BOOK IS NEW LOOK AT CIVIL WAR SPATS

With the approaching anniversaries this week of Civil War battles fought in Cape Girardeau and Jackson April 26, 1863, comes the publication of a book which views the clashes less as Union victories than as Union ineptitude.

"The Battle of Chalk Bluff" by Doniphan writer Jerry Ponder primarily describes the confrontation in early May 1863 between the forces under Confederate Gen. John S. Marmaduke and those under Gen. William Vanderveer and Brig. Gen. John McNeil of the Union Army.

That battle between 9,000 Union and 4,000 Confederate troops near Campbell on the Missouri-Arkansas border was won by Marmaduke, in Ponder's estimation, in that the Southern general was able to make his escape back to Arkansas after a daring raid into Missouri.

But in Ponder's view, the battles at Cape Girardeau and Jackson that preceded Chalk Bluff by about a week led to the Union's failure to waylay Marmaduke.

The battles were precipitated by the decision of Col. George W. Carter, who commanded a brigade of Marmaduke's army, to disobey orders and chase McNeil from Bloomfield back to heavily fortified Cape Girardeau.

"There is no doubt in my mind he wanted to capture Gen. McNeil and get that star," Ponder said of Carter, who only recently had been given his command.

But it is McNeil that Ponder is most critical of, primarily for his failure to engage the outmanned rebel forces both at Cape Girardeau and at Jackson and later while pursuing Marmaduke at Chalk Bluff in the Bootheel.

McNeil commanded all the Union troops in Southeast Missouri from his post at Bloomfield. Ponder writes that his treatment of Confederate sympathizers in the region earned him the nickname "The Butcher."

The so-called Battle of Cape Girardeau generally has been viewed as a Union victory. It was in the sense that, once safely back in Cape Girardeau, McNeil successfully repulsed the Southern attack. But Ponder says the attack was instead a "demonstration" -- a show of force.

"It would have been suicide to attack," Ponder says, pointing out that Marmaduke's heavily outnumbered troops, many of whom were armed only with squirrel rifles and shotguns, had come only to save Carter's skin.

"It was just to hold the troops in town there so Col. Carter could back his troops away," he said.

General McNeil reported the battles as a brilliant repulsion of an army of 8,000 Southerners and requested reinforcements. "There was no attack, really," Ponder says.

The battle basically consisted of a four-hour barrage of cannon fire leveled at the Southern troops from the Union's Fort B, situated at the current site of Academic Auditorium.

When Marmaduke pulled back toward Jackson, McNeil didn't pursue.

Union Gen. Vanderveer, arriving from Pilot Knob with 3,500 troops, did engage the rebels at Jackson that evening. Vanderveer blasted away with all his cannons in an attempt to get McNeil to come from Cape Girardeau, Ponder says. McNeil didn't come.

Vanderveer then sent McNeil a message. "Vanderveer told him to take Bloomfield Road to where the Jackson Road ran together and capture Marmaduke," Ponder said. "McNeil refused.

"Several of his actions were questionable."

By the time McNeil did mount a pursuit of Marmaduke at noon the following day, the latter was well on his way south toward Chalk Bluff.

The book took Ponder about two years to complete. He searched adjutant records and death records of Northern units to compile accurate casualty statistics because the only newspapers allowed to continue operating were notoriously pro-Northern.

Both the St. Louis and Perryville newspapers reported high numbers of Southern losses at both Cape Girardeau and Jackson and trumpeted them as great Union victories. But the losses of Marmaduke's entire raid were 30 killed, 60 wounded and 120 missing.

Though not an unqualified success, Marmaduke's raid into Missouri did relieve the federal pressure in Northwest Arkansas.

And the Southern victory at Chickamauga, Tenn., at the time of Marmaduke's raid has been attributed to the decision to hold back Union troops to fight Marmaduke. Major Gen. Samuel L. Curtis, the Union commander at St. Louis who disobeyed orders to send troops to Chickamauga, was relieved of his command by President Lincoln as a result.

Marmaduke eventually became the governor of Missouri. in 1864, McNeil was relieved of duty for cowardice during another battle. He was, however, promoted to major general after the war.

The book is available by writing Ponder Books, P.O. Box 573, Doniphan, Mo. 63935.

Ponder hasn't run out of regional battles to write about. His next project is a book about the Battle of Fredericktown.

"Much of Southeast Missouri was that way. It was a difficult place to live," Ponder said.