Nation and Family Torn Asunder
Even before the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter Meredith Marmaduke found himself at odds with friends and family. Much like his friend Senator Benton, Marmaduke's views on slavery had begun to change in the late 1840s. This led to a business and personal estrangement between Marmaduke and his father-in-law Dr. Sappington, and brother-in-law, future Missouri Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson. Once the war began Marmaduke was a fierce Union supporter. Going against his wishes, four of Marmaduke's sons would fight for the South, with two of them dying in the cause. One son, Confederate General John Sappington Marmaduke would survive the war and later become Missouri's 25th governor (1885–1887). Another, Henry Hungerford Marmaduke, served as a gunner in the Confederate Navy aboard the ironclad Merrimac in its historic clash with USS Monitor. Meredith Marmaduke himself would not live to see the end of the Civil War. He died at his home on March 26, 1864 and was buried at Sappington Cemetery State Historic Site near Arrow Rock, Missouri.
Read more about this topic: Meredith Miles Marmaduke
Famous quotes containing the words nation, family, torn and/or asunder:
“We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defenses only of freedom. It is our children’s children who may perchance be really free.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Public employment contributes neither to advantage nor happiness. It is but honorable exile from one’s family and affairs.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“yet it seems
Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind,
Scarce spread a glory to the morning beams,
But the torn petals strew the garden plot;
And there’s but common greenness after that.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“It does not come to a man that to be separated from a woman is to be dislocated from his very self. A man has but one centre, and that is himself. A woman has two. Though the second may never be seen by her, may live in the arms of another, may do all for that other that man can do for woman,—still, still, though he be half the globe asunder from her, still he is to her the half of her existence.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)