CITY UNDER SIEGE: CAPE GIRARDEAU REMEMBERS CIVIL WAR BATTLE

In the 1860s, Cape Girardeau was the perfect spot for a garrison to help protect Missouri's eastern half from an invasion.

And 135 years ago today, Confederate and Union troops squared off to prove exactly that point in the Battle of Cape Girardeau.

By most standards, it wasn't really much of a battle, said Dr. Frank Nickell, director of the Regional History Center at Southeast Missouri State University.

Confederate troops commanded by Gen. John S. Marmaduke advanced from Jackson while Union troops were dispatched from the forts in the city and from Brig. Gen. John H. McNeil's headquarters at Bloomfield. They met April 26, 1863, near what is now Broadway and Caruthers. The fighting came as far up as what is now the Capaha Park area.

By most accounts, the battle started at about 10 o'clock that Sunday morning on the Jackson Road and ended at about 3 that afternoon, with the Confederates retreating in defeat.

"It was a matter of a few hours of sort of shooting at each other in a sporadic fashion, some cannon fire," Nickell said.

At one point, the Union guns knocked out the light cannon and several horses in Marmaduke's forces.

The Confederates had a force of about 5,000. Union forces numbered about 2,000, but McNeil had called for reinforcements, who would arrive by steamboat at about 2 p.m.

But despite the difference in numbers, the Union forces were well entrenched. Four earthen forts surrounded the city, and guns were trained on the river and on the site of the battle.

"In the Civil War, the defensive position had the advantage," Nickell said. "The Confederacy quickly realized that Cape Girardeau was impregnable."

The Confederates did demand that the Union surrender, but they were refused.

"The Confederates assessed the situation, realized the city was fortified and they decided not to try," Nickell said. "So they retreated back down Crowley's Ridge and into Arkansas.

M. Gilbert, a St. Louis newspaper correspondent arrived in Cape Girardeau on the Mary Forsythe steamer two days before the battle.

Gilbert wrote the fighting "gradually ceased, with a great loss of life on their side, but a small loss on ours."

Roy Kinder wrote a history of Hanover Lutheran Church in 1986.

The book includes an account by Walter Bertling, whose father, Daniel, and grandfather, Frederick, went to the church the morning of the battle to see if services would be held.

The Bertlings and Pastor Frederick Daries were the only ones at the church, then at Delwin and Melrose.

"While they were waiting to see if there was going to be church services, the battle started," Walter Bertling told Kinder. "Dad said you could hear the bullets whistle, 24-pounders, firing from Fort B at the State College."

Reports on the number of casualties sustained in the battle vary. One account reported 23 killed and 44 wounded.

No detailed accounts of Confederate casualties were made, but Marmaduke later reported that 30 of his men were killed, 60 wounded and 120 missing during the April foray into Southeast Missouri.

McNeil had already ordered women and children in the town evacuated when the fighting started. They were taken to an island on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River on the Mary Forsyth.

By most accounts, Marmaduke was in Missouri to forage for food and supplies. McNeil and his subordinates routinely referred to Marmaduke's troops as "ragamuffins."

About 1,200 of Marmaduke's troops were unarmed, and hundreds -- in a cavalry division -- didn't have horses.

To the 19th century military mind, Cape Girardeau was the key to controlling the eastern section of the state.

It's the first high ground Confederate boats heading north on the Mississippi encounter, so cannons placed along the bluffs could discourage enemy river traffic.

And the city sits at the northern edge of Crowley's Ridge, which runs all the way to Helena, Ark. Before the swamps were drained, the ridge was the only land route from Cape Girardeau into the Bootheel and points south.

"They called it the military road," said Mike Hahn of Egypt Mills, a Civil War buff whose great-grandfather served in the conflict. Union and Confederate forces skirmished all along the length of it.

During the Civil War, Union forces felt that holding Cape Girardeau was a key factor in keeping the Confederates from taking St. Louis and its giant armory.

"That's why Gen. McNeil was stationed at Bloomfield, to keep the ridge open for the Union," Hahn said.

Once the war started in 1861, Cape Girardeau quickly became a city under siege by Union troops, Nickell said.

"They moved quickly to occupy it," he said. "Fort Sumter occurred in April. By May, they began occupying the city and by June, there were a thousand troops here."

