Kindle Available Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri During the American Civil War The state of Missouri witnessed the most widespread, prolonged, and destructive guerrilla fighting in American history. A horrific combination of robbery, arson, torture, murder, and swift and bloody raids on farms and settlements. |
Missouri Civil War Map of Battles
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 The Civil War in Missouri, Day by Day, 1861 to 1865 Follow as events transpire across Missouri within those four long years. From raids and pursuit of the outlaws to the hunting down of Southern sympathizers and the Federal scouting parties across the state |
DVD  Bad Blood: The Border War That Triggered the Civil War In the years leading up to the Civil War, a bloody conflict between slaveholders and abolitionists focused the nation's eyes on the state of Missouri and the territory of Kansas. Told through the actual words of slave owners, free-staters, border ruffians, and politicians DVD |
Background: Slavery in Missouri
Slavery was not a "Southern" problem alone. Many northern states phased out slavery as late as the 1830s, and states such as Delaware and New Jersey still had slave-owning residents as late as 1860. On a local level, residents of Illinois owned slaves (under long-term indenture agreements of 40 years or longer) during the period of the Dred Scott trials, and a special provision in the Illinois constitution allowed slaves to work in the salt mines across the Mississippi from St. Louis as long as they were not held there for over one year at a stretch. Many people in southern Illinois supported slavery. No slaves in the St. Louis area picked cotton however, and few worked in farm fields. Most worked as stevedores and draymen on the riverfront, on riverboats, in the lead and salt mines, as handymen, janitors and porters (like Dred Scott), and as maids, nannies, and laundresses (like Harriet Scott). |
Kindle Available The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America Go behind the scenes of the crucial Missouri Compromise, the most important sectional crisis before the Civil War, the high-level deal-making, diplomacy, and deception that defused the crisis. |
Kindle Available The Battle of Carthage: Border War in Southwest Missouri, July 5, 1861 The battle of Carthage and the events that precipitated it. The authors made an excellent choice in covering the entire early campaign in Missouri |
 St Luis Court House |
 Civil War St. Louis Rough-and-tumble St. Louis played a key role as a strategic staging ground for the Union army. A citadel of free labor in a slave state, it also harbored deeply divided loyalties that mirrored those of its troubled nation |
 Guide to Missouri Confederate Units The origins and history of Missouri Confederate units that served during the Civil War. Deeply torn, some Missourians chose sides enthusiastically, others reluctantly. The several thousand that sided with the Confederacy earned reputations for hard fighting exceeded by few other states, North or South |
 Civil War on the Missouri-Kansas Border The western front was the scene of some of that conflict's bloodiest and most barbaric encounters as Union raiders and Confederate guerrillas pursued each other from farm to farm with equal disregard for civilian casualties |
 Jesse James and the Civil War in Missouri I wanted to know more about Jesse James and what was going on in Missouri during the time of the war. This book gave me a good basic understanding. It was very easy reading and helpful |
 Wilson's Creek: The Second Battle of the Civil War and the Men Who Fought It In 1861, Americans were preoccupied by the question of which states would join the secession movement and which would remain loyal to the Union. In Missouri, it was largely settled at Wilson's Creek on August 10, 1861, in a contest that is rightly considered the second major battle of the Civil War |
 Three Years With Quantrill: A True Story Told by His Scout John McCorkle Quantrill is often maligned as a psychopathic killer and a despot. McCorkle refutes this common claim by the writers of the winner's history, shows that Quantrill was a compassionate and honorable man. He shows a side to the War of Northern Aggression that is rarely told |
 Charles W. Quantrell A True History Of His Guerilla Warfare On The Missouri And Kansas Border During The Civil War Of 1861-1865 This book was written just as Captain Harrison Trow told it to John P. Burch, giving accounts of fights that he participated in, narrow escapes experienced, dilemmas it seemed almost impossible to get out of, and also other battles |
Kindle Available Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War This places James within a specific political context, showing why it was possible for this murderous bandit to emerge as a folk hero among Southern sympathizers following the Civil War in which he fought as a teenager |
