In September, 1864 General Sterling Price left Texas with 12,000 men and 14 pieces of artillery, headed north towards Missouri.

 

The plan was to travel swiftly and capture the City of St. Louis, whoever held St. Louis would control Missouri and in 1864, whoever controlled Missouri, would control the war for capturing Missouri would mean bringing thousands of new recruits into the rolls of the Confederacy, strain the Union Army in the east and buy General Robert E. Lee some much needed time in Petersburg, Virginia, where ironically another Missourian, Ulysses S. Grant was closing in on the Confederate capital of Richmond.

 

If all went well Missouri’s current governor, Thomas Reynolds, and the legally elected government of Missouri (which was now a government in exile) would once again be restored in Jefferson City.

 

With his plan in place, General Price left Camden, Arkansas on August 28^th, 1864. On August 29^th, he gathered two divisions of cavalry at Princeton and a third in Pocahontas on September 13^th.

 

The “Army of Missouri” crossed the state line on September 19^th and Price divided his army into three columns, General Shelby’s force on the left, General Marmaduke’s on the right and General Fagan’s force in the center.

 

Upon reaching Doniphan, Shelby found that the town had been burned by the fleeing federals, and as Confederate Colonel John C. Moore would later write:

 

“A detachment, sent in pursuit by Shelby, came up with them, and they never burned another”

 

On September 23’rd Price arrived at Fredericktown and learned that St. Louis had been reinforced. Fort Davidson which lie in between Price and St. Louis was thought to be lightly defended and perhaps he saw a chance to achieve an easy victory and gain badly needed supplies for his army.

 

General Price sent Shelby’s brigade north to cut off all avenues of Union reinforcements, while at the same time sending Generals Fagan and Marmaduke’s divisions west to attack the fort. After cutting off all routes of reinforcements and lines of communications Shelby was to support Fagan and Marmaduke in their attack against the fort.

 

Shelby expressed to Price that he was against this plan later stating that:

 

“I favored moving rapidly into St. Louis and seizing it.... I then and there...stated what the result would be if we attacked Pilot Knob. I could see nothing as an inducement; they had nothing we required. It would only cripple and retard our movements, and I knew too well that good infantry, well entrenched, would give us Hell, and Hell we did get...."

But perhaps there was an inducement to attack the fort, or should I say two inducements.  Major Wilson of the 3’rd Missouri State Militia (and perpetrator) of The Wilson Massacre was in Command of the Fort until he was reinforced by General Ewing, author of the notorious Order number 11, which was enacted on August 25, 1863 and  forcefully removed Missouri residents (both Union and Confederate ) from  Jackson, Cass, Bates and Vernon counties. not living within one mile of specified military posts to vacate their homes by September 9, 1863.

Modern history tells us that Ewing was justified in this order as a result of  Colonel William Clark Quantrill’s raid on Lawrence, Kansas, but modern history does not tell us that Quantrill’s raid was in retaliation for  Union General James Lane’s destruction of the Missouri town of  Osceola as well as the jailing of several female relatives of  Missouri Confederate partisans in a  Kansas City building, or that the building was deliberately collapsed on them, killing 4 of their female relatives immediately, including 14 year old Josephine Anderson , sister of  Captain William Anderson  all but five of the 11 prisoners were killed.  10 year old Martha Anderson (another sister of Bill Anderson) escaped death but due to the 12 pound ball and chain attached to her by her Union captors, had her legs horribly crushed.

Nor does modern history tell us what the Lawrence Journal –World newspaper tells us in a reprint of a report originally published in 1929 does, which is that when Quantrill attacked Lawrence:

“The invaders divided into parties of six or eight and seemed to infest the whole town. Men wherever found, were shot down and their homes set afire. Women and children were not harmed”

The same can not be said for Ewing’s General Order #11 and here lying before General Price, was General Ewing for the taking.

