Sauk River Camp Monument Dedication

Osceola, MO  November 1st 2003

 From Osceola to Mobile

 By David S. Reif

Today we dedicate a great granite monument to Missourians who served in the Confederate Army with a distinction surpassed by none.  We are in sight of the place where Former Missouri Governor Gen. Sterling Price, his officers, and men began to gather here on November first 1861 after their military victories at Lexington, Oak Hills (Wilson’s Creek), Drywood, and other places.  It would have been just the day after Gov. Claiborne Fox Jackson and a legal assembly of the legislature at Neosho had ratified the ordinance of secession and Missouri withdrew from the Union.             

There beneath the bluff at the confluence of two ancient rivers the Sac and the mighty Osage volunteers and the Missouri State Guard came together to form what was to be one of the bravest and most valiant Confederate Army units. The First and Second Missouri Brigade and the M. M. Parson’s Brigade were formed here and some would later be heralded by the Southern press as “The South’s finest…” and “…the elite corps of the Confederate Service.” That is a matter of fact and record yet the question for many today is what brought these men to this place? 

We gaze from this jagged and rocky overlook upon a scene though now tranquil in its beauty was the birthplace of a fierce fighting force with the rare quality of inspiring both fear and praise from their enemies.  Some men would go forth from this place and serve in most of the important engagements of the Trans-Mississippi Department of the Confederacy.  Others would participate in the most titanic and historic battles of the War Between the States.  They would serve at among other places Pittsburgh Landing (sometimes known as Shiloh), throughout the Vicksburg and Atlanta campaigns, at Franklin, Tennessee, and some would fight to the end at Fort Blakely near Mobile, Alabama far-a-way on the Gulf of Mexico some 800 miles from this place as the crow flies. 

Still others would serve at home fending off the invasion of foreign troops that had come to plunder and ravage their beloved Missouri.  They would fight in countless engagement small and grand all over the state.  Put by some at over 1000 battles only Virginia and Tennessee saw more fighting than Missouri. By 1862 fully one quarter of the Yankee Army was in our State trying to keep a toehold. 

We will never know the true extent of the devastation wrought by the policies of the Lincoln Administration towards Missouri.  However, we do know that men such as those gathered nearby were driven to risk their lives and prosperity in hopes of stamping out the source of the atrocities visited upon their beleaguered State.  They would record their grievances in blood and glory for all the ages to ponder.

Whether stopping the Yankees at Kennesaw Mountain, GA, leading a noble charge at Franklin, TN, or fighting the murderous Jayhawkers at home in defense of friend and family these men had no peer.  Their actions and the precedent they set into motion here in St. Clair County would engrave a chapter in the book of military valor.  Yet glory was not what they set out to find.  They sought to do their duty in the military tradition of citizen soldiers and glory found them. Without doubt that sense of duty brought them here. 

To understand something else about why these men chose to fight against all odds and take on the authority of the central government one need not stray too far.  Look over there a scant mile or so away; the town of Osceola.  Imagine it is November first 1861; not  2003.  Just 39 days ago a little over a month on September twenty second and twenty third of 1861 was the date of an event that shook western Missouri as much as the Camp Jackson Massacre on May tenth of that year shook St. Louis.  It was the day the Yankees burned the peaceful town of Osceola. 

The men that came together here were well versed in the events of that fateful day in September.  Indeed it was one of the reasons they would take up arms.  The burning of Osceola by Union troops still weighed heavily on the minds of these men.  From here they could see the ghastly ruins of the town that had been a beacon of commerce, law, and learning in the Southern frontier of western Missouri. 

Nearly 3000 souls lived there; it was the largest town in the fertile and flourishing Osage River valley.  Osceola was prosperous in every sense of the word.  The town was admired as a model of development for a thriving rural civilization.  Built on classic Greco-Roman philosophy and nourished by Judeo-Christian values and ethics it was a symbol of ideal Southern culture.           

Loved by Missourians it was hated by others.  Osceola was a tangible symbol of accomplishment and a triumph of Southern society’s ability of bring forth harmony out of the wilderness.  That is what made it so dangerous.  To the dark forces lurking across the Kansas border it was a repository of traditional values that must be taken by force and destroyed.  

Never forget that this was always a war of competing worldviews and competing cultures.  The South stood for a traditional Christian way of life and the North represented the modernist culture dominated by materialism and the new economic theories of Karl Marx whose representatives were already on our shores and in our State.

Oh, yes we had Marxist here in Missouri.  Kicked out of Europe after the failed Revolution of 1848 unemployed Marxist revolutionaries and military people filtered into the West and eventually were employed by Lincoln and his cronies in Missouri.  Never forget Franz Sigel, George Weydemyer, and Carl Schurz  were ‘48’ers veterans of the Marxist revolution in Europe they all found their way into our State.  

