More coverage of Missouri 1861 in the works

Last week's CWBA book review [here] discussed a new title addressing the early months of the Civil War in Missouri, and now comes news of a budding trilogy (so far) that goes into even greater depth on the small but strategically significant campaign that placed most of the state, including the capital and all of Missouri's vital railroads and river communications, under permanent Union control.

Back in 2012, McFarland published Kenneth Burchett's The Battle of Carthage, Missouri: First Trans-Mississippi Conflict. While it did not supplant Hinze & Farnham's ground-breaking and excellent study The Battle of Carthage: Border War in Southwest Missouri, July 5, 1861 (1997), the book nevertheless stood very well on its own, filling in some gaps in the earlier work.

Next, Burchett will be going back to the beginning with Massacre at St. Louis: The Road to the Camp Jackson Affair and Civil War. McFarland announces their titles well in advance, so release dates are always tentative. Currently, this one has been pushed to September of this year. Of course, numerous fine books and articles have addressed topics surrounding the St. Louis arsenal, the forced surrender of the state militia at Camp Jackson, and the resulting St. Louis clash between soldiers and civilians that left dozens (numbers vary) of the latter dead. Burchett promises new information. According to the description: "Previously unpublished materials about Governor Claiborne Jackson are included, as well as the role of Montgomery Blair in the fight for Missouri, an analysis of the number of arms in the St. Louis Arsenal and the unknown total number of casualties of the St. Louis massacre."

Now comes news of yet another upcoming title from Burchett, Nathaniel Lyon’s River Campaign of 1861: Securing Missouri for the Union [I'll add a preorder link when one becomes available]. Though they will be published out of sequence, each book essentially picks up where another left off, together forming a trilogy detailing political and military events through the end of the Battle of Carthage. I don't know if the author plans to cap it all off with a new study of Wilson's Creek, or even better continue on from there through the autumn campaigns in western Missouri (we still don't have a study of Fremont's 100 Days), but I am looking forward to whatever transpires. The late Jim McGhee (the foremost expert on the Missouri State Guard) and I often commiserated on matters related to how much the conventional fighting in the state was still being neglected in favor of more coverage of the guerrilla conflict. He would have been very interested in these developments, too.