popular sovereignty, and all hell broke loose. Kansas would be declared a free or slave state based on how many settlers of each made their way into the land.
While the Civil War in general is often considered to be a conflict that pitted brother against brother, the nature of the war in the western states, owing to popular sovereignty and the mess that was "Bleeding Kansas", was one of a very viscous hatred of neighbor against neighbor. Lawrence, Kansas was almost completely ransacked by raiders from nearby Missouri, who were intent on making sure Kansas would not end up a free state. Even though it was not under the concept of popular sovereignty, Missouri was no less a hot bed of contention owing to its mixed background of settlement. The important thing to remember is that this was no mere debate of slavery and freedom, but an ugly conflict involving racism and cultural bigotry. By the time war began, Kansas was a free state, and Missouri found itself mired in a contest between people who would just as soon shoot one another as they would wait for marching orders. As was the plan for Kentucky, Missouri was to be seized as soon as possible by Union forces so that Confederate forces would never be given a chance to be mustered. The locals and the Arkansans had different ideas.
By July of 1861, the Missouri State Guard had received reinforcements from Arkansas, as well as Confederate troops from Louisiana and other places. Union forces, well aware of the disposition of the enemy, had already seized control of St. Louis and had encamped near Springfield, Missouri by July 13th. By early August, it became clear that the Union forces under General Nathaniel Lyon were vastly outnumbered by Confederate sympathizers pouring into the region. Lyon knew he needed to retreat and reinforce his numbers, but he also knew he needed to slow down his pursuers. In consequence, on August 10th, at 5:00 in the morning, the Battle of Wilson's Creek began. Tensions were already so high, however, that the Confederate forces, really just made up of ordinary Missouri and Arkansas militia, were more than ready to respond to this assault. Lyon tried desperately to form lines and advance against the enemy, but they were able to repel most counter-attacks strike for strike. Eventually, as was the case at Manassas, a relatively green army was not properly prepared to communicate between units, and Union forces became separated from one another, all the more so because they were well out of sight in the complicated landscape of the battlefield.
Despite some success on the part of the Iowa infantry, who were wearing the same colored uniforms as the Louisianans, things did not go well for Union forces. They were kept in check, never able to make serious advances, and the leadership was getting killed. Lyon, in fact, became the first Union general to die in the war. Their spirits sunk, and the objective to take out the pursuing force pretty much moot at this point, the surviving Union forces retreated to Rolla, Missouri. All the same, just about as many "Confederates" were killed at this point, and their forces were indeed unable to pursue the Union survivors, despite taking the battlefield. Wilson's Creek thus ended up being a tactical victory for the Union, though in all seriousness, even with later victories in Arkansas, this was at best a Pyrrhic victory. For nearly the rest of the war, Missouri would be the scene of fierce guerrilla warfare, and the state suffered some of the most severe losses of any land in the United States.
The battle itself, in fact, was far from an orderly affair. Traditional line warfare simply did not happen here, and the smaller skirmishes going on throughout the battlefield were extremely bloody in comparison to Manassas. Here, men not only shot to kill, but to maim, and combatants quickly broke down into savage hand to hand combat, complete with an even more savage fight coming from their mouths. The men, you see, were not exactly regular troops or even conscripts, but locals, locals who needed little provocation or orders to attack their neighbors. Such venomous hatred, combined with a familiarity of the rough landscape, and an August day that could not be more hot or humid, well, it made things very disgusting. The film shown at the visitor center of the present day national battlefield documents this well, but is mild in comparison to what things must have really been like. The battle remains a sacred event in the lives of Missourians, a reminder of just how much the state has suffered through. As such, the capitol building in Jefferson City features a very large mural of the battle, a piece of art which is very difficult to look at with a passing glare once one knows exactly what it depicts.
No comments:
Post a Comment