Civil War 150th

Joplin to New Orleans bike tour to raise money for disaster victims

Louis Niewald will travel 800 miles on a bicycle next month, pedaling from Joplin to New Orleans. He’ll have a lot to think about along the way. Niewald was returning to Joplin on May 22, 2011, when sirens sounded and an EF-5 tornado began grinding its way across the city.

Civil War 150th

Living history events will commemorate 1862 Newtonia battle
One of the oldest and most historic homes in Southwest Missouri — the two-story brick mansion built by Matthew Ritchey about 160 years ago — will be the centerpiece for the 150th anniversary of the first Civil War battle at Newtonia.

September 1, 2012 2 Photos
More Civil War events scheduled for this fall
The 150th anniversary of the 1862 battle at Newtonia isn’t the only Civil War event slated for the region this fall. A site dedication and sesquicentennial celebration will take place in late October at the Battle of Island Mound State Historic Site near Butler.

September 1, 2012
Confederate Gen. Price led 1864 campaign into Missouri to liberate state, disrupt election
When former Missouri governor and Confederate Maj. Gen. Sterling Price led an invasion of the state in 1864, he hoped to liberate Missouri from what he believed was Union occupation that had been in place since the first year of the war.

December 17, 2011
'Angel of death'
Maj. Henry Frisbie of the 37th Illinois — a Union veteran of the campaign that culminated near here in December 1862 — wondered after the Civil War why events in the East so often overshadowed events in the West.

October 18, 2011 12 Photos
Civil War: Order No. 11 reduced border to a wasteland
Solomon Young epitomized everything Americans admire in one of their own: self-made, a restless, westering soul hewing a life out of the wilderness with nothing but “a gun and an ax and two babies and a blanket,” according to family tradition.

September 24, 2011 1 Photo
William Quantrill’s legacy remains mixed 150 years after Civil War
In the spring of 1881 — the American Civil War had been over for 16 years — a newspaper editor from Dover, Ohio, wrote an open letter to Joplin residents, asking them to tell their stories about William Clarke Quantrill.

September 3, 2011 2 Photos
Battle of Wilson’s Creek played key role in Civil War
The Battle of Wilson’s Creek, 150 years ago this week, was a victory for the Confederates. It also resulted in the first death of a Union commander, Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon.

August 11, 2011 1 Photo
Battle of Island Mound marked first time blacks fought in Civil War combat
In October 1862, Rufus Vann’s journey brought him to the farm of imprisoned bushwhacker John Toothman in Bates County.

July 30, 2011 1 Photo
Part 8. King Cotton  
Slavery arrived in the New World before the Pilgrims, and it might not have survived to see Southern secession had it not been for Eli Whitney’s cotton gin.

May 19, 2011 3 Photos
Part 7. ‘Pavement of Dead Men’
Having captured Forts Henry and Donelson in February 1862, Ulysses Grant and his Army of the Tennessee pushed up the river of the same name as spring came.

May 19, 2011 2 Photos
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