A Family's Trials in Civil War Era Missouri: Unionism, Displacement, and Not-so-radical Reconstruction
Abstract
Much has been written about the vast and violent conflict
that was the American Civil War, exploring every social, political,
and economic aspect. And this body of literature continues to
grow. Scholarship focused on the war in Missouri has appeared
more often in recent decades, but much of it concerns the role
of Missourians in the Bleeding Kansas conflict prior to the war
or on the activities of Confederate-sympathizing guerillas that
roamed the state’s countryside for much of the Civil War. While
civilians enter into some of these more recent narratives as
victims, participants, and supporters of guerilla violence, there is
something of a historiographical gap in examining the experiences
of those who remained loyal to the Union in Missouri. A collection
of letters known as the John A. Mack Collection offer a valuable and
seemingly rare look into the lives of a large, Unionist family in
the Ozarks region of Missouri. The letters span from 1861 to 1869
and detail the experiences of various Mack family members in
the Union military, as refugees following the early victories of
secessionist forces in Missouri and as Radical Republicans in the
postwar period. These documents provide valuable resources
to analyze how a family of seemingly loyal Unionists became
incredibly embittered toward Confederate sympathizers in their
home state. The Mack family fought on the Union side during the
war and became involved in postwar politics in order to make sure
that those who were disloyal to the nation and destructive to their
state, were harshly punished. In contrast to their hardline stance
on former southern sympathizers, the Macks were not of the same mind that many Radical Republican politicians were with respect to civil rights, as revealed by the obvious racism toward African-Americans in their letters.
Citation
Lucerna, Vol. 11, January 2017, p. 33-43
Rights
Open Access (fully available)
Copyright retained by author