REBELLION IN MISSOURI: 1861

Written by a former Chief of the USAF Personnel Narrative Office, this tells of the struggle between the Unionists and Secessionists for the control of Missouri at the start of the Civil War, and of the efforts of a master strategist- General Nathaniel Lyon- to save the state for the Union. It was of vital importance to both North and South. Missouri's pro-slavery Governor Jackson and his adherents determined to swing it to the Confederacy; Nathaniel Lyon and Colonel Frank Blair of Washington opposed him. Establishing his own state guard, Jackson plotted to seize the great Federal arsenal at St. Louis; instead, by an amazing coup, Lyon captured it, and with it, control of the city. With little help from his superior officers, Lyon trained troops and led them against the state capital at Springfield; forced to retreat, he met the Confederates at Wilson's Creek where he was killed in one of the bloodiest battles of the war. The long-range result of Wilson's Creek, where both sides claimed a victory, was that Missouri stayed in the Union.... Filling in an often overlooked gap in Civil War records, this has an appeal primarily to students of political and military strategy of the War in the West, and to Missourians interested in the history of their own state.