Montana Territory and the Civil War

A Frontier Forged on the Battlefield

Ken Robison

• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781626191754
• eBook ISBN: 9781625846303
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

A compelling portrait of how the passions of the Civil War played out among gold miners in the remote mountains of the West.
 
In 1862, gold discoveries brought thousands of miners to camps along Grasshopper Creek—and by 1864, the Federal government had carved the Montana Territory out of the existing Idaho and Dakota Territories. Gold from Montana Territory fueled the Union war effort, yet loyalties were mixed among the miners.
 
In this compelling collection of stories, historian Ken Robison illustrates how Southern sympathizers and Union loyalists, deserters and veterans, freed slaves and former slaveholders living side by side made a volatile and vibrant mix that molded Montana. Discover how fiery personalities like Union Colonel Sidney Edgerton and General Thomas Francis Meagher fought to keep order in the newly formed frontier, while brave Confederate and Union veterans and their hardy families created an enduring legacy that helped shape modern Montana.

Chapter 1

Gold Camp Rebels Versus Yankees

Dueling words rang out across the new territory of Montana in the spring of 1865. The Civil War was ending, yet harsh words and hard feelings continued to dominate the political scene. The Unionist weekly Montana Post of April 29, 1865, editorialized as it reported the death of President Abraham Lincoln:

The Dark Day. The sable borders of our columns recall to our minds the dread fact we would so willingly disbelieve, if we could; but in the sad faces of our brethren we read the unspoken query, “Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day?” Would to God it were not so; yet alas! The black record is written on the pages of history, and the earthly tenement of as pure a soul as ever animated a mortal frame, and as noble a mind as ever planned the salvation of a people—is to-day but as a clod of the valley…

“Can Honor’s voice provoke the silent dust,

Or flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death?”

Abraham Lincoln is basely murdered; William H. Seward, his counselor, rests on the brink of the grave. Our heart bleeds as we write; but our sorrow is not for these men, but for the people of America.

Two weeks later, the Post printed a notice nailed to the door of its agent in Prickly Pear City:

Glory enough for one time!

Old Abe has gone to hell!

Hurrah for Jeff. Davis!

Grand Reception of Old Abe in Hell!

Big Dinner!

Grand Reception of Old Abe in Hell!

The Devil’s Band played “Welcome the Chief!”—Notice signed “One of the Chivalry”

To this Rebel sentiment, the Post responded:

We think the most ardent secessionist, out of a man-house, will consider it time to shake his skirts clear from contact with the animated carrion that penned this able, manly and elevating manifesto. There will ever be some questionable forms of life, bearing the outward shape of humanity, engendered by the festering of corruption and feeding on rottenness, like those crawling and writhing vermin that we saw reveling on the putrid carcasses of beasts of burden. Is this an exponent of the rank and file of secession? We expect that Southern men will take this in hand; ferret out this brutal defamer and punish him. One advice we give him, and that is to ask mercy of God for his soul; for if discovered in the dunghill he may make his home—man will have none on his body.

These were not dueling words spoken in the “occupied” South but rather in Montana Territory adjoining the North-Western Territory of Canada. Montana became a territory on May 26, 1864, just three years after the war began and just two short years after gold strikes in southwestern Montana had accelerated white settlement in this upper Missouri River region. The Gold Creek strike in the spring of 1862 was followed in rapid succession by greater discoveries at Grasshopper Creek (Bannack, 1862), Alder Gulch (1863), Last Chance Gulch (1864) and Confederate Gulch (1864). Within a year, thousands of miners, merchants and adventurers, the good and the bad, flooded into then eastern Washington Territory (1862) and later eastern Idaho Territory (1863). Gold brought the flood of miners and the very early creation of Montana Territory.

Gold and the remote geography brought large numbers of Southerners to the mining boomtowns. Those who supported the South came to seek riches or adventure, to escape war service, to honor paroles banishing them “to the western territories.” As the war progressed and Confederate control of Missouri and Tennessee slipped away, the flow increased, leading to Unionist belief that “the left wing of Price’s Army” was flooding into the mining camps. Sterling Price, the eleventh governor of Missouri from 1853 to 1857, served as a Confederate army major general during the Civil War. The defeat of General Price’s forces in Missouri in 1864 brought a flood to the western territories. Regardless of motivation, they came with passionate beliefs—secession was good; Lincoln Republicans were bad.

Map of Montana from Fort Benton to the gold mining camps of Bannock and Virginia City, 1865. Author’s collection.

