June 2024 Meeting

At the dinner meeting on June 19th, Round Table member Dick Titterington give a very interesting presentation titled: “The First Lost Cause: Confederate Missourians Exiled in Mexico.” This was a chapter of Missouri history that many of our members were not familiar with. Attendance at the June dinner meeting was 56.

At the end of the war, between 8,000 and 10,000Confederates went into exile in Central and South America. Many Confederates from Missouri chose not to surrender but decided to go into exile in Mexico. Dick told us the story of Confederate Missouri leaders, Joseph O. Shelby, Sterling Price, and Thomas C. Reynolds, who chose exile in Mexico over surrender in the United States.

Dick’s presentation covered the following topics:

• Why go into exile?
• Why exile in Mexico?
• End of the war in the Trans-Mississippi region.
• Confederate Missourians march for Mexico.
• Former Confederates in Mexico City.
• Carlota, the Confederate Colony.
• The fall of Mexican Emporer Maximilian I.
• The Confederates return from exile.