n July 1862, the provisional Unionist government of Missouri began enrolling a militia that came to number its regiments to a staggering eighty-nine. Organized largely by locality, these units did not represent the standard thousand-man size of a volunteer regiment, but clearly placed tens of thousands of men under arms for the Union and clearly represented the largest single military force in the entire Trans-Mississippi war. Such a scale alone argues a major contribution to the course of the conflict. 

Nevertheless, the Enrolled Missouri Militia (EMM) remains the most neglected organization in the war's most ignored theatre of operations. Irregularly made reports were badly kept and maintained; the National Archives--like previous Federal authorities--abdicated much of the responsibility for this state organized force. Contemporaries, even its well-wishers, generally referred to it simply as "the militia," failing to distinguish between the various bodies using such a designation. The EMM, in short, became the truly forgotten citizen-soldiers of the Civil War.  

Clearly, the very process of mobilizing the EMM helped bring a much-needed coherence to the Union cause in a badly divided and politically confused state. Its service freed from garrison duties in Missouri tens of thousands of Federal volunteers without whom major military initiatives west of the Appalachians would have been smaller, later and less likely of success. The EMM's role in contesting guerilla operations in Missouri, though more direct, involved innovative approaches to counterinsurgency warfare. Further, it played a major role in driving back several major raids and incursions by Confederate regulars. 

The first full season of war in 1861 sealed Missouri's unenviable fate. By June, the Missouri State Guard (MSG) of the pro-secessionist state government confronted a Federal invasion from St. Louis spearheaded by extralegal Home Guards composed of Missourians determined to overthrow that government. These gained official sanction only when the Federal military seized the state capital and backed the MSG into southwestern Missouri. There, the MSG and Confederate allies blunted the Federal drive in August at Wilson's Creek and won a September victory at Lexington that threatened to carry the war back into central Missouri. Nevertheless, reinforced Union columns drove the MSG back towards the Arkansas line where the state authorities voted to secede in October. As the MSG was absorbed into Confederate service, the Unionist Provisional Government had established three-month, then six-month militias. 

Missouri's subsequent experience typified the paradox of the Trans-Mississippi war. After the March 1862 battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas, the Union had theoretically secured Missouri, and began the wholesale reassignment elsewhere of soldiers from Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin and Missouri itself and virtually invited an escalation of Confederate activities. (While Confederate troops experienced similar transfers until the 1863 Union successes along the Mississippi river ended such troop movements.) In short, victories west of the Mississippi inspired reassignments that undermined those victories. 

Guerilla warfare erupted on an unprecedented scale in 1862. Though nominally Union-held, much of Missouri remained a vast no-man's land tenuously controlled by small military outposts. The very conditions that created the need for more troops left many able-bodied potential fighting men unwilling to leave their homes and families for volunteer service elsewhere. The provisional state government won authorization that spring for the Missouri State Militia (MSM)--Federally-funded units to fight only within the state. While the MSM contributed actively to the course of the war its members nevertheless found themselves fighting far from their homes and the guerilla problem persisted. 

In July, the state government determined to enroll all residents fit for military service into a new Enrolled Missouri Militia. The EMM would be funded by the state and subject to the call of the governor but receive orders from the regular Federal military. Its members would continue to pursue their civilian lives, contributing such service as would be needed, sometimes for months at a time. There were a total of eighty-nine such regiments.  

Each of EMM regiments had a unique wartime experience. Federal authorities did not pay the EMM. Its officers rarely filed reports to any Federal authority (or that authority rarely retained them), and its members often performed their duties with little or no rations and sometimes even without weapons. In most parts of Missouri, the organization was largely a self-sustaining local operation, the activities of which likely depended upon the needs and whims of the local Union garrisons. Total time in service was generally equivalent to that of a six-month or year regiment of volunteers. While units of the EMM may have often been "green," its ranks usually included discharged veterans and others who had often seen action. 

Virtually representing the adult male population of the state, the EMM represented a vast and complex force. Prominent men of the community won appointments to command, and conducted their affairs accordingly. As Unionists divided among moderate and radical factions, the shifting political ground often shaped the course and conduct of a regiment. In militarily secure areas along the Pacific railroad or in St. Louis, the EMM played an important political role, though it became progressively disorganized for military purposes. 

>At one end of the spectrum, the EMM included men whose Unionism was, at best, conditional. Some members enrolled under protest, promising only to fight guerillas and not Confederate regulars. The so-called "Paw-paw" units of western and central Missouri were headed by Democrats, disarmed some Unionists, and were suspected of collaboration with the guerillas. However, the 28th EMM of Osage county had an entire "Reb company" of men with previous MSG or Confederate service; they, nonetheless, served the Union well against regular Confederates. 

