Operations to Control Missouri

On July 5, 1861, at the Battle of Carthage, Missouri, US General Sigel attacked the pro-secessionist Missouri State Guard. My great-great grandfather was a scout for General Sweeney in later battles in Forsyth, Missouri and Southwestern Missouri. His brother fought for the Confederacy and left Missouri to live in Arkansas. From the article:

"Operations to Control Missouri | American Battlefield Trust

Missouri's loyalties were divided at the start of the Civil War. During four years of a bloody border war over the status of statehood in neighboring Kansas, “Free Soilers” and pro-slavery guerilla fighters violently raided each other’s camps across the Missouri border. Even though Missouri was a slave state with a strong secessionist movement, the Missouri legislature voted by a strong majority to remain in the Union when the war began. In May 1861, Union General Nathaniel Lyon attacked a secessionist gathering in St. Louis and forced several thousand armed belligerents calling themselves the Missouri State Guard, led by pro-slavery governor Claiborne Jackson and General Sterling Price, to evacuate the city. Lyon chased Price up the Missouri River and skirmished with him near Booneville outside the capital at Jefferson City.

Union Colonel Franz Sigel organized an expedition into southwest Missouri with orders to disperse other Rebel groups. Sigel arrived in Carthage on July 4 and skirmished with the Guardsmen the next day. Outnumbered and nearly surrounded, Sigel withdrew and united with Lyon’s larger force. The reinforced Confederates pursued, and met Lyon’s army along Wilson’s Creek on August 10, 1861. After a bloody day of battle, Lyon was killed and the Union army retreated again. Confederate victories against Union troops at Dry Wood Creek, Lexington, and Liberty in September sustained Confederate hopes of changing the loyalty of the state and gave the Confederates control of southwestern Missouri, enforced by Price’s Guardsmen. Plans for a new Confederate offensive in Missouri were dashed with Union victories at Springfield and Fredericktown in October, and the Battle of Pea Ridge just across the border in Arkansas in March 1862. Price would not attempt to reclaim Missouri for the Confederacy for two more years."