Fort Davidson was protected by approximately 900 -1,500 men , a drawbridge, a

“Hexagonal earthen work surrounded by a dry moat. It was connected by two rifle pits extending north (190 yards) and south (150 yards) accessed by sally ports (tunnels). The fort had a drawbridge and sat in a valley between the mountains Pilot Knob (east) and Shepherd (south). It contained the following impressive concentration of artillery: four 32 pound siege guns, three 24 pound howitzers and six 3-inch ordnance rifles. In the center of the fort was a buried powder magazine.”

After a running battle with Federals on the afternoon of September 26^th, 1864 which started at the “Shut in Gap” near Arcadia,  and Ironton, General Ewing ordered his forces to take up positions within the fort.

On the morning of September 27’Th, 1864 Price had managed to get four cannon on top of Shepherd Mountain and after a short bombardment of the fort General Price ordered an assault on it.

“Marmaduke’s division was “ordered to attack the fort from Shepherd Mountain, while Cabell attacked from the plain. Marmaduke was assured there was no ditch around the fort. Cabell made an attack upon the plain and was repulsed, because there was no way of getting into the fort after he reached it. Clark’s brigade dismounted, advanced down the side of Shepherd Mountain through a heavy growth of scrub-oak, and attacked, just after Cabell”

 

All three attacks failed.

 

One must wonder what was going through the minds of the attackers as they came down the mountain and crossed the plain and screamed the distinctive Rebel Yell.

 

Perhaps it was Osceola, or the girls from Kansas City, or the charred remains of Jackson, Cass, Bates and Vernon counties, which is still remembered as “The Burnt District”.

 

Or maybe it was Doniphan, or the lost comrades and family members killed on Christmas Day, 1863, remembered as “The Wilson Massacre”.

 

Some may have remembered “The St. Louis Massacre” in which German immigrants shot down Missourians who protested the arrests and parading of Missouri militia members through the streets of a city that would never be the same after May 10^th, 1861 when the citizens would take no more and the Germans would fire into the crowd and again the next day, killing numerous citizens, including a child.

 

Others might have pondered the “Palmyra Massacre” in which ten Southern civilians were executed in retaliation for the disappearance of a Union informant.

 

“Thousands of men hurled themselves into a hideous storm of shot and shell. Three times they charged the walls; three times they failed to take them. The hellish gunfire mowed down scores of brave, young soldiers. A few reached the moat, only to be slaughtered by rifle fire and crude grenades. As the thunder of the guns finally subsided, thick clouds of sulfurous gun smoke drifted away to reveal a ghastly scene of carnage. The fields before Fort Davidson were covered with nearly 1,000 dead and wounded men. The surviving Confederates bivouacked for the night and prepared to renew the bloody contest in the morning, building ladders to scale the fort's walls. Word that the hated General Ewing was in command of the Union force no doubt strengthened the resolve of the Southerners.”

 

Approximately 250 of these brave men are buried here in a mass grave. After we leave here today, we might meet somewhere to eat, or go to Elephant Rocks State Park, or perhaps Tom Sauk mountain, but the brave men buried here can not leave and while both sides of the political aisle in Jefferson City have chosen to ignore them, it is our duty and our privilege to remember and honor them, for we are standing on hollowed ground.

 

Referances:

 

“Missouri in the War” – Colonel John C. Moore

 

http://www.civilwarhome.com/pkintro.htm

 

http://www.civilwarhome.com/pkdescription.htm

 

“Price’s Raid” Wikipedia.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price's_Raid

 

“Order #11” – Castel:

http://www.civilwarstlouis.com/History2/castelorder11.htm

 

“The St. Louis Massacre”

http://www.civilwarhome.com/stlouismassacre.htm

 

“Quantrill’s raid left Lawrence in ruins, killed 143 men”, Lawrence World – Journal, September 19, 2004

 

“Quantrill: Psychopathic Killer or Avenging Angel?” The Barnes Review magazine November / December 2007, Lacy