Hello, I am from the central Missouri area and have been studying events in my neighborhood. Recently I've been working through sources such as 'Inside War', 'The Gregg Manuscript', 'Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy', etc. and have seen very little mention of my hometown, Columbia. I am aware of the guerrilla presence in Boone County near Columbia in places such as Perche Hills, and Rocheport and that James S. Rollins established the the Fighting Tigers to defend Columbia in response to events at Centralia, but know very little about what actually occurred here beyond that. I saw online that Federal troops in Columbia engaged in light skirmishing on a few occasions, as well as a Confederate jail break here - however what I have seen is shady at best in regard to actual detail. I was hoping someone could shed some light on the matter, or point me in the right direction. For caveat - I am in my mid-20s currently working on a non-history related degree which takes up a lot of my Civil War studying time (lol), so thank you for your patience if I appear ignorant to something obvious!
First of all, welcome to the forum-again! I'm always happy to see more Missourians here.
Three members of the forum live just west of you in Boonville; Patrick H, Boonslick, and myself, so you're in good company. We're all older guys, but old guys know stuff, and we all have a pretty good knowledge of the history of central Missouri.
I noticed you didn't include in your reading a history of Boone County. In the late 1800's a number of county histories were produced. Some of these histories go into pretty good detail with regards to the Civil War, while others just hit the high points, as the memories of the war were still rather raw, and the authors of the histories didn't want to agitate the readers. The most valuable thing about theses county histories is that they set the tone of what lead up to the war on a local basis. I think that is invaluable in understanding the "what and why' of what happened locally. Most of these types of county histories are available online. However, the History of Boone County given here, is rather good in its account of Boone County and Columbia, covering 30 or 40 pages of the war. In the early chapters of the book, there is a brief history of the war in the state, but in later chapters they give a much more in-depth history of the war in Boone County.
dl.mospace.umsystem.edu
If you study the history of the Civil War in Missouri, you'll spend most of your time studying the guerrilla war fought here. I would highly recommend Bruce Nichols' 4-volume series of the "Guerrilla Warfare in Civil War Missouri." Perhaps these volumes are available in the University library. I got my copies from Amazon, and I think they are well-worth the expense. He breaks the war down not only by years, but by region of the state. It appears most of his resources are from the OR's and county histories, which can lead to some mistakes. This is not a criticism of Nichols work. There is a certain amount of bias in the OR's, since it's only one viewpoint of what happened, and there's a certain amount of CYA made by the reporting officer in their reports. No guerrilla did an after-action report. In the county histories and biographies, realize they were written several years after the war when memories could have been hazy, or a biography could be somewhat loose with the facts, particularly if the writer wanted to put themselves in a better light of what happened, or wanted to hide what they participated in. My point in all of this as it pertains to guerrilla history is that it can be near impossible to ascertain the true history of an event. As an example, there were two young guerrillas killed in Howard County in the fall of 1864. I have read several accounts of the event, and in my opinion, all of them save one, given by an eyewitness are wrong.
link to the true event, IMO-->
https://civilwartalk.com/threads/the-carter-and-collins-boys.96697/
Lastly, the Columbia Tribune did a series of articles on the local events of the CW as a day-by-day report during the 150th CW anniversary. They may be available on-line, or perhaps they were made into a book, I'm not sure, but the series was well done.
Again, welcome to the forum. If you want a little tour of the guerrilla sites in central MO, give me a PM. There are several sites very close to you that make a very nice day trip.
Now, get back to your studying.
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