Fwd: Mark Your Calendar for May 1-2

Having trouble viewing this email? View it as a Web page. Mark your calendar to join us for a two-day event of living history, discussion and learning! FRIDAY, MAY 1 at the North Jefferson City Recreation Area, Bill Quigg Commons The Civil War in Living History: Spend the day enjoying family-oriented educational activities and entertainment.  Activities include cannon demonstrations, re-enactors, period music, and more. SATURDAY, MAY 2 at Lincoln University, Mitchell Auditorium in the Richardson Building  Reunion and Reconciliation Lecture Series: Learn more about Missouri's Civil War history as well as discussion of how the efforts to create national unity and civil rights unfolded in the wake of the Civil War.  Registration information coming soon! More information to be announced at mocivilwar150.com. Sponsored by: Missouri State Parks, the National Park Service, City of Jefferson, Lincoln University, Missouri State Archives, State Historical Society of Missouri and Missouri's Civil War Round Tables.      Questions?    Contact Us STAY CONNECTED:   SUBSCRIBER SERVICES: This email was sent to james@spluuu.com using GovDelivery, on behalf of: Missouri Department of Natural Resources · PO Box 176 · Jefferson CIty, MO 65102 · 1-800-361-4827

Don't miss the deadline for the Reunion and Reconciliation Lecture Series

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Having trouble viewing this email? View it as a Web page. Register today for the Reunion and Reconciliation Lecture Series!  The deadline is Friday, April 24.  Register today at http://shsofmo.org/store/reunion-and-reconciliation-lecture-series.html May 2, 2015 at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, 8 a.m.-3 p.m.This lecture series will feature speakers discussing the Civil War with particular focus on how the efforts to create national unity and civil rights unfolded in its wake.   All events will take place at the Mitchell Auditorium in the Richardson Building on the Lincoln University campus. All are welcome to attend the lecture series.  $20 registration fee $10 student registration fee The cost of registration includes: Keynote address  Lectures  Luncheon with address from Dr. Kevin D. Rome, Lincoln University President Panel discussion The agenda includes: Keynote speaker, Dr. Linda Reed, The Civil War: A Rehearsal for the Civil Rights MovementThe Civil War opened up the way for the successful consideration of the Reconstruction Amendments--13th, 14th, and 15th, amendments to the U. S. Constitution.  Many historians describe the 20th century struggle for freedom as the Second Reconstruction.  In the context of "Reunion and Reconciliation Day" it is fitting to tie together two time periods that provided much room for forward-looking progress.  General Donald Scott, The Prophetic PresidentAs president, Abraham Lincoln set the tone and terms to end the Civil War and begin a new birth of freedom for the country without knowing how or when the war would end and did it before his untimely death. Christopher Phillips, North Star, Southern Cross: The Cultural Politics of Civil War Memory in Missouri, 1865-1915Our understandings of the national past and present interpret a timeless border between North and South, with the Civil War as confirmation that distinct cultures on either sides of the Ohio River fought over separate devotions to slavery or freedom.  Missouri straddled both a north-south and an east-west border during this war. This talk will explain how modern Missourians alongside neighboring Iowans, Illinoisans, Kansans, and Kentuckians derived such understandings as much from the aftermath of the conflict as from the war experience itself.  Situated as former westerners, among white residents the cultural politics of war memory in these states' took them in different trajectories by the politics of regional identity, evolving as Northerners, Southerners, and more complicatedly Midwesterners, by re-narrating the war, and themselves. Panel discussion, The Civil War in Missouri:  Consequences and Meanings for Modern-day MissouriansLed by Gary Kremer, Executive Director of The State Historical Society of Missouri Sponsored by: Missouri State Parks, the National Park Service, City of Jefferson, Lincoln University, Missouri State Archives, State Historical Society of Missouri and Missouri's Civil War Round Tables.      Questions?    Contact Us STAY CONNECTED:   SUBSCRIBER SERVICES: This email was sent to james@spluuu.com using GovDelivery, on behalf of: Missouri Department of Natural Resources · PO Box 176 · Jefferson CIty, MO 65102 · 1-800-361-4827

150th Anniversary of the Battle of Westport

Thursday, October 23, 2014 is the 150^th anniversary of the Battle of Westport, a pivotal battle in the Trans-Mississippi Theater.   I’m thrilled our four hereditary organizations (SUVCW, DUVCW, SCV, and UDC) are conducting a joint commemoration Thursday evening, October 23^rd at Loose Park, 5200 Wornall Road, Kansas City, Missouri.

