The Battles at Lucas Bend

The first Civil War battle fought with Ulysses Grant in command in the field occurred near the Mississippi River town of Belmont, Missouri. The fight was in the shadow of a highly fortified Confederate position at Columbus, Kentucky. Two months later, Grant visited the scene once again. This time, he accompanied U. S. Navy Flag Officer Andrew Foote on board one of the new Ironclad gunships constructed south of St. Louis by James B. Eads. Both of Grant’s expeditions occurred along a long-forgotten bend in the Mississippi called Lucas Bend, now a meander cut off from the river’s channel.

On November 7, 1861, Grant landed over 3,000 troops on the south shore of Lucas Bend. This amphibious operation utilized five converted steamboats and two wood-clad gunboats. Grant’s second excursion to Lucas Bend, in January 1862, occurred when the first of Eads’s new ironclads were ready for action. The speaker will engage the audience by discussing this question: was this the first time an ironclad naval vessel came under enemy fire?

Missouri in 1861: The Rise and Fall of John and Jessie Fremont

Jessie Benton, the daughter of Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, married the famous western explorer John Charles Fremont in 1841. In 1856, Jessie played a crucial role in building consensus for her husband’s campaign for President of the United States, a campaign that marked the birth of the Republican Party. When the Civil War began in 1861, Lincoln appointed John Fremont to lead the Union Army in the western states and territories. He would make St. Louis his headquarters.

President Lincoln, at the time, resisted calls for emancipation for fear that so-called Border States Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland would secede and join the Confederacy. Learn how the Fremonts’ advocacy of emancipation, and an inter-family fight, freed two enslaved men – a “first” in American history. The speaker also explores John Fremont’s doomed military campaign that targeted Springfield, Missouri.