June 14, 1865---A matter of momentary impulse

JUNE 14, 1865:         

It can be argued that the Civil War had its birth in the Kansas-Missouri Border War of 1854-1861. During the Civil War Missouri was a terrifying slaughterfield. 1,162 recorded engagements took place within its borders between May of 1861 and April of 1865. How many unrecorded incidents took place is completely unknown, but the State was notorious not only for the violence of its battles but for the savagery of the men fighting them, savagery which rivaled the exploits of Attila The Hun and Genghis Khan. “Missouri” became a code word for the complete breakdown not only of civil order but of simple humanity.

Given that its residents were hanged, burned, drowned, exiled, tortured, raped, mutilated, shot, and stabbed with a routine casualness that was terrifying all in itself, it would be unrealistic to think that the war simply ended when Lee gave his Farewell Address.  No. In point of fact, the killing continued, not in any organized way, but in a one-on-one personal fashion born of a hunger for revenge, Missouri quickly became known as “The Outlaw State” because so many notorious gunslingers hailed from the State, and because the existence of law and order continued to be largely a matter of momentary impulse.

Despite the “end” of the war, fighting between Federal patrols and former Confederates still in gray continued, as did raids on towns and attacks on individuals.

In 1864, a Radical Republican Legislature and Administration had been elected, and from Jefferson City, the Radical Republicans tried to impose order on the State by force. A new Constitution, outlawing slavery and granting suffrage to blacks was passed, thoroughly ignoring white popular sentiment. Former Confederates and ex-slaveholders were barred from property ownership (and voting) and a reconstituted State Militia (like Kentucky’s, with many Freedmen) was empowered to keep order. And like Kentucky, enforced order bred violence. Unlike most places, however, those who resisted State coercion --- mostly former Confederates-turned-outlaws like the James-Younger Gang --- became folk heroes.

Opposing them was a masked group of vigilantes called the Bald Knobbers (from a mountain in the Ozarks), a group of Unionists. As time passed, the Anti-Bald Knobbers (ex-Confederates) became their most dire foes.  The two groups became multigenerational, and continued fighting each other, with documented incidents reported as late as 1890 (and anecdotal reports into the 1920s). If these are true, then the Civil War in Missouri lasted a full 70 years.