Union and Confederate Missourians Fight at Bayou Meto
Missouri, a border state, never seceded from the Union but her people were nevertheless divided and tens of thousands of Missourians wore both blue and gray between 1861 and 1865. Missouri is credited with supplying 109,111 men to Union forces, of whom 13,885 would not survive the war.
At least 30,000 — some historians say as many as 40,000 — Missouri served in Confederate units, and at least 7,000 of them died.
Missouri soldiers would play prominent roles for both sides in the Little Rock Campaign. In fact, the majority of the Confederate cavalrymen who served in the campaign and in the fighting at Reed's Bridge were from Missouri.
"From the early 1850s through the mid-1870s, almost every community in Missouri suffered terrible internal divisions. As Missouri's neighbors free states to the north and east, slave states to the south and east, and federal territories to the south and west, including troubled Kansas quarreled among themselves over the era's most controversial issues, some Missourians commitment to moderation began to falter as well. Missourians took up arms in defense of their
communities for and against slavery, for and against the Union, and ultimately against each other"
— From Missouri's War: The Civil War in Documents,
Silvana R. Siddali, editor.
Missouri Troops in the Little Rock Campaign
Confederate Forces
Elliott's Battalion
Thompson's Regiment
Jeffers' Regiment
Greene's Regiment
Young's Battalion
Ruffner's Battery
Bell's Battery
Gordon's Regiment
Gilkey's Regiment
Kitchen's Regiment
Burbridge's Regiment
Bledsoe's Battery
Collins' Battery
Union Forces
First Missouri Cavalry
Second Missouri Cavalry
Third Missouri Cavalry
Seventh Missouri Cavalry
Eighth Missouri Cavalry
Second Missouri Light
Artillery, Batteries K and M
{Portrait captions:}
Left to right:
Private James A. Carlile served in Co. F, First Missouri Cavalry (U.S.).
Charles F. Hartman was a first lieutenant in Co. L, Third Missouri Cavalry (U.S.).
Private John Floyd served in Col. DeWitt Clinton Hunter's Cavalry (C.S.), a unit raised in 1864.
First
Sergeant John F. Fealy of Co. F, First Missouri Cavalry (U.S.) had this image made at A.J. Millard's photo studio in Little Rock.
First Lieutenant Samuel G. Appleby of Co. M, Eighth Missouri Cavalry (U.S.) was photographed at White's Portable Gallery in DeValls Bluff.
Col. William L. Jeffers led the Eighth Missouri Cavalry (C.S.) during the Little Rock Campaign. Courtesy James E. McGhee.
Captain James T. Ward fought in Brig. Gen. Joseph O. Shelby's Confederate "Iron Brigade."
John A. Pond enlisted in Co. H of the Eighth Missouri Cavalry (U.S.) as a sergeant, but rose to the rank of first lieutenant.
Thomas A. Muzzall of the First Missouri Cavalry (U.S.) would later serve as a hospital steward for the Fifty-seventh U.S. Colored Infantry Regiment. Courtesy Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas
Middle bottom:
Young Frank Stanley was a bugler in the Seventh Missouri Cavalry (U.S.).
Col. Lewis Merrill's Second Missouri Cavalry Regiment (U.S.) inspired a popular song of the Civil War: "The Merrill Horse or, The Guerrillas Conquered. An Historical Ballad of the War Against Guerrillas in North East Missouri." By permission of the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University.
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