Elk Horn to Vicksburg

Homer L. Calkin has received his Ph.D. in history from the State University of Iowa, and it now associated with the State Department as Chief of Records Coordination Branch. He has contributed to various historical journals and is one of the authors who wrote Federal Records of World War ?. Elk Horn to Vicksburg HOMER L. CALKIN INTRODUCTION upon the election of Lincoln to the presidency in 1861, the impending crisis between the North and the South could no longer be delayed. With little hesitation representatives of ten southern states met to decide upon a course of action. The decision of the Atlanta meeting was in favor of a confederacy. Then came the shelling of Fort Sumter in April, 1861. Almost immediately the Confederate States of America began to organize an army to uphold the traditions of an aristocratic, slaveholding, tobaccoand cotton-growing plantation life. With equal speed President Lincoln was calling for troops to serve in a short war of three months in order to bring the recalcitrants back into the Union. In times of war border states are hard pressed to know whether to attempt the maintenance of a neutral status or to join one of the sides. The situation facing the states of Missouri, Maryland, Kentucky and Delaware was a difficult one during the War Between the States. In Missouri, as in the others, sympathies were divided North and South. But in the end the majority of the Missourians voted to remain in the Union. However, many loyal Southerners, such as former Governors Sterling Price and Claiborne Jackson, Elijah Gates and others, formed a secessionist government in Missouri which was eventually accepted into the Confederacy. On May 18, 1861, a General Order was issued from Confederate Headquarters at Jefferson City placing the Missouri State Guard, with MajorGeneral Sterling Price as commander, at the disposal of the southern cause. Confidence and enthusiasm reigned supreme. Appeals were made for volunteers, and 50,000 men were promised. Alas, after six months, only 5,000 had answered the call, and Price was asking, "Where now are the 8 HOMER L. CALKIN 50,000 to avenge our wrongs and free our country?" He urged the herdsman , the farmer, the mechanic and the lawyer to leave their work and join the army. James Henry Fauntieroy, a farmer eighteen years of age, was one oí those who answered Price's plea. He had been born in Kentucky in 1842, the son of James Harrod Fauntieroy, a descendant of a leading colonial family of Virginia and Kentucky. He was also a great-grandson of James Harrod, one of the earliest settlers of Kentucky. During the 1840's the Fauntieroy family felt the urge to migrate to a less populous area. Their choice of locality was Buchanan County, near St. Joseph, Missouri. There they were but a part of the more than 99,000 Kentuckians who helped to settle Missouri and who formed a strong pro-southern element in 1861. James was enrolled on December 19, 1861, in Company E, First Missouri Volunteers, Cavalry, Confederate States of America, at Sac River by Captain John S. Holland. Less than two weeks later the First Missouri Cavalry Regiment was organized with Elijah Gates as Colonel and was commonly referred to thereafter as Gates' Regiment. The Regiment had little opportunity to receive much in the way of training. Within a month it was in Arkansas, participating in the battle of Elk Horn Tavern. Then followed a series of retreats and a movement of the troops to Memphis. Fauntieroy purchased a small, 128-page notebook while in Memphis on April 21, 1862. From then until August 24, 1863, he made almost daily entries in the book. For the first four months of his army career, Fauntieroy devoted only nine pages of his diary to general details, probably because he had to rely upon his memory. The single entry in which he expressed hope that he would not have to remain "much longer" is the only one bearing on his life in a Federal prison. There is no further indication of the conditions at Fort Delaware or Point Lookout, Maryland, where he died in January, 1864. The diary is particularly valuable...