THE CIVIL WAR THROUGH WORDS: VARINA VERSUS VIRGINIA CITY

As one of the new towns formed in Alder Gulch, a hotbed of Confederate sentiment, Southern sympathizers determined to name the town “Varina” in honor of the wife of Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Varina Townsite Company was formed in June 1863. Papers were drawn up using the new name and presented to miners’ court Judge Dr. G. G. Bissell to finalize. The judge, an ardent Unionist, issued an emphatic expletive, declaring that he absolutely would not allow the town to be named for the first lady of the Confederacy. He boldly wrote in the name “Virginia City”; thus, that town was born, soon to be the capital of the new Territory of Montana.

The crystallization of society into a true community proved a difficult process on the frontier. In remote Montana, this process proved especially so with a population so diverse, from regions so remote from one another, with environments, entanglements and traditions so incongruous. Road agents soon followed the gold and organized around Sheriff Henry Plummer. Robberies and murders followed until a vigilante movement was organized. Meanwhile, organized government began to form around an ardent Lincoln Republican and soon-to-be first territorial governor, Sidney Edgerton.

Honoring Varina Davis, wife of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, triggered a raging battle in Alder Gulch in 1863. United Confederate Veterans Convention, 1895. Author’s collection.

When the first newspaper began publication in the new territory on August 27, 1864, the staunchly Unionist editor carried a patriotic banner on the first issue of his Montana Post: “My Country, May She Always Be Right, But My Country, Right or Wrong.”

Mining boomtown Virginia City in 1866, later capital of Montana Territory. Library of Congress.

The stories of Nicholas Wall, James Liberty Fisk and the arrival of the military represent the early years of the Civil War in what became Montana Territory. Major Nick Wall was captured and held as a Confederate prisoner of war, banished to the western territories, joined the vigilante movement to bring law and order and established a trading empire in Territorial Montana. Captain James Fisk organized and led wagon trains from Minnesota to the upper Missouri gold fields during the Civil War to bring loyal Unionists to balance the influx of Southerners. Military presence on the upper Missouri, previously transitory, now began to man garrisons to protect white settlers from real and perceived threats from native Indians.

MONTANA’S FIRST REBEL PRISONER OF WAR AND TERRITORIAL EMPIRE BUILDER: NICHOLAS WALL¹

Nicholas Wall was a man of many talents and important firsts in Montana history. He was the first Confederate prisoner of war to come to (later) Montana Territory. He was a founding member of the Montana Vigilantes and among the most important businessmen of Montana Territory, yet few Montanans have ever heard of Captain Nicholas Wall.

Nicholas Wall was born in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1820. He was a young steamboat captain on the Mississippi River in the 1840s and operated a steamboat agency in St. Louis a decade later. Wall lived with his family in St. Louis, where they had one female domestic slave in the household in 1860. Major Nick Wall was officer of commissary with the Missouri Volunteer Militia when it deployed to the southwestern Missouri border with Kansas in late November 1860 to suppress raids by Kansas Jayhawkers on the eve of the Civil War. As commissary of the brigade on this Southwest Expedition, Major Wall made all purchases and issued all rations and stores. The brigade returned to St. Louis in mid-December to be welcomed home by immense crowds.

By early May 1861, Missouri teetered on the edge of secession. Missouri’s pro-secession governor Claiborne Jackson, supported by Brigadier General Daniel M. Frost, commanding the Missouri Militia, and the Southern-leaning officers on his staff, including Major Wall, were determined to lead the state out of the Union. The Civil War began in Missouri on May 6, 1861, when the Missouri Militia was ordered into encampment at Camp Jackson at Lindell’s Grove on the outskirts of St. Louis. Camp Jackson posed a symbolic and potentially real threat to the Union in Missouri. In response, Captain Nathaniel Lyon led loyal Union troops composed mostly of German immigrants to surround Camp Jackson. In the face of overwhelming firepower, the Missouri Militia surrendered without firing a shot, and its secession flags were hauled down.

Major Wall and the other officers and men of the Missouri Militia were held as Confederate prisoners of war and marched through the streets to the St. Louis Arsenal. During the march, riots and gunfire broke out and continued for two days. The prisoners were released on parole that required them either to remain in St. Louis or go to the western territories.

After signing his parole, Nick Wall’s Civil War was over. During July 1861, he commanded the steamboat Emilie in place of Captain Joe LaBarge, who, ironically, was removed from his command because of his pro-Southern leanings. In the spring of 1862, the Emilie, with Captain LaBarge back in command and Captain Wall serving as clerk, departed St. Louis loaded with 143 miners and adventurers bound for the gold fields of Idaho. Steamboat clerks were responsible for handling cargo and passengers.

