Only Wilmer McLean may be more star-crossed than Southwest Missouri when it comes to the Civil War.
In July 1861, the Civil War in the East erupted on McLean’s Virginia farm near a creek called Bull Run. McLean eventually moved to a crossroads known as Appomattox Court House, and it was in his house that Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865.
But that war — at least that piece of it fought west of the Mississippi River — also began on one side of Joplin and ended on the other.
With all due respect to the soldiers who fought the First Battle of Bull Run, the war here was already running before that. An engagement at Carthage on July 5, 1861, is, according to the Encyclopedia of the American Civil War, the “site of the first large-scale land battle of the Civil War.”
And it wasn’t far south of Joplin that the war in the West ended. A battle fought on Oct. 28, 1864, at Newtonia is considered one of the last gasps of Confederacy in the West.
In between, the Four-State Area doesn’t lack for drama, either. Large-scale battles crucial to the outcome of the war, such as Wilson’s Creek and Pea Ridge, are a little more than an hour away. Baxter Springs, Kan., was the site of a horrific slaughter of Union troops by Quantrill’s killers, and Fort Scott, Kan., to the north recalls the bloodshed of the border war that preceded the outbreak of the full-scale war.
And, just last week, thanks to a generous donation by Ed and Alison Hershewe, five acres around Rader’s Farm were saved as a county park.
The movie “Glory” celebrates the exploits of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, one of the first black units formed after the Emancipation Proclamation. But on May 18, 1863 — the same day that Massachusetts Gov. John A. Andrew was presenting that unit its regimental flags — former slaves who had joined the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteer Infantry and their white officers from the 2nd Kansas Volunteer Battery were set upon by a band of Confederate guerillas, who shot and butchered 18 of the men.
Saving this site preserves a key piece of ours and the nation’s history, and we express our thanks to all those who were involved.
As the 150th anniversary of the Civil War approaches, this area has a great story to tell visitors and subsequent generations, and the park ensures that story will remain a part of the larger national drama.
