Civil War

Title: From Florella Brown Adair to Samuel Lyle Adair and Emma Adair
Description: This undated letter was written by Florella Brown Adair to her husband Samuel Lyle Adair and daughter Emma Adair. Florella describes her recent trip to Ashtabula, Ohio to visit friends and relatives. She writes of visiting the “great oil county where all seemed to be alive pumping oil from the bowels of the earth…Their are now five hundred wells sunk & most in opperation, they are worked by steam engines & yeald from five to therty barrels of oil in its crude state.”

Title: From John Brown, Jr. to My Dear Friend
Description: This letter, dated July 18, 1862, is from John Brown, Jr., a former member of the 7th Kansas Cavalry Regiment, to his friend Parker Pillsbury. Last winter, Brown writes, he and his regiment helped to free more than 2,000 slaves. Now, he says, the commander of the regiment, Lieut. Col. Daniel R. Anthony, is under arrest. Brown includes a copy of a letter he received from another friend, Arthur T. Reeve, concerning Brig. Gen. Mitchell's arrest of Anthony. Brown writes: “His arrest for such a cause is in the estimation of every true man a greater honor than to have won a battle.”
Object Type: Letter
Date: June 26, 1862-July 18, 1862

Title: Examination of James Gates
Description: This is James Gates's Oath of Loyalty to the United States. Gates, a 21-year-old resident of Clay County, Missouri, states that he was born in Kentucky and that he demonstrated his loyalty to the United States Government during the Civil War by staying at home. The oath, labeled No. 75 in a bound volume, was signed by Gates in 1866.
Object Type: Government Document
Date: 1866

Title: Memorial to the President of the United States
Description: This 1854 broadside, entitled “Memorial to the President of the United States,” was drafted “on behalf of the settlers upon lands in Kansas Territory, ceded to the United States in July last, by the Delaware Indians.” The memorandum protests against a new treaty between the U.S. government and the Delaware Indians, because it will result in white settlers being driven from Kansas Territory and “will benefit none but speculators.” The document’s authors beg the President to reconsider the treaty.
Object Type: Broadside
Date: 1854

Title: Missouri State Militia 8th Cavalry Circular Orders on Leaves from Camp
Description: By order of Major Edward B. Eno, Lt. William O. Mead notifies commanding officers that "after this date no soldier is to leave the lines of the Camp without a pass from his commanding officer."
Date: September 28, 1863

Title: From Alex M. Bedford to Mary E. Bedford
Description: On June 6, 1863, Alex M. Bedford writes from Johnson’s Island, near Sandusky City, to his wife Mary E. Bedford. Alex reports that he and Mary’s brother are in good health, and that they have been moved from Indianapolis to Johnson’s Island. Alex asks Mary to send him several items of clothing, and states that he recently sent her $60.00 to be given to Sister Mary of St. Joseph, Missouri. He explains that he is only permitted to write a one-page letter to her.
Date: June 6, 1863

Title: Lydia Maria Francis Child
Description: Silhouette of Lydia Maria Francis Child by Auguste Edouart, 1841. Child published the poem, "The Kansas Emigrants," in the New York Daily Tribune on October 23, 1856, in reponse to the caning of Senator Charles Sumner by Representative Preston Brooks.
Object Type: Image
Date: 1841

Title: From James Boyer to A. Comingo
Description: On December 19 and 20, 1863, James Boyer, Deputy Provost Marshal for Chariton County, Missouri, writes from Brunswick, Missouri to Capt. A. Comingo, Provost Marshal for the 6th District of Missouri, in Lexington, Missouri. Boyer describes the evidence against four deserters he recently turned over to Department Headquarters: Charles G. Kuhn, Henry Lees, Frank Mortiz, and Daniel G. Bently. Boyer inquires why Henry Lees, whom he calls "a deserter of the worst kind on account of his using his best efforts to get others to desert," has been "parolled or furloughed to the limits of Macon City by the authorities there."
Date: December 19, 1863-December 20, 1863

Title: Thomas Archer
Description: This carte de visite depicts Thomas Archer, who served in the Fifth Kansas Volunteer Cavalry. The photograph was produced ca. 1861-1865.
Object Type: Image

Title: From Charles W. Graeff to Robert M. Stewart
Description: This letter, dated July 29, 1858, is from Charles W. Graeff to Missouri Gov. Robert M. Stewart. Graeff reports that he has just arrived in Polk County, Missouri and will soon travel to Jefferson City, Missouri. He tells Stewart that several hundred men are hiding in a place called “Osage rocks” in Kansas Territory. These men, he states, have invaded Missouri, robbed citizens, driven families away from their homes, murdered a man, and injured several others.
Object Type: Letter
Date: July 29, 1858

