Civil War Entrenchment at the Lamine River Railroad
Bridge Near Otterville*
By James M. Denny
Historian, Missouri Department of Natural
Resources
A mile or so east of Otterville there is a curious and
interesting relic of the Civil War in the form of a long entrenchment that
was constructed during the winter of 1861/1862. A visitor standing in the
parking lot of the Lamine River Conservation Access can look southward and
clearly see the remains of what was once an extensive earthwork
fortification. The entrenchment can be identified by the line of cedar and
other trees that grow on and in the earthen embankment and trench of the
fortification. The entrenchment consists of two lines of trenches, each
approximately one-quarter of a mile long, that meet at right angles at the
crossing point of today’s Game Drive. The southeastern leg of the
earthwork extends nearly to the Lamine River on the east while the
northwestern leg terminates near the tracks of what was then the Pacific
(now Union Pacific) Railroad. In 1861 there was a wood trestle railroad
bridge spanning the Lamine River at a point opposite the apex of the two
lines of trenches and it was this bridge that the earthwork was erected to
protect. Given the size of the whole defensive work, it was clearly designed
to enable a large body of defenders to resist the onslaught of an enemy
force numbering in the thousands.
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Civil War Entrenchment at the Lamine River Railroad
Bridge Near Otterville, Missouri. |
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As entrenchments go this structure is impressive. Not only
did a fortification of this size require a large number of men to even
create, once completed, it could serve as an effective defense against enemy
attack only if several thousand soldiers occupied it from end to end. The
existence of this entrenchment is a testament to much more than the need to
protect a strategically important railroad bridge; the typical guarding of a
railroad bridge could and usually was accomplished by building a blockhouse
beside the bridge.
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Maj. Gen. Sterling Price
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Besides, no such large scale entrenchment was built
anywhere else along the Pacific Railroad route, and this railroad crossed
much larger streams than the Lamine--such rivers as the Osage and Gasconade.
There were obviously much larger events in motion in the Otterville vicinity
than the need to secure a railroad bridge. This large entrenchment was
clearly built in anticipation of a major battle, but our histories record no
epic clash of arms at this location, or even remotely near it. This curious
outsized entrenchment could have only been Civil War, when no one yet realized where
the actual decisive battlegrounds were to be. For a few short weeks the high
command of the Union army felt that full brunt of the war in the West might
well focus on the Otterville neighborhood. The threat would come, if it did,
in the form of a second invasion of southern leaning Missourians led by
Major General Sterling Price.
As it turned out Price was in no mood to bring on a major
battle at that time and place. The big battles would be fought elsewhere,
and the massive entrenchment near Otterville was never needed. The sense of
peril occasioned by the nearby presence of Price’s army prevailed for only
a few months in the waning months of 1861. As it became apparent that the
battles to control the Trans-Mississippi West would be waged to the south
and east, the troops defending the Pacific railhead were moved to other
theaters of the war. Once this happened, the defense of the Lamine River
railroad bridge devolved to small detachments of soldiers who built a
blockhouse by the tracks. Later in the war, when the bridge was actually
attacked by Confederate invaders, there were virtually no Union guards of
any kind present to mount a defense. On two occasions the Lamine River
bridge was destroyed by Confederate horsemen (during the raids of Col.,
later Brig. Gen., Joe Shelby, in October 1863, and of Maj. Gen. Sterling
Price a year later); both times the long entrenchment stood empty of
blue-clad defenders.
