William R Dameron

Border State William R Dameron

After Lincoln's election to the presidency in 1860, the Cotton states of the South, led by South Carolina, began to seize Federal facilities within their borders and declare their independence from the United States. In the months leading up to Fort Sumter's surrender, they captured federal forts, arsenals, and other facilities including revenue offices and revenue cutters (ships) at gunpoint, taking millions of dollars in property, military equipment, and money. In Texas, they forced the surrender of several thousand U. S. soldiers and their outposts. The rebelling states formed the Confederacy, the better to resist any possible retaliation by the Federal Government. The Rebels built armies and prepared for war. There were slave states that didn't decide to secede right away. The so-called Border States: Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland, had large populations of slaves but were bordered by states to their north which did not allow slavery. Each of these three states remained in the Union, but each had a struggle to decide which side to join. Governor Claiborne Jackson of Missouri favored secession, and General Nathaniel Lyon of the United States Army was determined to keep Missouri in the Union. Missouri may have been the only state in American history which for a time waged a significant war, on her own, against the United States, although she eventually gained some Confederate assistance. In the minds of Missourians, the United States attacked them first, at Camp Jackson in St. Louis, and by occupying Missouri's state capitol, Jefferson City. This Missouri war cost thousands of casualties on both sides, and eventually culminated in the Battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas. After that, Missourians in large numbers continued to fight in the greater war, either on the Confederate or the Union side. The Carpenters, a fictional Missouri family, were headed by two brothers who were farmers. One brother owned slaves; the other did not. The brothers and their sons fought on different sides. Amos and his son Lew fought in the Missouri State Guard, while Orville's sons Simon and Thomas, fought with the United States Army. They are not unlike real Missouri families in the early months of the American Civil War. Those left behind suffered in other ways. Border State tells the story from the perspectives of both fictional and historical characters