At the other end, some units led by radical Unionists undertook emancipation despite the exemption of Missouri from Lincoln's proclamation. Franklin county slaveholders complained of such activities by the 54th and 55th EMM which also recruited blacks for the army.   

In an effort to distill from the EMM militarily reliable forces, the Federal commanders began to abandon the traditional regimental structure and urged local committees of public safety to reorganize the EMM into provisional battalions. 

Available sources mention a number of the the Provisional EMM battalions. The numbering of these units seems particularly quirky. Some evidently chose to start once more from "one," while others simply kept the number of the original EMM regiment from which they were organized. Two of these, the 6th and 7th Provisional EMM later reorganized as regular volunteer regiments (respectively, the 16th and 15th Missouri Cavalry). 

The EMM was intended primarily for garrison duty. For the most part, it guarded supply depots, public buildings, military outposts, and railroad bridges. This freed thousands of Union soldiers for the campaigns in Tennessee, along the Mississippi river and, later, in Georgia. 

Invariably, such duties involved the EMM in locating and attacking guerilla bands across the state, but the EMM often found itself doing what it had never been organized to do, directly confronting Confederate regulars. 

At the onset of 1863, a Confederate column under Gen. John S. Marmaduke reentered Missouri attacking Springfield and other communities in the southwest. Members of the 26th, 72nd, and 73rd EMM participated in the January 8 battle of Springfield which thwarted Marmaduke's effort to seize the town and the 74th EMM participated in operations nearby to challenge the Confederate drive elsewhere. Marmaduke's spring raid into the southeastern Missouri "Boot Heel" began with a clash at Chalk Bluff with the 56th EMM. Towards the fall, the First Provisional EMM and the 43rd EMM contested the Confederate incursion into west central Missouri by Gen. Jo Shelby's cavalry. 

The diversity of their experience was evident in Confederate Gen. Sterling Price's much larger invasion of Missouri in the Fall of 1864. The Federal high command responded by concentrating its forces at St. Louis and Jefferson City. Aside from Pilot Knob (Sept. 26-27) and its aftermath, the later pursuit of Price across west central Missouri, and the clash of the armies before Westport (Oct. 23), Union troops and the MSM avoided engaging the enemy. 

To contest the invasion, the St. Louis area raised a number of miscellaneous EMM units. Despite the myth that Union commander William S. Rosecrans used the delaying of the Confederates at Pilot Knob to place the city's defenses in order, the dates of these mobilizations generally indicate that these units were filled only after the Confederate threat to the city had passed (Sept. 30-Oct. 1). Given the upcoming gubernatorial elections, their value was likely as much political as military. 

However, the Union concentration rarely included the EMM outside of St. Louis and Jefferson City. Rosecrans left garrisoning much of the state to the militia. Often alone, the EMM faced the escalation of guerilla activities that accompanied the invasion. While avoiding the risk of a defeat of the Union troops, the policy allowed hundreds of partisans easily to overwhelm isolated outposts like that held by Company I, 35th EMM at Keytesville which surrendered on September 20. 

Through most of the invasion's course, EMM units provided the key--usually the only--force contesting the Confederate advance. However, being a state rather than a Federal organization, the records note its battles, skirmishes and movements only rather offhandedly insofar as they affected the movements of the "real" troops.  
 
Our understanding of what actually transpired in Missouri--or the Trans-Mississippi generally--can scarcely be complete without reference to the largest military force active in that theatre of the war. Nor is that task served by citing the nineteenth century delineations of authority and record-keeping. Those lines initially justified a distinction between state forces like the EMM and those in regular service, but other factors continued to keep the EMM largely invisible in the history of the war that evolved over the ensuing decades. 

The non-presence of the EMM, per se, obscured the obvious reality that the Federal high command readily subjected the militarily least prepared Unionists to trials and dangers to which they would not subject its own soldiery. It obscured the bravery, even heroism of ordinary citizen-soldiers in order to minimize the losses for which the historical record would hold the Federals accountable. It also eclipsed the "total war" waged by the Confederates upon those Missourians who dared resist them, permitting the Price invasion to appear in the hazy, shimmering glow of a tragic and glorious endeavor in pursuit of the Lost Cause. 

In short, more serious work on the Enrolled Missouri Militia challenges the long enshrined myths about Federal competence, Confederate honor, and military glory. On many aspects of the conflict, such a price has been too high. What will be won at this cost, however, promises a greater, more rounded understanding of a vital theatre of the Civil War. 

See Commission Papers to the rank of Corporal and Provost Identification card of J.R.Williams 
in the 7th Enrolled Militia of Missouri.

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