The start of 1862 witnessed the federals in their most precarious position of the war in Missouri. Sterling Price’s Missouri State Guard (MSG) controlled the interior of the state – including large sections of the strategically vital Missouri River Valley. Guerrillas ran rampant through the interior as well. It was up to the newly-installed commander of the Department of the Missouri, Major General Henry W. Halleck to restore the Union’s fortunes in the states. Halleck was not idle over the holiday season of 1861, as he instructed Brigadier General Samuel R. Curtis, commander of the recently-formed Federal Army of the Southwest, on his plans for the upcoming campaign season.
Shelby’s Raid is one of the great unsung raids of the American Civil War. The raid lasted over 40 days and covered more than 800 miles of territory in west central and northwest Arkansas and southwest and west central Missouri in the autumn of 1863. While spectacular, the raid had little lasting result on the course and conduct of the war in Missouri or in other theaters. It did earn Joseph O. “Jo” Shelby a general’s star and cemented his reputation as one of the Civil War’s most daring cavalry commanders.
Today the town of Newtonia, Missouri counts only about 200 residents in its population, but during the Civil War, it was the site of two notable battles.
Major General Sterling Price’s unsuccessful cavalry raid of September and October 1864, the largest Confederate cavalry raid of the war, sought to capture St. Louis and recover Missouri for the Confederacy. Price believed the expedition would spur recruiting, contribute to Abraham Lincoln’s defeat in the November presidential election, and perhaps end the war.
Joseph Orville Shelby, Confederate cavalry commander, was born in Lexington, Kentucky on December 12, 1830. Educated at Transylvania University in Kentucky, he moved to Waverly, Missouri, in 1852, becoming a rope manufacturer and hemp planter and one of the state’s largest slave owners. During the Missouri-Kansas border troubles, he led two armed forays of proslavery activists into Kansas, one of which participated in the Sack of Lawrence.
As the war turned against the Confederacy in late 1864, Confederate Major General Sterling Price led his cavalry forces on an epic raid into Missouri, hoping to install secessionist Thomas Reynolds as state governor in Jefferson City and to establish the Confederate state government’s legitimacy. Presumably, the loss of a border state would impede President Lincoln’s chances for reelection the following month and give the Confederacy an opportunity to negotiate a peaceful settlement. At the Battle of Westport, however, Price’s Raid (or Price’s “Missouri Expedition”) came to an inglorious climax.
The city of Neosho, Missouri briefly served as a provisional capital of Missouri's secessionist government, which was formed by the deposed governor Claiborne Fox Jackson and secessionist legislators.