The Emilie landed at Fort Benton on June 17, 1862, and Captain Nick Wall stepped ashore in what would become Montana Territory to establish the most sophisticated trading empire of the 1860s. With the miners, Wall headed west along the newly completed Mullan Road to western Montana, where gold had been discovered in quantities at Gold Creek near today’s Drummond. Arriving in the new mining area, Wall leased cabins from Johnny Grant and set up a small store, doing a brisk business with newly arriving miners.

Just weeks later, Wall had a visitor at his store. Young Tom Cover arrived with a group of men who were out of money and starving. Looking Cover over, Wall advanced him lifesaving provisions, and before long, Cover, with another party, discovered gold at Grasshopper Creek, the beginning of the Bannack boom. In payment, Cover filed a claim in Nick Wall’s name. Wall moved his store to Bannack and early on became a partner in the Bannack Ditch that furnished water to the placer miners.

After a successful trading year, Nick Wall returned overland to St. Louis for the winter, establishing a commuter pattern he would follow throughout his Montana years. During the winter of 1862–63, Wall formed a partnership with St. Louis steamboat owner and merchant John J. Roe, who was acquiring wealth from pork packing during the Civil War.

On his return to the mountains in early June 1863, Captain Wall rode into Bannack and then on to Fort Benton to receive a large shipment for the newly formed John J. Roe & Company. This freight had been shipped up the Missouri River by Captain Joe LaBarge’s steamboat Shreveport, commanded by his brother John LaBarge. Through a combination of low water and bad judgment, Shreveport’s freight was offloaded at Snake Point, an inaccessible location on the river. Disgusted at this setback to his new company, Captain Wall immediately sent a letter of protest and returned to St. Louis to join John J. Roe in seeking damages in district court from LaBarge, Harkness & Company. In mid-September, accompanied by young Edgar G. Maclay, Captain Wall returned to Bannack, and on November 1, Wall and Maclay arrived in the new boomtown of Virginia City in the heart of Alder Gulch’s massive placer mines. Captain Wall opened the John J. Roe & Company store and erected a pretentious-looking house in the rear. True to his nautical life, his home resembled a “Texas,” or captain’s cabin on the upper deck of a steamboat.

With the mining boom of the big gold strikes at Grasshopper Creek and Alder Gulch, thousands of miners, merchants and adventurers flocked into this eastern region of the new Idaho Territory. In the presence of huge amounts of gold and in the absence of civil authority or organized government, travelers were increasingly subjected to robbery and murder. “Miners’ courts” tried to fill the void, and by mid-December, one of the murderers, George Ives, was apprehended and brought to trial in Virginia City.

A young Civil War Union veteran, Colonel Wilbur Fisk Sanders of Bannack, accepted the dangerous challenge of prosecuting Ives, who was known to be an associate of Sheriff Henry Plummer, leader of the gang of troublemakers. Despite threats to his life, Sanders began to prosecute. Throughout the Ives trial, Colonel Sanders was a guest of Captain Wall, and Wall’s men served as guards at the trial and at his home. Early in the Ives trial, probably on the night of December 20, 1863, Wall met covertly in the back of Kinna & Nye’s store with four fellow Masons: Paris S. Pfouts, Alvin W. Brookie, John Nye and Wilbur F. Sanders. Masonic bonds trumped North-South sentiment, and out of this meeting came agreement to form a vigilante movement to bring order out of the lawless chaos. After Ives’s conviction and hanging, Captain Wall departed Virginia City by horseback for St. Louis. His arrival at Salt Lake City on January 12, 1864, brought the first news to the outside world of the vigilante actions to clean up the gold fields.

During this winter sojourn in St. Louis, Captain Wall and John J. Roe developed the next step in their plan. By the spring of 1864, their new steamboat line, the Montana and Idaho Transportation Company, had begun operations under Roe’s son-in-law, Captain John G. Copelin. By late April, Captain Wall was back in Montana Territory just as it was being formed, taking charge of Roe company operations. During this summer, E.G. Maclay suggested that they begin an overland freight...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Gold Camp Rebels Versus Yankees
• 2. Montana Territory: Forged on the Battlefield
• 3. Profiles in Courage: Civil War Officers and Enlisted Soldiers
• 4. Black Americans: From Emancipation to the Firing Line
• 5. Children, Women, Men, Families: In Total War
• 6. From the Civil War to the Indian Wars
• 7. The Legend of Victory and the Lost Cause Live On
• Bibliography
• About the Author