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Maj. Gen. John Charles Fremont
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The action that caused the construction of the
entrenchment to protect the Lamine River bridge was the concentration of all
Federal troops at Rolla and Sedalia in the Fall of 1861. This came after
series of reversals and misadventures that befell the Union cause during the
preceding months, when Maj. Gen. John Charles Fremont was the commander of
the Department of Missouri. Initial successes early in 1861, before Fremont’s
arrival, placed the Missouri government in Union control, but by mid-Summer
the tide appeared to turn. Federal armies were defeated at the Battle of
Carthage in July, the Battle of Wilson’s Creek in August, and the Battle
of Lexington in September. During this last defeat, the humiliation of the
Union Army in Missouri was driven deep by the fact that Sterling Price was
able to march his army north, spend nearly a week preparing to lay siege to
the federal garrison at Lexington, spend three days subduing the garrison,
and then linger with his army on the banks of the Missouri River for ten
more days, gathering recruits and supplies, before any Union force could be
mounted to move against him. At long last Fremont managed to assemble and
set in motion a massive army of 35,000 men to drive Price southward. This
slow moving mass of men, encumbered with a huge supply train, made its way
south at a snail’s pace; Price had no difficulty in remaining out of reach
of Fremont’s ponderous juggernaut.
President Lincoln, who was to become well acquainted with
slow moving generals, at last lost all patience with Fremont and relieved
him of his command. The president rightly concluded that Fremont’s slow
moving war machine stood no chance of closing with Price during that season.
Rather than risk an over extension of the Union supply lines, Lincoln, and
his senior advisors, saw no alternative but to pull back and regroup. He
issued an order to Fremont’s replacement that read in part:
The main rebel army (Price's) west of the Mississippi
is believed to have passed Dade County in full retreat upon Northwestern
Arkansas, leaving Missouri almost freed from the enemy, excepting in the
southeast of the State. Assuming this basis of fact, it seems desirable,
as you are not likely to overtake Price, and are in danger of making too
long a line from your own base of supplies and reinforcements, that you
should give up the pursuit, halt your main army, divide it into two
corps of observation, one occupying Sedalia and the other Rolla, the
present termini of railroads; then recruit the condition of both corps
by reestablishing and improving their discipline and instruction,
perfecting their clothing and equipments, and providing less
uncomfortable quarters. Of course, both railroads must be guarded and
kept open, judiciously employing just so much force as is necessary for
this. From these two points, Sedalia and Rolla, and especially in
judicious cooperation with Lane on the Kansas border, it would be so
easy to concentrate and repel an army of the enemy returning on Missouri
from the southwest that it is not probable any such attempt to return
will be made before or during the approaching cold weather.
Your obedient servant,
A. Lincoln
Whatever the wisdom of Lincoln’s reasoning might have
been, his order had a profound impact on the Otterville neighborhood. By the
first of December, 1861, some 15,000 bluecoats had been withdrawn to Sedalia
and other strategic points along the western end of the Missouri Pacific
Railroad. As the Lamine railroad bridge was a vulnerable yet strategically
important point it received a substantial commitment of troops.
For a time it seemed that Lincoln might have been wide of
the mark in his estimation of Price’s willingness to launch a Fall/Winter
campaign back into the Missouri heartland. As the Federals withdrew to
Sedalia, Price set his army in motion again, and followed the retreating
Union army at a respectful distance until he finally halted at the Osage
river, little more than fifty miles from Sedalia. The nearness of Price
aroused considerable concern in the Federal high command that another Rebel
invasion was afoot.
Price established an encampment at Osceola, and sent
recruiters out to bring more men into his camp. Bodies of men with Southern
leanings were soon flocking to his standard. The Federal commander at
Sedalia, Brig. Gen. John Pope, was determined to put a halt to this
activity. He dispatched large troop detachments to cut off , harass, and
capture these potential recruits to the Southern army. In the meantime,
aggressive measures were taken to defend the railhead at Sedalia and other
vital points along the western end of the pacific railroad.
Between September 19 and October 26, 1861, Bissell’s
Engineer Regiment of the West was sent to Otterville to complete the as yet
unfinished Lamine River bridge and to dig fortifications to defend it. To
finish the bridge some of the men worked 36-hour shifts. Thanks to this
effort the bridge was complete by October 1st, and the Pacific Railroad now
ran all the way to Sedalia. Bissell’s engineers now shifted their energy to
constructing a defensive breastwork. Initially they dug an entrenchment that
could hold 500 defenders. They next set to work digging a far larger
earthwork—one intended to contain three thousand men. This is the
entrenchment we see today.
