April 25, 1861---A civil war within the Civil War

APRIL 25, 1861:          

Missouri, a Border State, initially elected to stay out of the Civil War by remaining in the Union, but staying neutral---not giving men or supplies to either side and pledging to fight troops from either side who entered the State. Although secession was narrowly voted down, Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson was ardently pro-Confederate, and planned to take the State out of the Union, regardless. 

On this day, with the State on the verge of secession, Unionists carried out a daring operation. St. Louis held one of the largest Federal arsenals west of the Appalachians, and the Union needed those guns to equip troops who would soon be flooding into Cairo, Illinois. Federal infiltrators seized more than 10,000 muskets and other stores and vanished with them before St. Louis secessionists became aware of the raid. 

Missouri could not maintain its neutrality for long, and ultimately sent men, armies, generals, and supplies to both opposing sides, had its star on both flags, had separate governments representing each side, and endured a neighbor-against-neighbor intrastate war within the larger national war. 

By the end of the Civil War, the State had supplied nearly 110,000 troops to the Union and about 40,000 troops to the Confederacy.

April 24, 1861---"You are the only Northern realities."

APRIL 24, 1861:         

With the secession of Virginia, President Lincoln fears that Maryland will go out of the Union; if so, Washington, D.C. will be isolated and defenseless.  A gunboat in the Potomac River is ordered to keep steam up at all times in case the President and his Cabinet should need to flee the city. 

Only a few militia units have arrived from Pennsylvania and New York, and Lincoln speaks to them today: “I don’t believe there is any North,” he says morosely. “The Seventh Regiment is a myth...you are the only Northern realities.”

April 23, 1861---Stephen A. Douglas answers the call

APRIL 23, 1861:          

Stephen A. Douglas, who lost to Abraham Lincoln in the presidential election of 1860, appeals to the public to support the President and the Union during an unscheduled whistlestop in Columbus, Ohio.  

The war, Douglas told the crowd, was not about “the Negro question,” but rather about free commerce and free trade. Rebels controlled the Mississippi River and interrupted its free navigation, he explained. 

Douglas “called upon all men, without respect to party, to rally to the defence of the Government and its constitutional head, and for the maintenance of the National Constitution.”

On this same day, Robert E. Lee accepts command of all Virginia State Forces.

 

April 22, 1861---A new Virginia

APRIL 22, 1861:          

The Clarksburg, Virginia (now West Virginia) Convention calls for anti-secessionists to organize a State government loyal to the Union.