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Little Dixie

I found the History of Howard County, Missouri to the Civil War in some of my Dad's stuff after his death. He had it dated (in his hand) September 3, 1998. Besides that I have no idea where it came from or who wrote it. I've used parts of it on three webpages entitled: Howard County And Fayette, Little Dixie, and Tyranically-evil And Cruel?

Dad and I were born in Fayette, Missouri and he stayed there until WWII. I don't remember ever living in Howard County, but Grandma and Papa, five blood uncles and one aunt were on farms there all the while I was growing up. With over thirty first cousins and I'm not sure how many second and third cousins there, I spent a lot of summers in Howard County. It still is the place "Johnmeyers" call home.

Retreat to Victory? Confederate Strategy Reconsidered. Robert G. Tanner. Many have come to believe that the South might have won the Civil War if it had only avoided head-on battles and conducted an aggressive guerrilla campaign. Here, the author challenges that widely held theory, arguing that deep retreats and battle avoidance were not available to Southern leaders in planning their strategy. The South fought as it did for valid reasons, according to the author, and this book examines those reasons in detail.

Throughout the early 1800s until the War Between the States, Howard County and the other Central Missouri, river counties were the political power center of the state. Known as the "Boonslick Democracy" and, more-widely, as "Little Dixie ," these counties produced governors and state legislators who championed the free trade, states rights, and agrarian policies of the South. However, Howard Countians, as well as most Missourians, were also strongly loyal to the Union prior to 1861. Even following the Missouri-Kansas Border Wars, which broke out between Missourians and northerners moving into Kansas after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, when events continued to build toward the ultimate secession of southern states from the Union (beginning with South Carolina's secession on December 20, 1860), the majority of Howard Countians remained opposed to arbitrary dissolution. In a county meeting held at the courthouse in Fayette, after Abraham Lincoln's election, in December, 1860 (which was presided by Missouri Supreme Court Justice, Abiel Leonard, and attended by the majority of the citizens from the county), a Howard County resolution was passed citing several policy positions approved by the citizens:

1. [although only two votes had been cast for Lincoln in Howard County], the legal election of any qualified person to the Presidency of the United States was, in itself no cause for disunion,
2. "we [the citizens of Howard County] regard the election of Abraham Lincoln as a triumph of sectionalism over nationalism ... of fanatacism over patriotism; but, while we have freemen voting and battling with us for our country, we will not despair of the Republic,"
3. "resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law by the people, and virtual nullification of its provisions by the legislatures of the states of the north, are an actual grievance of which we have a right to complain, as illegal, unconstitutional, and unfriendly to us,"
4. the United States government should enforce compliance with the existing Fugitive Slave Law by all northern states, while the law is in effect, and
5. the resignation of any U S. congressman from any southern state, at this time, would result in a serious imbalance of power in favor of the northern states in the federal government, and would jeopardize the passage of any legislation, or the legal enforcement of any federal law that was fair and just to southern states. (From the 1883 History of Howard County).

It was not until the U. S. Army invasion of Missouri ... the capture of the Missouri State Militia's Camp Jackson ... the shooting of between 90 and 100 civilians, including women and children, in St. Louis by U. S. troops and German mercenary soldiers, under General Nathaniel Lyon, on May 10, 1861 ... the military deposing of Missouri's, legally- elected governor and government officials from office ... and the Federal imposition of Martial Law in Missouri (which remained in effect until after the end of the war in 1865) that Howard Countians changed their minds about remaining in the Union. Following these events, according to the 1883 History of Howard County, Howard Countians "boldly avowed their determination to unite with their brethren of the South in resisting coercion upon the part of the [federal] government." Having finally committed, however, they were to fight for the independence of the Confederate States of America in a big way. Of a county with a total population of little more than 5,000 people in 1861, the 1883 History of Howard County also reported: "We have no accurate means of knowing the number of men who entered the Confederate Army from Howard County. The number could not have been less than 1,500 men from the beginning of the war to its close. It is supposed, from the best information that can now be obtained, that between 500 and 700 men [alone] joined General Sterling Price on his last raid through this portion of the state. These soldiers were composed of all classes and ages from men of three score years to the mere stripling of fifteen . . . "

While providing almost one-third of its population to fight for the Confederate States, Howard County also provided a safe refuge for other Missourians from outside the county, throughout the war. Many southerners, who were permanently banished from their homes and farms in Bates, Cass, Jackson, and Vernon Counties by Union General Ewing's infamous "Order No. 11," took temporary or permanent residence in Howard County. Confederate Army recruiting officers routinely used Howard County locations for their headquarters. And, most Confederate Partisan Ranger companies, including those of Wm. C. Quantrill and "Bloody Bill" Anderson, routinely visited the county to take needed furloughs from the war.

While the Battles of Fayette and Glasgow and several skirmishes were fought in the county during the war, Howard County managed to escape much of the heavy fighting and destruction that plagued other areas of the state. This was due, in part, to the county's central location, away from the Union strongholds of St. Louis and Kansas City, and away from the river and railroad towns with large concentrations of garrisoned Union troops. It was also due, no doubt, to the strong southern sentiment and determination of the people to resist the Union invasion and occupation of Missouri ... and to gain freedom and independence for the Confederacy of southern states.