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Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck
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By early December an encampment called the Lamine
Cantonment was beginning to take shape. On December 9, 1861, Gen. Pope
reported to his superior, Major General Henry W. Halleck, that he had
ordered 3,000 men to occupy the west bank of the Lamine River below the
"intrencments." He reported that the location was good for
defensive purposes and could be supplied by easy fords and wagon bridges.
The digging of the "intrenchments" referred to in Pope’s report
moved forward slowly. The month of December, 1861, proved to be a bitterly
cold one. Often the thermometer dipped below zero. On the 9th of
December the Sixth Iowa Infantry arrived to set up housekeeping at the
Lamine Cantonment. To stave off the bitter cold, the Iowans built huge fires
in the company streets and kept the fires constantly blazing in sheet iron
stoves that were set up in each of the 12-man Fremont tents; still, the men
froze and shivered as they cut and hauled hundreds of cords of wood and
spent the remainder of the month "working on fortifications erected for
the protection and defense of the railroad bridge." Under the bitter
conditions epidemics broke out in the camps and the sick list lengthened. In
the meantime large details of men were set to work each day with their picks
and shovels building the great earthwork that enclosed the camps. Under the
direction of Colonel J. W. Bissell and his engineer regiment, the work on the
entrenchment pushed into January. There was a large pool of labor to tap for
construction gangs. The Sixth Iowa had around 750 men available for this
effort (while another 190 men were on the sick lists), and Col. Bissell’s
regiment consisted of 925 enlisted men. In addition, there were twelve other
infantry regiments from Missouri, Indiana, and Illinois stationed at Lamine
Cantonment during this period. Even with this manpower, the digging drug on
into mid January. By then, according to the historian of the Sixth Iowa
Infantry, morale had begun to plummet: "For a time great discouragement
prevailed throughout the camps on account of the increasing sickness,
believed to be caused by the severely inclement weather and exposure on duty
while working on the trenches and guarding the camps." Likely this was
the low point for the Iowans for shortly they were to move on. By January
22, when they broke camp, their spirits were already starting to lift. The
entrenchment was surely completed by then. Although Price never attacked,
and the earthwork was never needed, the cost in casualties had proved nearly
as high as many of the battles that were being fought in those early days of
the war. Some 34 men died in the camp or in the hospitals, and another 16
were discharged for disability.
The massive effort of manpower required to excavate the
Lamine entrenchment proved, whether by intention or not, to be little more
than a military exercise. General Pope was a highly effective officer at
this early phase in his career; his energetic campaign against Price was
gaining the favorable notice of his superiors. Pope’s aggressive
harassment of Price during the month of December paid large dividends. One
of his detachments got into the rear of Price’s advance position on the
Missouri River and came away with 300 prisoners and 70 wagons filled with
supplies intended for Price. On December 18, Pope’s troops surprised a
entire rebel encampment at Milford on the Blackwater River and gathered in
over a thousand prisoners, including three colonels and 17 captains, a
thousand stands of arms and as many horses and mules. In the face of such
pressure from the federals, Price, at the end of December, abandoned his
foothold on the Osage River and withdrew his army to Springfield.
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Maj. Gen. John Pope
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With the coming of the Spring campaigning season of 1862,
the large concentration of troops at Sedalia began to move out to join the
campaigns to drive the Confederates out of southwestern Missouri and
northwestern Arkansas, and, on the southeastern end of the state, to begin
the long crusade to free the lower Mississippi River from Confederate
control. Pope, for his part, went on to gain another victory during the
Siege of New Madrid Campaign/Island Number Ten campaign. This victory gained
a promotion to major general for Pope, and earned him the opportunity to
lead an army against Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson at Second Manassas.
These two great generals administered such an inglorious drubbing to Pope
that his once promising career was completely sunk. In the meantime, troops
from the Lamine Cantonment who were longing to see some real action were not
to be disappointed. Many of them went on to fight in some of the most
memorable battles in the western theater of the Civil War; their blood was
shed in some of the most epic clashes in the Civil War: Pea Ridge, Shiloh,
Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Nashville, Mobile Bay. Roughly three
thousand of them were fated to lay down their lives on battlefields far from
their Midwestern homes..
