Joe Johnston is a guest contributor who is writing articles related to the Civil War. To read others in the series, click here. His latest book, The Mack Marsden Murder Mystery, was published by the Missouri History Museum in 2011 and received a 2012 National Indie Excellence Award (True Crime category). 

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Joe Johnston is a guest contributor who is writing articles related to the Civil War. To read others in the series, click here. His latest book, The Mack Marsden Murder Mystery, was published by the Missouri History Museum in 2011 and received a 2012 National Indie Excellence Award (True Crime category).  Read more »

Joe Johnston is a guest contributor who is writing articles related to the Civil War. To read others in the series, click here. His latest book, The Mack Marsden Murder Mystery, was published by the Missouri History Museum in 2011 and received a 2012 National Indie Excellence Award (True Crime category). 
Read more »

The ingredients for Civil War had been simmering for 15 years: debates about slavery, stolen slaves, recaptured slaves, violence along the border with Kansas, abolitionists moving in next door, and general distrust. Paranoia was rampant. People were afraid of being attacked by neighbors, or by gangs of strangers favoring one side or another. The new governor, Claiborne Jackson, took office in early 1861, and then he and his government were summarily thrown out by the Federal government and replaced with Federal appointees. The exiled Jackson rallied the state militia around him, and when they camped on the western edge of St. Louis, tensions rose even higher. Read more »

In May 1862, a 28-year-old colonel in the 77th Illinois Volunteer Regiment sent a letter to his fiancée. The regiment’s camp outside Monterey, Mississippi, David P. Grier wrote, was located “on the same ground on which stood a Rebel Camp a few days ago and which I set fire to with my own hands. The coincidence would be very striking indeed if these same Rebels should happen to get back here and burn my Tent and baggage. I should not relish this much,” he went on, “but it might be the fortune of war and I suppose would have to be born with for the sake of country.” Read more »

Franklin, Tennessee, was the scene of one of the Civil War’s bloodiest battles. On the edge of the former battlefield is a Confederate cemetery. In one section, there are 130 small rectangular stones, each marking the final resting place of a son of Missouri. Beneath one of them lies Patrick Caniff, an Irish-born resident of St. Louis. Read more »

Joe Johnston is a guest contributor who will be writing articles related to the Civil War. This is his first article in the series on History Happens Here. His latest book, The Mack Marsden Murder Mystery, was published by the Missouri History Museum in 2011.
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