Book Review: Nathaniel Lyon’s River Campaign of 1861: Securing Missouri for the Union

Nathaniel Lyon’s River Campaign of 1861: Securing Missouri for the Union. By Kenneth E. Burchett. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2025. Softcover, 267 pp. $39.95.

Reviewed by Greg Mertz

In the eyes of many students of the Civil War, little of interest occurred over the three months between the Confederates firing on Fort Sumter and the first major battle at Bull Run. While four more slave states joined the Confederacy, important negotiations, military actions, and civil unrest occurred in Missouri during that span. Kenneth Burchett highlights those events in this book and argues that Missouri was saved for the Union during those first three months of the war.

Missouri’s Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson favored the state’s secession. When U.S. President Abraham Lincoln called upon the loyal states to furnish 75,000 soldiers to put down the rebellion, Jackson responded by declaring “Not one man will the State of Missouri furnish to carry on any unholy crusade.” (8)

Then one of the most violent incidents in the early days of the war occurred in St. Louis on May 10, 1861. Federal Captain Nathaniel Lyon was concerned that nearly 700 supposedly neutral troops gathering at Camp Jackson encompassed a threat to the St. Louis Federal Arsenal. Lyon and his troops arrested those in the camp and marched the prisoners through the streets. Violence broke out with more than a hundred soldiers and civilians being killed and wounded. The state legislature gave Jackson near dictatorial authority and he called for raising a Missouri State Guard “to protect the state from invaders,” declaring the state’s neutrality.  (1)

This volume is the sequel to Burchett’s 2024 book Massacre at St. Louis: The Road to the Camp Jackson Affair and the Civil War. Burchett felt a need for a book on Lyon’s subsequent River Campaign along the Missouri River Valley because most of what had previously written about it has been biased.

This second volume picks up from the Camp Jackson Affair with the meetings to negotiate a peaceful settlement of the issues, to the Federal capture of the Missouri capital, to the engagements on June 17, 1861 at Boonville and on June 19, 1861 at Camp Cole. The opponents in these earliest battles of the Civil War in Missouri were not Federal troops versus Confederate troops; they pitted Federal soldiers against Jackson’s Missouri State Guard soldiers tasked with protecting the state’s neutrality.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis provided little support of Jackson or Gen. Sterling Price, who was tasked with commanding the Missouri State Guard. Burchett points out that Davis was disturbed by Price’s barbarism in dealing with a revolt during the Mexican War, and Jackson’s declaration of Missouri’s neutrality was hardly an endorsement of the Confederacy.

Interestingly, when Capt. Lyon initiated the Camp Jackson Affair, Gen. William S. Harney commander of the Department of the West, was absent from his St. Louis headquarters. In the aftermath of the violence, Harney and Price agreed to a truce. Eventually Harney was relieved and Lyon was promoted to brigadier general. Burchett indicated that Lincoln would later say that dismissing Harney was “one of greatest mistakes of his administration.” (59) By siding with Lyon, Lincoln drove a large number of uncommitted Missouri men—who felt that Lyon and the Federal army’s actions at Camp Jackson were too heavy handed—to support either the anti-Federal Missouri State Guard or the Confederate army.

Lyon held a four-hour meeting with Price and Jackson in which both sides obstinately clung to their standpoints. Within hours after the discussion concluded, Lyon and his troops were heading for the Missouri state capital in Jefferson City, near the middle of the state. Within a week Lyon had taken the capital, defeated the Missouri State Guard in battle at Booneville, and had secured the Missouri River. The Missouri flowed west to east across the heart of the state and served as a barrier preventing any of the Missouri State Guard recruits from the northern part of the state to reaching either Jackson or Price. “The fight for Missouri,” wrote Burchett, “took on a new national dimension.” (174)

Though many had seen through the charade of the Missouri State Guard being neutral, Jackson revealed his true colors when he next sought the shelter of Confederate troops in Arkansas, turning south from Boonville. Blocking his way were some Federal recruits at Camp Cole, but other pro-Confederate troops launched a surprise attack, opening the way for Jackson to continue, as well as giving a morale boost to Confederate sympathizers.

Besides giving a comprehensive look at the complicated issues facing Missouri and showing that critical events were taking place during the first three months of the war, Burchett does so with balance. Readers learn when major characters are reasonable as well as when they are deceptive and resort to trickery (including pro-Confederate forces carrying U.S. flags to gain their surprise at Camp Cole). Burchett fills a void in the knowledge of this significant place and period with this well-written study.

 

Greg Mertz earned a bachelor’s degree in Recreation and Park Administration at the University of Missouri and a master’s in Public Administration from Shippensburg University. He recently retired from Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park where he worked for 36 years — 27 of them as the Supervisory Historian, managing the park’s visitor services and training hundreds of seasonal employees, interns, and volunteers in the art of interpretation. His interests in public history and preservation include service in several organizations outside of his 40-year career with the National Park Service. Greg is the founding president and a current board member of the Rappahannock Valley Civil War Round Table and is the vice president of the Brandy Station Foundation. In addition, Greg is the author of Attack at Daylight and Whip Them: The Battle of Shiloh, April 6-7, 1862, published by Savas Beatie in 2019.