In the meantime Missouri became a ugly and mean backwater
of the war. The regular army regiments that moved on were replaced in the
main by local militia units. These hapless units were called upon to wage a
bloody and destructive guerrilla warfare that devastated much of Missouri as
both sides did their worst. On a yearly basis, Confederate Raiding parties
would come riding out of Arkansas on a return visit to their Missouri
haunts. Two of these raids would bring Confederate horsemen into the
neighborhood of the Lamine River railroad bridge.
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Brig. Gen. Joseph O. Shelby
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On September 22, 1863, Colonel Joseph Shelby rode out of
Arkadelphia, Arkansas on a legendary 1,500-mile raid into the heartland of
Missouri that would go into the annals as one of the best executed cavalry
raids of the entire war. By the time Shelby crossed into Missouri his force
numbered 1,200 cavalrymen. In a series of lightening strikes the raiders
swiftly moved north capturing or destroying fortified garrisons and supplies
as they went. By October 10, Shelby was at Tipton. While Shelby dashed
through Missouri, the Union commanders frantically scrambled to mount a
force to pursue and corral the Confederate raiders.
The Union commanders had hoped to protect the Lamine River
railroad bridge, but before their orders to move more defenders to the
bridge could be carried out, the resourceful Shelby, still a step ahead,
struck. The days were long gone when thousands of soldiers were available to
hunker behind the entrenchment above the bridge and hold off a vast army.
For the stand against Shelby’s seasoned warriors, there was only a company
of 28 men, commanded by a Captain Berry, who were barricaded in a blockhouse
close by the bridge. Against this token force, Shelby dispatched 100
horsemen, led by an energetic young lieutenant named James Wood. His
instructions were simple and to the point: attack and destroy the Lamine
Bridge at all hazards. This he did with the dash expected of one of Shelby’s
men. He led his detachment forward in a spirited assault that caught the
garrison by complete surprise. Those militiamen who could turned and fled
for their lives. "In five minutes," according to Shelby, "not
an armed enemy was near, and in five minutes more this magnificent
structure, reared at the cost of $400,000, stood tenable against the
midnight sky, one mass of hissing, seething, liquid fire." Captain
Berry with 17 men surrendered without firing a gun (the rest escaped).
Before moving on, Captain Wood, in addition to burning he bridge, also fired
the blockhouse, all the tents, wagons, commissaries, and rode off with the
horses, and a lot of clothing confiscated from the captured federals. The
only flaw in this narrative of dash and heroism was one of accounting.
Shelby’s bloated valuation of the destroyed "magnificent" bridge
hardly came to the exalted sum of $400,000; the railroad’s assessment, of
the cost of the destroyed bridge was $9,000!
The damage that Shelby’s raiders caused to the Pacific
Railroad proved trifling compared to the wholesale destruction that Price’s
raiders would wreck when they swept through the state a year later. In late
September, Sterling Price was presented with a final opportunity to lead a
army into his beloved Missouri homeland in a twilight effort reclaim the
state. At the head of 12,000 men Price crossed the border from Arkansas into
Missouri and moved up the eastern side of the state. After a bloody and
costly victory at Pilot Knob, Price decided to avoid St. Louis and instead
wheel his column towards the Missouri River, and make his way westward. On
October 8, 1864, Price was in front of Jefferson City. The state capital
proved to be well fortified and heavily defended, so Price prudently circled
around the city and continued his westward movement towards the welcoming
environs of the Boonslick with its rich plantations and friendly population.