Although Missourians had voted not to consider an arbitrary referendum to seceed from the Union after Lincoln's election in 1860, Missouri's pro-Southern Governor, Claibourne Fox Campbell, a Fayette, Howard County resident, flatly refused President Lincoln's subsequent demand that Missouri supply troops to the U. S. Army for the purpose of invading and coercing Missouri's sister states of the South, after they began to seceed in December, 1860. Fearing that Missouri was inevitably going to seceed (because it was a slave state with strong Southern sympathies), and realizing that such secession might seriously jeopardize Union chances to win a war, Lincoln authorized the unprecedented and unconstitutional invasion of Missouri and the imposition of Martial Law throughout the state in May, 1861. In making this authorization, Lincoln deliberately broke an agreement he had previously made with the Missouri government, through the U. S. Army Department of the West, not to allow Federal troops to set foot on Missouri soil, unless Missouri actually seceeded from the Union or provided direct military assistance to the Confederate States.

Missouri was strategically-important, during the Civil War, not only as the leading producer of corn, hogs, hemp, and lead in the United States, but also as the hub of shipping and transportation in the Mississippi River Valley. Whichever side controlled Missouri could easily control the Mississippi, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, Red, and Arkansas Rivers and virtually the entire Western theater of the war. Unfortunately for Missouri and the other Southern states, Lincoln recognized this fact at the very onset of the war, while President Jefferson Davis and the Confederate States government at Richmond paid most of their initial attention to defense strategies for the east.

Following their invasion of Missouri on May 10, 1861, Federal troops immediately drove toward Jefferson City to depose Missouri's legally-elected state government. However, the governor, legislators, and newly-created Missouri State Guard (commanded by General Sterling Price) were able to flee from the city before Federal troops arrived. As they were pursued across the state, the Missourians fought the very first land battle of the Civil War at Boonville, Missouri on June 17, 1861. This battle was fought between a unit of 450 raw Missouri State Guard recruits under Colonel John Marmaduke (many of whom did not even have weapons) and 1,700 invading U. S. troops and mercenary, German soldiers under Union General Nathaniel Lyon. (Two skirmishes had previously taken place between Northern and Southern troops at Phillipi, West Virginia and Big Bethel, Virginia, but were too small to classify as battles). On July 5, 1861, the Missouri State Guard again fought pursuing Federal troops at Carthage, Missouri, in a battle that an 1861 issue of the New York Times described as "the first serious conflict between U. S. troops and the rebels" of the war. On August 10, 1861, the Missouri State Guard, with the support of regular Confederate Army troops from Arkansaw and Texas, fought the Battle of Wilson's Creek or "Oak Hills," as the Confederates called it, south of Springfield. This was the second largest battle fought in Missouri during the Civil War, and a Confederate victory. The 1,159 subsequent battles and skirmishes that were fought after these initial clashes, including the large battles at Lexington, Pilot Knob, and Westport, made Missouri the third most fought over state in the entire Civil War, next only to Virginia and Tennessee.

Although Missouri's legally-elected state government was deposed and arbitrarily replaced with a Union-picked, provisional government (without the vote of Missouri's citizens), it was maintained in exile, first in southwest Missouri, and, later, in Texas by Governor Campbell and Lt. Governor Thomas Reynolds, throughout the war. In Neosho, Missouri, on October 28, 1861, Missouri's legally-elected government unanimously voted to seceed from the Union, citing the unconstitutional and agreement-breaking, Federal invasion of the state as one of several reasons for secession. On November 28, 1861, Missouri was admitted to full statehood in the Confederate States of America. Throughout the war, Confederate senators and representatives, including Senator/General John B. Clark from Fayette, Howard County, represented Missouri in the Confederate States Congress at Richmond, Virginia.

The industrialization of the North and the shift in the balance of power in the Federal Government from the South to the North during the 1800s. (The increasing Federal tariffs being levied on Southern agricultural products, as this balance of power shifted during the decades before the war). In Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address he promised to "collect the duties and imposts" his radical Republican party arbitrarily proposed to levy on the South, no matter what. Lincoln, shortly after his inauguration, imposed the highest tariff on Southern agricultural products in U. S. history, doubling the existing rates to 48% ... only 2% shy of the staggering 50% tax King George III tried to impose on American colonies prior to the Revolutionary War (which, by the way, led colonists to rebel against the crown and fight for American independence)! You may begin to understand why only 17,000 people, out of the 170,000+ who actually voted in the 1860 presidential election in Missouri, voted for Abraham Lincoln. (Incidentally, almost all of the 17,000 votes Lincoln received in Missouri came from newly-arrived German immigrants, living in the ghettos of St. Louis).

While the citizens of each of the thirteen Southern states, including Missouri, did indeed share Howard Countian's anger at some of the northern states' arbitrary refusal to honor the Fugitive Slave Laws (which protected the integrity of the labor force of the Southern states), it was Lincoln's election in 1860, with its portent of skyrocketing tariffs and a completely-out-of-control transfer of power and wealth to the North, that actually sparked Southern secession. While Lincoln and his Republican Party did oppose the expansion of slavery to the new western territories (which had been an issue between the North and the South since before the Missouri Compromise of 1820), Lincoln did not run on a platform to abolish slavery ... nor was the existence of slavery, in any northern or southern state, even mentioned as a dividing issue during the first first two years of the war. In fact, for over a year after the Southern states had actually seceeded and the Civil War had begun, Lincoln offered to enact a Constitutional Amendment that would protect slavery forever in the states where it already existed ... if the southern states would only return to the Union! So, rather than invading the seceeded Southern states for the purpose of "emancipating slaves," the North, quite obviously, initiated the war and invaded the South for the simple economic reason of retaining the southern states' territory and resources.

Three Years with Quantrill A True Story Told by His Scout John McCorkle. Barton. This memoir details how John McCorkle fought in Quantrill's guerrilla force against pro-Union people in the Missouri-Kansas borderland, including violent actions at Lawrence and Baxter Springs, Kansas and Centralia, Missouri. In 1865, Quantrill was killed in Kentucky and his followers, including McCorkle, were forced to surrender.

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