Kindle Available John Hunt Morgan and His Raiders The "Thunderbolt of the Confederacy" John Hunt Morgan from Tompkinsville, Kentucky to Greeneville, Tennessee. |
Kindle Available Civil War on the Western Border, 1854-1865 Fanatical politics of the western frontier, immigrant abolitionists with loaded Spencer rifles funded by mysterious personages back East, cut-throats, gin heads and horse thieves, colorful character descriptions |
Guide to Missouri Confederate Units The origins and history of Missouri Confederate units that served during the Civil War. Deeply torn, some Missourians chose sides enthusiastically, others reluctantly. The several thousand that sided with the Confederacy earned reputations for hard fighting exceeded by few other states, North or South |
 Galvanized Yankees on the Upper Missouri: The Face of Loyalty Confederate prisoners of war were permitted to enlist in the Union army. Detailed studies of individual regiments. One such unit, the First United States Volunteers and their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Dimon. |
 The Partisan Rangers of the Confederate States Army: Memoirs of General Adam R. Johnson The capture of Newburg, Indiana, with only twelve men and two joints of stovepipe mounted on the running gear of a wagon. This episode won him a nickname of "Stovepipe." He was promoted to Brigadier General in June 1864 |
Kindle Available Bloody Bill Anderson: The Short, Savage Life of a Civil War Guerrilla For a brief but dramatic period, Bloody Bill played the leading role in the most violent arena of the entire war-and did so with a vicious abandon that spread fear throughout the land |
 Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy: Guerrilla Warfare in the West, 1861-1865 The establishment of a police state in Missouri and the subsequent backlash and ensuing war of sabotage by local guerrillas. Missouri and Kansas had shared much animosity in the years leading up to the Civil War |
 Autobiography of Samuel S. Hildebrand Figures such as Quantrill and Anderson are better known today, Sam Hildebrand was an equally notorious Missouri bushwhacker in the southeast region of Missouri. Operating with a small group of followers, Hildebrand and his rifle "Kill-Devil" were a terror to local Unionist civilians |
DVD Ride With The Devil The bloody feud among neighbors in the border state of Missouri. In this war zone the destinies of several young Southern bushwhackers as they experience the violence and the seasons DVD |
 Missouri State Flag |
Centered on red, white and blue fields is the Missouri state seal. It is encircled by a blue band with twenty-four stars representing the number of states in 1821. The stars in the inner circle have the same meaning. Two huge grizzly bears support the circular shield in the center which has three parts. |
Missouri State Seal
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 4th Missouri |
Bonnie Blue Flag Bonnie Blue The Confederate government did not adopt this flag but the people did and the lone star flags were adopted in some form in five of the southern States that adopted new flags in 1861. |
Southern Cross Flag Used as a navy jack at sea from 1863 onward. This flag has become the generally recognized symbol of the South. |
Second Confederate Flag  On May 1st,1863, a second design was adopted, placing the Battle Flag (also known as the "Southern Cross") as the canton on a white field. This flag was easily mistaken for a white flag of surrender especially when the air was calm and the flag hung limply. More on Confederate Flags |
Sources:
U.S. National Park Service
U.S. Library of Congress
Federal Citizen.
Courtesy AnimationFactory.com
Slavery in Missouri was different from slavery in the deep south. The majority of Missouri's slaves worked as field hands on farms along the fertile valleys of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. St. Louis, the largest city in the state, maintained a fairly small African-American population throughout the early part of the nineteenth century. Life in the cities was different for African-Americans than life on a rural plantation. The opportunities for interaction with whites and free blacks were constant, as were those for greater freedom within their slave status. Because slavery was unprofitable in cities such as St. Louis, African-Americans were often hired out to others without a transfer of ownership. In fact, many masters illegally allowed their slaves to hire themselves out and find their own lodgings. This unusual state of affairs taught African-Americans to fend for themselves, to market their abilities wisely, and to be thrifty with their money.