Title: Examination of William Bailey
Description: This unsigned Oath of Loyalty comes from a bound volume of oaths sworn between 1866-1888 by Clay County, Missouri voters. The document bears the name of William Bailey, a 22-year-old resident of Clay County who was born in Illinois.
Object Type: Government Document
Date: 1866

Title: The Arrest of Governor Robinson by Marshall Donaldson
Description: Illustration of the arrest of Governor Charles Robinson by Marshall Donaldson in Lexington, Missouri on May 10, 1856. Charles Robinson, then considered the Kansas Territorial Governor by the Free-Staters' illegitimate Topeka legislature, was arrested for treason in Lexington, Missouri due to his faux "governorship" and his denouncements of the proslavery "Bogus Legislature." He was imprisoned at Lecompton, Kansas before being released on September 10, 1856. He was finally acquitted of the charges of treason on August 20, 1857. This image was originally published in the 1856 publication of "True History of the Kansas Wars" by O. N. Merrill.
Object Type: Image
Date: 1856

Title: Examination of H.C. Everett
Description: This is H.C. Everett's Oath of Loyalty to the United States. Everett, a 39-year-old resident of Clay County, Missouri, states that he obeyed all the laws of the United States during the Civil War, and sympathized with both parties in the War because "I had friends in both." The oath, labeled No. 69 in a bound volume, was signed by Everett on September 29, 1866.
Object Type: Government Document
Date: September 29, 1866

Title: From George Collamore to G.L. Stearns
Description: This letter was written on October 23, 1861 by George Collamore in Lawrence, Kansas to G.L. Stearns. Collamore writes that Kansas cannot expect a good harvest next year because so many men have volunteered for the service and left the state. He says that “large numbers of fugitives from Missouri…are daily arriving,” and many of them lack clothing for the winter. Collamore adds that “slavery is fast disappearing in Missouri,” and may be completely abolished within six months.
Object Type: Letter
Date: October 23, 1861

Title: From Mrs. Silliman to My Dear Brother
Description: This letter, dated August 24, 1862, is from Mrs. Silliman to her brother. She describes the “horror” of life in Warrensburg, Missouri, which has been invaded by both Bushwhackers and Jayhawkers, and is now “swarming with runaway slaves.” She complains about her health and says that the black girl who was caring for her was lured away to Kansas by soldiers. She also describes how her son Oscar avoided military service: “he was exempted from drafting, as not being ‘able bodied,’ caused by an internal injury.”
Date: August 24, 1862

Title: Missouri Militia Order to Organize Platoons and Companies for Polk and Cedar Counties
Description: Missouri Militia Colonel Hosea G. Mullings orders that residents of Polk and Cedar Counties in Missouri enrolled in military duty to be organized into companies and platoons. Mullings provides specifications of rank and number for a platoon and company.
Date: June 3, 1865

Title: From Calvin Iserman to Brother William
Description: In this letter of October 3, 1858, Calvin Iserman writes from Independence, Missouri to his brother William. Calvin wants to leave Independence, where non-slaveholders are “counted just nobody at all," and “a poor man, and mechanic is looked upon as no better than a slave.” He declares that “any man East that upholds Slavery…should be made to live in a Slave State all of his life time.” Calvin plans to go to Kansas Territory and “take a look around.”
Object Type: Letter
Date: October 3, 1858

Title: From E.B. Alexander to A. Comingo
Description: On December 31, 1863, Col. E.B. Alexander, Acting Assistant Provost Marshal General in St. Louis, writes to Capt. A. Comingo, Provost Marshal for the 6th District of Missouri, in Lexington, Missouri. Alexander informs Comingo that "Recruiting Agents appointed by the Provost Marshal General have nothing to do with the Enlistment of slaves." He refers Comingo to Col. J. Broadhead, in the Department of the Provost Marshal General, for information on that subject.
Date: December 31, 1863

Title: Examination of Larkin Bradford
Description: This is Larkin Bradford's 1866 Oath of Loyalty to the United States. Bradford, a 52-year-old Tennessee native, states that he has lived in Missouri for 18 years and manifested his loyalty during the war by "attending to my own business and letting everything else alone." Bradford declares that he cannot recall his feelings about the Federal defeat at Bull Run in 1861, and describes the question as "irrelevant." The oath is No. 179 in a bound volume.
Object Type: Government Document
Date: 1866

Title: From S.B. Wait to A. Comingo
Description: This letter, dated October 1, 1863, is from S.B. Wait, Deputy Provost Marshal of Carroll County, Missouri, to Capt. A. Comingo, Provost Marshal of the 6th district of Missouri. Wait states that he is sending Comingo the military roll for the 25th sub-district. He asks, on behalf of the enrolling officers, for information about their pay, and he informs Comingo that there has been considerable "ill will" towards the enrolling officers in his community.
Date: October 1, 1863

Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1854-1865

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