Civil War
The Porter brothers enrolled with Colonel Martin E. Green’s Missouri State Guard regiment and participated in the attack on the union Home Guard at Athens; and they later participated in the Confederate attack on Lexington, September 1861. Joseph Porter had no prior military experience, but proved to be a natural leader and was elected a lieutenant colonel (an official commission would come later) in the Missouri State Guard.
Following his participation in the Battle of Pea Ridge in March of 1862, Porter returned home on the orders of General Sterling Price, to raise recruits throughout northeast Missouri. His duties included the establishment of supply drops, weapons, caches and a network of pro-Southern informants.
Throughout Porter’s brief military career, his status as a regular army officer was not fully recognized by his adversaries, particularly Colonel John McNeil. Those serving behind Union lines were not recognized as legal combatants and were threatened with execution if captured.
Though most of his activities were guerrilla operations or harassment, a few battles were fought. On June 17, 1862, near Warren or New Market, in Warren Township, Marion County with 43 mounted men, he captured four men of the Union regiment he found there. The prisoners' weapons and horses taken, then they were paroled on their oath not to take up arms against the Confederacy until exchanged.
Read more about this topic: Joseph C. Porter
Famous quotes by civil war:
“Luxury, or a refinement on the pleasures and conveniences of life, had long been supposed the source of every corruption in government, and the immediate cause of faction, sedition, civil wars, and the total loss of liberty. It was, therefore, universally regarded as a vice, and was an object of declamation to all satyrists, and severe moralists.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)
“At Hayes’ General Store, west of the cemetery, hangs an old army rifle, used by a discouraged Civil War veteran to end his earthly troubles. The grocer took the rifle as payment ‘on account.’”
—Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Since the Civil War its six states have produced fewer political ideas, as political ideas run in the Republic, than any average county in Kansas or Nebraska.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)