Who's to Know?

President Lincoln asked all Northern governors to provide troops for the Civil War. But Missouri Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson, refused.

 

Instead, he called up the Missouri State Militia and commanded it himself, making him the first sitting governor to lead troops into battle and the first to lead them against his own Union.

July 5 William Parker Carr fought Governor Jackson's men in the Battle of Carthage, the Civil War's first major on-land battle. It pitted 1,100 Union volunteers, armed and well-drilled, against the governor's force of 6,000. Two-thirds bore arms; the rest were raw recruits, hurriedly gathered, barely trained.

The fight featured fluttering battle flags, cannons booming, and a bayonet charge. As Union forces retreated, Carr saw Governor Jackson's 2,000 weaponless recruits, unable to fight, hanging about in the woods, moving like deer among the trees.

Carr heard gunfire, a voice shouted from the woods, "For God's sake, stop! You're shooting your own men!" 

Who's to know? Recruits, who had no Confederate uniforms, wore whatever they could.

Coming soon in 

THIEVES, RASCALS & SORE LOSERS: 

A Saucy History of a Nebraska County Seat War 

by Marilyn June Coffey