5:30 pm – Informal Meet and Greet

6:15 pm – Commemoration Service

Enclosed is a promotional flyer; feel free to share with your membership, family, friends, and other Civil War enthusiast.  Thanks

Dale Crandell

dcrandell@suvcwmo.org


150th Anniversary Flyer

Five Unknown Soldiers Monument Dedication Ceremony by Maj. Gen. J.O. Shelby SCV Camp #191

When: November 8, 2014

Time: 2 p.m.

Location:

The Adkins Couts cemetery is located on Venture Road in Morgan county, Mo. Venture Road ends in a loop that goes through a residential area on the Lake of the Ozarks. The cemetery is at the top of the hill on the loop.

Directions:

To get to the cemetery go to Stover, Mo. on Highway 52. Turn south on highway 135 at Stover. Proceed to Ivy Bend Road and turn right. Follow Ivy Bend Road to Webb Loop and turn right at the GEM mini mall. Follow this road for about two miles. Stay to the right when the road forks. the street sign says Venture Road. Follow Venture Road to the cemetery.  The cemetery has a metal fence around it. Park along the road on the same side as the cemetery.

 Perhaps I should mention that the Missouri Department of Conservation has a public fishing area on Webb Loop called Wigwam School Access.  There is a sign for Wigwam School Access across from the Gem mini mall.  If you can find Wigwam School Access you are almost to Venture Road and the cemetery.

A little History about this Cemeterey:

Five Unknown Soldiers

Some thirty years ago the residents of Venture Valley were clearing brush from an overgrown cemetery in their neighborhood, when they found a common fieldstone bearing the inscription “Five Rebel Soldiers.” Since then the stone has disappeared, but the memory of it has not. The question remains to this day; who were they?

There were no skirmishes reported in the immediate area of the cemetery during the war. There were, however, a few small skirmishes reported on Deer Creek, farther to the west. The largest of these occurred on October 16, 1863, but it is unlikely that the dead from these skirmishes would have been transported to the north side of the Osage River, and then another nine miles as the crow flies to the Adkins-Couts cemetery.

So how did the five Rebel soldiers come to be buried in the Adkins-Couts cemetery? The most plausible explanation stems from a sweep of the town of Versailles and the surrounding neighborhoods on March 25, 1862, by a company of the Federal Sixth Missouri Volunteers, with the assistance of a detachment of Missouri State Militia Cavalry. They had been sent to root out a band of fifteen or twenty Southern recruits who had been stealing horses and harassing the Union citizens of the town at night. This detachment took a number of suspects into custody and attempted to extract information from them. Lt. Col. James H. Blood, reported that some of these captives were suspended with a rope by the neck. One young male, described by his captors as a boy, was hung the most. After repeated hangings he “confessed his complicity with the gang…told five names connected with it…described some of the horses they had stolen and said the gang left that morning and would camp that night on Buffalo Creek twenty miles distant.”

The most important part of Blood’s report concerning the actions of the Federal detachment sent to Versailles is what he did not say. He wrote his report because he had been ordered by his superiors to investigate accusations that his troops had acted improperly at Versailles by hoisting several of their prisoners by their necks. Blood defended his men’s actions, by maintaining they had gotten valuable information from their prisoners.

Blood had reported his men knew the names of five recruits who would camp on Buffalo Creek on the evening of March 25^th. His men had been sent to Versailles to put and end to the harassment of the Union citizens by the recruits. This begs the question; did his men pursue them? The obvious answer is they probably did. Had his troops skirmished with the recruits, he certainly would have reported it. However, if they had captured the recruits and executed them without a trial, Blood would have had good reason not to make the admission in writing. This would have been especially so, since his superior, Maj. Gen. Henry Halleck in St. Louis had issued a death order on March 13, 1862, for individuals who joined guerrilla bands. Halleck, however, backtracked in April and clarified the meaning of his order to require a legal process before the death penalty could be enforced.