As Price’s army moved up the Missouri River valley, the
raiders were constantly at work systematically destroying track and bridges
along the Pacific Railroad route. Awed railroad officials had to admit:
"The rebels never made such clean work of any railroad in their
progress through any state held by national troops, as they did in
destroying portions of this railroad." By the time the Raiders neared
the vicinity of the Lamine River bridge, they had already left the
smoldering ruins of ten bridges in their wake, including the long spans
across the Osage and Gasconade Rivers. A machine shop, engine house, 9 water
stations, 4 locomotives, and 39 freight cars were also destroyed. The total
property damage to the Pacific Railroad by Price’s army came to a half
million dollars, while another $200,000 deficit was incurred due to the loss
of business.
Traveling in the vanguard of Price’s army was the band
of the notorious guerrilla chieftain, George Todd. On October 9th,
Todd and 108 men swept through the Otterville area. They paused to fire a
couple of houses, a water tank and depot, and kill three citizens. At the
railroad bridge, they attempted to set fire to some of its timbers. They did
not tarry long enough, however, to make a proper job of it, and the damage
amounted to little more than a few scorched timbers. Events were unfolding
too rapidly to allow the federals time to perform even minimal bridge
repairs, for the main body of Price’s raiders were passing through the
region close on the heels of Todd. Less than a week later the bridge was
struck again.
Unfortunately for the Lamine River bridge, it again lay in
the path of Gen. Joseph Shelby’s men. Once more the by now well practiced
Lt. Wood received orders to fire the "large and magnificent bridge over
the La Mine River," and he knew exactly what to do. He struck in
"the dim dawn of a dusky mourning and woke the tardy sun by a mingled
mass of flame and smoke, and crackling and splintered timbers, and crumbling
arch and abutment." Wood, unlike Todd a week earlier, made sure that
the bridge was completely destroyed.
The attacks of Todd and Wood apparently encountered no
Union resistance. The Federals had been slow to rebuild the blockhouse
burned by Shelby the preceding year. In late July the blockhouse had been
ordered to be rebuilt. Two months drug by, however, while subordinates sent
in excuses for their slow progress, and the blockhouse was still not
finished when Price appeared in the neighborhood. Neither a finished
blockhouse, nor even any soldiers, were on hand to contest the second
destruction of the bridge. The entrenchment that could have easily held
three thousand defenders again stood empty.
No sooner than the dust of Price’s departing raiders had
settled than troops set to work to rebuild the Lamine River bridge. Despite
a urgent need to get the railroad back into operation, it was not until the
end of November that troops and railroad workers managed to get the bridge
rebuilt and rail service restored between Jefferson City and Warrensburg.
After the departure of Price yet another blockhouse was
built. It proved unnecessary, however, for no more Confederate raiders would
threaten the Lamine River bridge, nor would bands of partisan guerrillas
sweep down unexpectedly upon it. But there was, as it turned out, one very
real threat to the Pacific railroad that still existed despite the
conclusion of the War. This was the threat from ex-guerrillas who had
turned to a life of crime after the Civil War, and who found that trains
were a ideal target for the hit and run style of ambush they had perfected
during the war years. On July 7, 1876, a night watchman guarding the Lamine
River bridge (which was being rebuilt yet again) was overpowered by the
famous Jesse James outlaw band. Many members of this gang, including Jesse,
himself, had ridden as guerrillas during the war. The bandits then proceeded
to halt an oncoming train at Rocky Cut, close by the bridge, and, while some
of the outlaws held the passengers and crew at gunpoint, others broke into
safes; the gang made off with over fifteen thousand dollars.
This well-known incident formed the last violent chapter
in the saga of the Lamine River bridge during the era of the Civil War and
its aftermath. Since then, it would appear that the Pacific railroad, the
Lamine River bridge, and the Otterville neighborhood have enjoyed a period
of sustained calm and peacefulness that will hopefully not be shattered by
another cataclysmic and consuming tragedy such as the Civil War proved to
be.
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Webmaster's Note: This article was published by permission of
the Boonslick Historical Society, PO Box 324, Boonville, Missouri 65233
and originally appeared in "Boone's Lick Heritage," Vol. VII,
No. 2, June 1999, the quarterly historical journal of the Boonslick
Historical Society.