Carl Schurz was one of Lincoln’s speechwriters and a high-ranking Union General.  For his trouble he was rewarded with the job of United States Senator from Reconstruction Missouri the only admitted Marxist to serve in that post.  Both Weydemyer and Sigel were in the Union Army. Weydemyer spent most of his time in the Ozarks unsuccessfully chasing Col. W. O. Coleman and his mountain boys. 

Now Sigel is of more immediate interest.  While in Missouri he was a Colonel who led his troops at the Battle of Carthage and Oak Hills.  Soldiers who were here the men of the Missouri State Guard beat him soundly both times.  The Guardsmen are the first and only troops to engage and defeat a Marxist army on American soil.  A distinction not covered in history books.  I wonder why?  But that’s another story. 

The causes and criteria for the action of Union troops at Osceola are sometimes not apparent if one only looks at the military part of the equation.  This town was not a garrison town nor was it engaged in wholesale weapons distribution as was erroneously alleged.  Reasons for this wonton destruction were political and philosophical in nature.           

Although Osceola was a rich and prosperous target to plunder the belief that thievery and vandalism was the only reason for sacking Osceola misses the point.  This town was also another kind of prize.  The dangerous symbolism it represented was the real point of its destruction.  

Not only was it a sign of Southern cultural success it was the home of Missouri’s United States Senator Waldo P. Johnson.  A man of letters and learning he was gracious and influential as well.  Senator Johnson was an emblem of his time and the belief system that drove the lifestyle of the Southern frontier.  A man with the rare combination of political savvy and keen intuition he knew his way around Washington as well as he knew his way around the intricacies of rural society.   

People lived peacefully here in Osceola until that terrible day in September when Union General and sometime politician Jim Lane of Kansas rode into this unarmed town with hundreds of Yankee soldiers by his side.  Lane had left Ft. Scott, Kansas a few days earlier to do some “jay hawking” in Missouri while Price’s army was busy with legitimate military business in Lexington about 90 miles north of here.  Undefended Osceola was a perfect target for the cowardly General Lane known as “The Grim Chieftain” to those who admired him. 

Lane was a fan of the new President in Washington, Abraham Lincoln.  Gen. Lane was one of the organizers of the Republican Party in Kansas and had served the interests of the New England ideologues during the Border War still smoldering only a few years in the past. Jim Lane believed Missourians and all Southerners for that matter were only one step above animals. And like all bigots he believed only he and his kind were the superior ones immune from both criticism and reality.  

The Kansas troops moved into town holding mock court martial trials executing those who they judged to be disloyal.   They looted the stores and churches and burned the courthouse with all its records.  On the second day of terror they proceeded to burn the library, schools, and all the homes until the entire town was plundered and burnt. 

They took especial pleasure in burning United States Senator Waldo P. Johnson’s home.  Think of it my friends.  Can you imagine the army of Al Qaeda marching into town and burning Kit Bond’s home?  That was the magnitude of the event! 

I believe it was not a simple act of drunken rogues playing soldier.  This was a premeditated act of state-sponsored political terrorism.    These actions were part of a long running cultural and political war that had been going on here in the frontier since the 1850’s.  Designed to intimidate the leaders of the South and exhibit a complete disregard for legal principles it represented more than the pretensions of little Jim Lane.  It represented a worldview that would first provoke and finally attempt to destroy a people and their culture.  This town became the motto of the Union forces in Missouri, “Submit to our rule of go up in smoke like Osceola”. 

I have no doubts that this atrocity was in the thoughts of the men we honor here today.  Furthermore, I believe that here in the shadow of devastation Price chose this meeting place as a salute to Osceola and way of saying “We will not forget you”. They knew far more than we give them credit.   

With his home burned, his town in ruins, everything he believed in under siege is it any wonder why Senator Johnson would soon quit the United States Senate and become Col. Waldo P. Johnson one of Gen. Price’s officers.  He later served as one of Missouri’s Senators in the Congress of the Confederate States of America. Although he was a man of exceptional learning and accomplishment the same story was already common throughout Missouri and rest of the Upper South.  In that regard Johnson was like the other soldiers in the embryonic armies that were growing by the day.  

My humble rambling cannot do justice to the bravery and valor that the men of Price’s army would display in the four years issuing forth from their coming to this place.  Nor can I express the individual suffering that these men and their families endured. It is my hope, however, that maybe my words have in some way supplied a context to understand the sacrifice these soldiers would make for their beliefs and unlock the reasons why they came here on this day 142 years ago. 

 It is the belief and mission of the Sons of Confederate Veterans that this granite monument and others erected to commemorate the Missouri State Guard and the Armies of the South will uplift the memory of these men and contribute to the understanding of the cause they stood for.