Within a few months, construction began on the four earthen forts that surrounded the city: Fort A was at the end of Bellevue Street overlooking the river, Fort B was at the Dittlinger House on the hill now occupied by Kent Library on the university campus, Fort C was at the end of the Bloomfield Road, now the site of the old St. Francis Hospital and Fort D, which still stands, overlooked the river at the south edge of town.

"On some of those maps, there were even sketches for a fifth fort," Nickell said, but it was never built.

Cape Girardeau's affections were divided during the war. German immigrants sided with the Union cause, but old stock Americans sympathized with the South.

Guns were set up on the hill where Southeast Missouri Hospital now stands, and Union forces made it clear the guns would be turned on the city if sympathy for the Confederacy became too obvious, Nickell said.

Missouri was the site for hundreds of battles and skirmishes during the war.

The largest, at Wilson's Creek, came in August 1861. More than 2,300 soldiers on both sides were killed.

And in 1864, Southeast Missouri was the site of another major battle when Gen. Sterling Price, a former Missouri governor, came north from Arkansas with 12,000 men.

Price planned to capture the arsenal at Ford Davidson, near Pilot Knob, then capture the railroad running from Pilot Knob to St. Louis in hopes of capturing the city itself.

He didn't succeed. Union troops evacuated the fort overnight, and Price gave up on attacking St. Louis, turning west instead.

There were other battles in the region, including Fredericktown, Iron ton, New Madrid and Charleston.

Eventually, Nickell said, "the war just moved south. When Grant passed through here, he took the war into Kentucky and Tennessee."

The state was deeply divided. Hahn cares for a cemetery near Egypt Mills containing the graves of two brothers -- Edwin and Eugene Poe -- who fought on opposite sides, Edwin with the Confederacy and Eugene with the Union.

The two brothers fought at several of the same battles, including Missionary Ridge, Lookout Mountain, Chattanooga and Chickamauga. Eugene was taken prisoner outside Atlanta just as the city fell.

The two brothers came home, forgot their differences and farmed close to each other on the Bainbridge Road at Egypt Mills.

Missouri was a dangerous place to be during the Civil War, whichever side you were on.

"I think everyone expected that something big would happen in Missouri, because Missouri was on the front pages of every newspaper in the country since 1820," Nickell said.

Most people figured Missouri would be the key state in the battle for western territories, he said.

But President Abraham Lincoln had little use for the state, so federal troops didn't do much to defend it.

Martial law was declared in the state when war broke out, and Gov. Claiborne Jackson, a Southern sympathizer, fled the state after unsuccessfully trying to seize the federal arsenal in St. Louis. Jackson eventually set up a pro-secessionist government in Texas.

"Missouri really fell into chaos. There was no law and order except military. The school system stopped functioning and the government was non-existent," Nickell said. "There was no law."

After the Battle of Pea Ridge in 1862, the state was controlled by the Union, but vicious guerrilla fighting and raids created terror throughout Missouri.

"Those were the days of Jesse James and Quantrill's Raiders," Nickell said.

It took years after the war to restore law and order, he said. In the 1870s, the state set up a system of normal schools, or teacher colleges -- including what would later become Southeast University -- to "jump-start" the state's educational system.

CIVIL WAR SITES IN CAPE GIRARDEAU

1 -- Battle of Cape Girardeau site: In 1951, the Rotary Club erected a marker to designate the site of fighting at what is now Broadway and Caruthers.2 -- Minton House: The home at 444 Washington was built in 1846 and was used as a smallpox hospital during the Civil War.3 -- Old Lorimier Cemetery: The cemetery, formed in 1820, has graves, many unmarked, from the Revolutionary War and Civil War.4 -- Common Pleas Courthouse: The courthouse, completed in 1854, served as the provost marshal's headquarters while the city was held by Union forces during the Civil War. The dungeon was used as a jail for Confederate prisoners.4 -- Confederate War Memorial: The monument was presented to the city in 1931 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and stands 14.5 feet tall.4 -- Union Monument and Fountain: The cast monument was presented to Courthouse Park in 1911 by the Womens Relief Corps to honor Union troops. It was rededicated in 1961 in memory of all American veterans.5 -- Port Cape Girardeau: One of the oldest buildings west of the Mississippi, it was commandeered by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant for his temporary headquarters during the war.6 -- Fort D: General John C. Fremont ordered the fort built at the onset of the Civil War. It was one of four built to defend the city from land or water assault. It is the only remaining fort, and was the most heavily armed, with both 24- and 32-pound cannons that could fire across the Mississippi River.