Divided loyalties audio tour panel 13

This panel presents a few of the Confederate documents housed in the Missouri State Archives. Because the pro-Southern state government fled Jefferson City to southern Missouri and later Texas, not many of its records made it back to Jefferson City after the war ended.

• One confederate soldier, a Tennessean named Ephraim McDowell Anderson, is unusually well documented. McDowell participated in the defense of Vicksburg, Mississippi where he was captured along with 30,000 of his fellow soldiers. General Grant paroled them, not expecting the starving soldiers to be capable of fighting again. In fact, Anderson rejoined his unit a year later, but was plagued by chronic illness and received a furlough, as shown by the medical release and military passes depicted here.

Up to this point we have shown glimpses into the lives of enlisted soldiers, elected officials, and military officers. However, much of the violence of the civil war took place off the battlefield. The next panel tells us how Missouri civilians were drawn into the conflict.