No report has been found which states who the five Confederate soldiers were who are buried at the Adkins-Couts cemetery or how they died. Had it not been for the words “Five Rebel Soldiers” inscribed on a common field stone to mark their grave, we would not know these men ever existed or endeavored to serve their then divided country. Once again a stone has been inscribed in their memory, may it long remain.

Everyone is welcome to join this event of a dedication on the unknown Confederate Soldiers.

Confederatly Yours,

Paul Lawrence, Commander Maj. Gen. J. O. Shelby camp #191

Oscar Holland - An Unreconstructed Missourian

Thought you'd find significant interest in this – a fellow Missourian who refused to be reconstructed according to the "new order of things"....which we understand well today. Anyway, I came across the following article from the Platte County Historical Society on Oscar Holland (1830-1912). His grave at Camden Point Cemetery, which is pictured in the attached photo, states that he was "One of the sturdy pioneers from Va. who helped to settle the Plat Purchase" I also researched to see where his land may have been located in an 1877 Platte County atlas, and noted several tracts of land owned by the Holland family near Atchison Junction.

The article reads as follows:

He Died a Rebel – served throughout two wars but refused to be "reconstructed" after surrender. Transcribed from the Weston Chronicle of March 1, 1912.

Camden Point – Oscar Holland, who died in St. Joseph last Thursday night and who was buried here yesterday, was in reality a citizen of no country. For the past fifty years he had not voted, and he had never taken an oath of allegiance following the surrender of the Confederate armies, refusing to be "reconstructed."

Mr. Holland served through the Civil War in a Virginia regiment and went to Mexico following the surrender at Appomatox with Col. Jo Shelby to aid in securing Mexican independence and was one of the last survivors of the little band that saw Maximillian executed following France's desertion from the cause of the Austrian. After a residence in Mexico he returned to the United States, but, as stated, he never became a citizen under the new order of things. In addition to his service in the Confederate army he served in the Mexican war. When the Civil War broke out he took the vast retinue of Negro servants that belonged to his family and started to Texas and Mexico with them, but the emancipation proclamation and Union troops which he encountered freed the slaves.

In 1849 this remarkable man trekked across the plains to California with a wagon train from Farquar County, Va., his birthplace. He became fairly wealthy be prospecting for gold, and sewing his dust in a leather sack strapped it around his body and sailed around Cape Horn and back to New York. In 1854 he came to Platte County and bought the farm which he owned at the time of his death.

Missouri's Ordinance of Secession

Missouri's Ordinance of Secession

The following act was passed by the duly elected State Legislature. A quorum can be proven for the Senate and reasonable evidence suggests a quorum in the House. History books, generally, call this elected, governing body a "rump" legislature. The Southern view is the government installed by Federal occupation viz martial law was an illegal "rump" legislature.

AN ACT declaring the political ties heretofore existing between the State of Missouri and the United States of America dissolved.
WHEREAS, the Government of the United States, in the possession and under the control of a sectional party, has wantonly violated the compact originally made between said government and the State of Missouri, by invading with hostile armies the soil of the State, attacking and making prisoners the militia whilst legally assembled under the State laws, forcibly occupying the State capital, and attempting, through the instrumentality of domestic traitors, to usurp the State government, seizing and destroying private property, and murdering with fiendish malignity peaceable citizens, men, women, and children, together with other acts of atrocity, indicating a deep settled hostility toward the people of Missouri and their institutions; and,
WHEREAS, the present administration of the government of the United States has utterly ignored the Constitution, subverted the government as constructed and intended by its makers, and established a despotic and arbitrary power instead thereof; Now, therefore,
Be it enacted by the general assembly of the State of Missouri, as follows:
That all political ties of every character now existing between the government of the United States of America and the people and government of the State of Missouri, are hereby dissolved, and the State of Missouri, resuming the sovereignty granted by compact to the said United States upon admission of said State into the Federal Union, does again take its place as a free and independent republic amongst the nations of the earth.
This act to take effect and be in force from and after its passage.
Read first and second time and amended. Read third time and passed, October 28, 1861.

Missouri Day

Missouri Day

http://amzn.to/Y3qhd1
 

On March 22, 1915, the 48th General Assembly set aside the third Wednesday in October each year as "Missouri Day," due to the efforts of Mrs. Anna Brosius Korn, a native Missourian. Missouri Day is a time for schools to honor the state and for the people of the state to celebrate the achievements of all Missourians. (RSMo 9.040)