July 2023 Meeting Summary
At the dinner meeting on July 19th, Civil War Round Table member Rick Manfredi gave an excellent presentation on the question: “Did Missouri Secede from the Union?”
Missouri was a border state during the war but did it actually secede? There are some historians who claimed that it did and others who say that it did not. Rick presented his opinions based on facts regarding this question.
To answer this question, Rick said we must first place ourselves in the geography, time, and conditions that Missouri had to offer. We must research the people who immigrated to Missouri, where they came from, their social economic standards, and their beliefs they brought with them to Missouri. They were very different than the population of Missouri 163 years later.
The following text is from Wikipedia:
“During the American Civil War, the secession of Missouri from the Union was controversial because of the state's disputed status. Missouri was claimed by both the Union and the Confederacy, had two rival state governments, and sent representatives to both the United States Congress and the Confederate Congress.
“Despite sporadic threats from pro-Confederate irregular armies, the Union government had established permanent control of Missouri by the end of 1861, with the Confederate government functioning only as a government in exile for the duration of the war.
“Acting on the ordinance passed by the [Missouri Governor Claiborne Fox] Jackson government, the Confederate Congress admitted Missouri as the 12th confederate state on November 28, 1861. The Jackson government subsequently named Senators to the Confederate Congress. It was driven into exile from Missouri after Confederates lost control of the state and Jackson died a short while later in Arkansas. The secessionist government continued in exile, eventually setting up a legislature in Marshall, Texas, until the end of the war.
“At the war's conclusion, the successors to the provisional (Union) government continued to govern the state of Missouri."
