Battle of the Hemp Bales/Lexington, MO

Thanks! I knew about the hemp bails, but didn't realize they were soaked in water.

The Union soldiers did something similar during the siege of Vicksburg. They stacked bales on a rail car and move it forward, digging their entrenchments from behind its relative safety. It approached nearer and nearer every day. Finally, one Confederate figured out that if he put turpentine soaked cotton into the base of a minie ball, it might just light the bales. Shots were fired and after a while, some smoldering was seen. Word spread and the Confederates poured fire into it with the result being the bales were beginning to burn. Any Union soldier who attempted to extinguish the flames was shot at or shot down. Flames consumed the car, forcing the Union soldiers to abandon it.
 
Does anyone know of any primary sources relating to the Federal army's use of land mines (torpedoes or fougasses) at the battle of Lexington. (Battle of the Hemp Bales)?
 
All that cotton oil in a bale it would burn like a torch. had to soak them in water.
Yes, they had to soak them in water, but these weren't cotton bales. These were hemp bales--used for making rope. Hemp, as in "ditch weed", as in marijuana. Yes, that's what these bales were: Marijuana. The hemp weed grown on plantations in Missouri would not have stoned many people. It still grows wild all over the river bottoms in pockets away from the cultivated row crop fields. It grows there because it was cultivated there for rope and cordage more than 150 years ago.

All that said, I do speculate what might have happened if Mulligan's artillery had set fire to the hemp breastworks. Would the whole town of Lexington eventually have become stoned? I doubt it, but we will never know for sure.
 
There's a Confederate Soldiers Home at Higginsville, about 18 miles from Lexington. Worth a visit. Last resting place of destitute and disabled.
 
The battle of Lexington by larry wood mentions the mines, however it says they were between "confusion" pits outside the outer works, however when the real fighting began which only lasted 3 days, it began with mulligans men falling back to the inner works..........

The outer works were being built to be able to garrison 10000 men since mulligan was expecting reinforcements, however that never happened.
 
The Higginsville Confederate Memorial State Park is a sizable Confederate cemetery. It is impressive. Quantrill is buried there and some others. There was a Confederate Soldiers Home from 1891 to 1950 there. Only the Chapel remains. Over 700 Confederate soldiers are buried there with several large memorials
 
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