Joseph C. Porter - Legacy and Evaluation

Legacy and Evaluation

Porter is credited variously with five and nine children, only two of whom were living at the time of Mudd’s book, his daughter, Mrs. O.M. White, and his son, Joseph I. Porter of Stuttgart, AR, who wrote: “I know but little about the war and have been trying to forget what I do know about it. I hope never to read a history of it.”

Porter’s character is hard to estimate: clearly he possessed considerable personal courage, but was also a prudent tactician, often declining battle when he could not choose his ground and when he thought the potential for casualties disproportionate to projected gains. Declining the option to pursue the retreating Union force at Santa Fe, Mudd has him say ”I can’t see that anything would be accomplished by pursuing the enemy. We might give them a drive and kill a dozen of them and we might lose a man or two, and I wouldn’t give them one of my men for a dozen dead federals unless to gain some particular purpose.”

A number of atrocities are attributed to him, but the partisanship of accounts makes it difficult to ascertain his responsibility for the killings of Dr. Aylward, Andrew Allsman, James Dye at Kirksville, a wounded Federal at Botts' Farm, and others, though it must be concluded that he failed to communicate the unacceptability of such actions to his subordinates. There is reliable eyewitness testimony to his intervening to prevent the lynching of two captured Federals in retaliation for the execution of a Confederate prisoner at the Battle of Florida.