Missouri's Civil War - Central

The Missouri State Museum in the Capitol in Jefferson City includes an extensive collection of Civil War exhibits and artifacts, including a collection of Union regimental battle flags. The Museum of Missouri Military History offers exhibits dating from 1808 to the present, including exhibits on Missouri’s involvement in the Civil War.

Lincoln University in Jefferson City was established in 1866 as Lincoln Institute by soldiers and officers of the 62nd and 65th Regiments, U.S. Colored Troops, and was paid for with money saved by enlisted men. It has long been recognized as Missouri’s prestigious historically black college.

The Jefferson City National Cemetery, established in 1867, contains graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers, including a mass grave and monument dedicated to the 39th Missouri Voluntary Infantry, which was decimated in the Centralia Massacre.

In Columbia, the most famous painting of the Civil War era hangs at the State Historical Society of Missouri. George Caleb Bingham’s “Order No. 11” depicts the Union order to clear the civilian population from Missouri’s western counties near the Kansas border. The purpose was to check guerrilla activity in the region, but the harsh measure only served to increase the bloodshed as William Quantrill, “Bloody Bill” Anderson and others raised terror in the hearts of anyone connected with the Union war effort.

During the summer and fall of 1864, Anderson and Quantrill terrorized the towns and countryside in central Missouri, including Rocheport. A historical museum there has displays relating to these raids.

In Centralia, federal markers describe the Centralia Massacre, a brutal massacre of federal soldiers by “Bloody Bill’s” guerillas on Sept. 27, 1864.

Boonville was the site of the first actual clash of arms between Union and pro-Confederate Missouri State Guard troops. Several markers in the town commemorate the First Battle of Boonville on June 17, 1861, and the Second Battle of Boonville in September 1863, as well as Gen. Sterling Price’s raid through the town in October 1864.

A small museum, maintained by the Friends of Historic Boonville, can be found in the old Cooper County Jail on Morgan Street.

Thespian Hall, the oldest theater still in use west of the Alleghenies, was used as a hospital after the Second Battle of Boonville in 1863 and was Price’s headquarters during the 1864 Price Expedition.

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