Missouri in the Civil War

Civil War Women: Mary Carroll, Missouri Confederate Supporter

/ sandramervillehart

 

Teenager Mary Carroll lived with her mother, sister, and brother, Dennis, in Pilot Grove, Missouri, at the beginning of the Civil War.

Although “Bleeding Missouri” had been a slave state in 1861, it voted to remain in the Union. Despite this, the state’s governor—a Southern supporter—offered guns and cannons to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Union soldiers then seized the armory and the state’s capital to set up a Union government, creating great turmoil. Union troops arrested Missouri residents without charges. They took their horses and food.

Dennis Carroll was arrested in August of 1862 for trying to join the Confederate army. In March of 1863, he was released from an Alton, Illinois Federal prison.

Learning of Union plans to arrest a group of Missouri men intending to muster into the Confederate army, Mary rode through hard rain to warn them and lead them to safety.

In May of 1863, Dennis and a friend helped Confederate sympathizers raid a Federal militiaman’s home. After the Union man shot one of them, some set the home on fire. Though Dennis didn’t help set the fire, he was arrested, taken to Boonville, and sentenced to be shot to death.

Mary, 17, boarded with a family in Boonville to be near her younger brother. She sneaked a crowbar into him, at his request, with his lunch. His breakout attempt that night was unsuccessful.

Giving up meant her brother would die.  She then set to work on making a key patterned like the jail door key. After several attempts, she made an iron key. It took days.

In the meantime, the Federal government ordered all Cooper county women to take an oath of allegiance. Mary complied, after making sure that nothing she was doing to save her brother violated that oath.

She gave the key to her brother. Unfortunately, it was too short.

A young Union soldier proposed marriage to Mary. She agreed—if he helped her brother break out of prison. He let her see the jail key and she made an impression of it on a book. He took it from her, but didn’t know she’d made another impression. She then created another key.

Meanwhile, the men awaiting execution tied leather around an earlier key out of desperation. The bits of leather made the key fit and they broke out of jail.

Suspicion immediately went to Mary, who was arrested during the search for the fugitives. In a letter to her mother, she asked which key Dennis used to escape. Union soldiers found her letter. She was interrogated by General Dodge and Colonel Catherwood.

The colonel remembered Mary’s question about helping her brother before taking the oath—it saved her.

Released and back at home, her relief didn’t last. Dennis was apprehended and killed by Union soldiers. They forced Mary’s family from their home.

After the war, Mary married a Confederate soldier, Thomas Brooks, and had six children. She wrote of her experiences in The Secret of the Key and Crowbar.

-Sandra Merville Hart

Sources

Cordell, M.R. Courageous Women of the Civil War, Chicago Review Press, 2016.

 

“Swamp Fox of the Confederacy” Surrenders at Chalk Bluff, Arkansas

/ sandramervillehart

In 1857, M. Jeff Thompson was elected mayor of St. Joseph, Missouri. He gave a speech about the importance of the Pony Express in a ceremony on April 3, 1860, before the first rider left St. Joseph.

Thompson supported secession in writings and speeches while mayor. After the war began, he commanded the First Division of the Missouri State as brigadier general. Located in the “boot heel” of Missouri, he and his troops caused trouble for the Union forces and won their admiration. Then Colonel Ulysses S. Grant called him “Swamp Fox.” He soon became known as the “Swamp Fox of the Confederacy.”

After suffering some defeats, Thompson was assigned to the Confederate riverine navy defending Memphis. This navy was destroyed and Thompson was sent back to Arkansas where he and his men raided into Missouri for the next few months.

Thompson was captured at Pocahontas on August 24, 1863. He spent the next year as a prisoner first at the St. Louis Gratiot Street Prison, then Johnson’s Island, Ohio, and then Fort Delaware. He was paroled in August of 1864.

He rejoined the fighting in Missouri. He had command of the Iron Brigade in Brigadier General Jo Shelby’s division and commanded the Sub-District of Northwest Arkansas beginning in March, 1865.

Union Lieutenant Colonel Charles W. Davis, 51st Illinois Infantry, requested a conference with Thompson. They discussed surrender terms on May 9th at Chalk Bluff, Arkansas. Thompson asked for two days to consult with his officers.

Thompson surrendered on May 11, 1865. The paroles took place at two Arkansas locations, Wittsburg and Jacksonport. Though some of Thompson’s men had already deserted, about 7,500 officers and enlisted men surrendered and were paroled.

-Sandra Merville Hart

Sources

“Conclusion of the American Civil War,” Wikipedia.com, 2018/03/21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conclusion_of_the_American_Civil_War.

“Conclusion of the American Civil War,” Wikiwand.com, 2018/03/22 http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Conclusion_of_the_American_Civil_War.

“’Great Race Against Time,’ First Run: April 3, 1860,” National Park Service, 2018/04/21 https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/poex/hrs/hrs2e.htm.

“M. Jeff Thompson,” Wikipedia.com, 2018/04/21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Jeff_Thompson.

Long, E.B. and Long, Barbara. The Civil War Day by Day: An Almanac 1861-1865, A Da Capo Paperback, 1971.

Perkins, Russell S. “Thompson, M. Jeff,” The Kansas City Public Library, 2018/04/21  http://www.civilwaronthewesternborder.org/encyclopedia/thompson-m-jeff.

Plante, Trevor K. “Ending the Bloodshed,” National Archives, 2018/03/21

https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2015/spring/cw-surrenders.html.