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| Meriwether Jeff Thompson c. 1857 |
All Jeff Thompson wanted to be when he grew up was a soldier. It was a gentlemanly pursuit in his native Virginia. He would realize that dream, but only after a long delay. Attending military school in Charleston, Virginia (now West Virginia) from the age of 14, he applied for admission to the Military Academy at West Point, as well as Virginia Military Institute, but was turned down by both institutions. It seemed that life at a store was in the cards for Jeff, which must have stung for a man coming from a military family.
He wandered the country a bit, starting out from his native Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1843, working in stores in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Frederick City, Maryland, before coming to Liberty, Missouri in 1847. In 1848, he moved to the bustling town of St. Joseph, Missouri. Having an aptitude for mathematics, surveying and engineering, he soon became the city engineer. He reportedly was very charismatic and energetic, qualities which helped him achieve advancement.
In 1851, he obtained a position as a surveyor with the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad. He went to find a position on the crew and wound up in charge of the surveyors for the preliminary survey. Eventually supervising the building of the western Missouri section of the railroad, he rode on the first train from Hannibal to St. Joseph. He took over the controls himself outside of town and drove the first locomotive into St. Joseph in 1858. While working on the railroad, he became a member of the land company that laid out and promoted the town of Hamilton in Caldwell County. Among the residents of this town were James Cash Penney, founder of the JC Penneys chain.
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| Thompson's Engineering Protractor |
Learning surveying and mapping on the fly, Thompson was a quick study. Soon he found the instruments required to draw exact road lines and machinery to be inadequate, and invented his own protractor to aid in producing engineering drawings. The patent model at the left now resides in the Smithsonian Museum of American History's collection. It is formally a "Rule for Describing Polygonal Forms" US patent 21,784 issued 12 October 1858. It is a crude looking instrument, because it was made to illustrate the patented concept, not to function as a working tool. There is no evidence that the tool ever went into production, and although Thompson invented several instruments, this is the only one for which he pursued a patent.
The executive
For all of his struggles in business as a young man, Jeff Thompson became a man on the move. He became a military leader, named colonel of his Missouri State Militia unit. He served as the seventh mayor of St. Joseph from 1857-1860. He was the president of a gas company, Buchanan County Surveyor, real estate broker, agent for the Platte County Railroad, member of the Elwood (KS) town company, president of the St. Joseph and Maryville Railroad, secretary of the St. Joseph and Louisiana Railroad at the same time that he was St. Joseph mayor. He surveyed land in Kansas and Nebraska Territories, surveyed the first lines for the St. Joseph and Maryville Railroad, as well as some of the route for the St. Joseph and Topeka Railroad.
You can tell that Thompson was a great proponent of railroads. He placed the first bags of mail on the horse and delivered a speech at the first running of the Pony Express on 03 April 1860, remarking:
"The day will come when at this very town you may board a train which will take you through to the gold fields, and that within a very few years! More than that, I say that the wilderness which lies between us and that El Dorado will soon blossom as the rose."
The Pony Express was in large part possible because the mail from the East had been expedited by the railroad. Russell, Majors and Waddell had arranged for westbound mail from Chicago to be routed to Quincy then to the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad. The railroad continued to be important to mail delivery, and the first mail car for a railroad was designed and used on the Hannibal and St. Joe Railroad.
The General
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| Col. Jeff Thompson, CSA |
Thompson did not run for re-election as St. Joseph mayor. Business and national politics began to weigh on his mind. Following the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States and the calling of secession conventions in the South, Thompson was not idle. Although he was not a slave owner, he thought that slavery was protected in the Consitution and any attempt to abolish it was illegal. He went to the state capital of Jefferson City and lobbied for passage of a military bill and a secession convention. He endeavored to "use my little influence to bolster up such weak-kneed and timid Southerners as might be frightened from doing right for fear that a war would be forced upon them." He was unsuccessful, as the military bill failed to pass and the delegates to the secession convention voted to stay in the Union. The state that contained a mix of Southern, Western and Northern influences was unraveling and in few places was a war that pitted "brother against brother" fought so brutally.
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| Brig. Gen. Jeff Thompson, MSG |
Frustrated by a governor that espoused the Southern cause, but refused to release money to support activities of the militia, Thompson decided to go to offer his services to his home state of Virginia. When he left, St. Joseph was so divided that Mayor Armstrong Beattie ordered that no flags be flown anywhere in town. The new postmaster of St. Joseph decided he was going to raise the US flag at the post office on 22 May 1861. After the flag was raised, Thompson climbed a ladder to the top of the building, cut the flag down and threw it into the crowd, which tore it to pieces.
Jeff Thompson became a colonel in the Confederate States Army and when given command of the First Division of the Missouri State Guard in July 1861, he became a brigadier general in the State Guard. He carried out several actions against the Union in southern Missouri, a low area that was very swampy. He became "Missouri's Swamp Fox" or "The Swamp Fox of the Confederacy" and his troops were known as the "Swamp Rats".
When Union Gen. John C. Frémont placed Missouri under martial law and proclaimed emancipation for the slaves of rebels, Thompson issued a counter proclamation. Thompson led a 1500 man cavalry raid on the Iron Mountain Railroad bridge over Big River in Jefferson County, MO on 15 October 1861. He then withdrew south, joined up with infantry and decided to attack Union forces at Fredericktown on 21 October with a force of 3000. In this engagement, the Missouri State Guard was outnumbered. The Union forces were composed of two columns: 1500 under Col. Joseph Plummer and 3000 under Col. William Carlin. Thompson deployed the Guard on wooded ridges overlooking the main road, and put Col. Aden Lowe's infantry out in the open as bait. Lowe's unit met the initial Union force and held their own, but waited too long to retire. Lowe was killed and his unit took heavy casualties (total Missouri Guard casualties: 25 killed, 40 wounded, 80 captured). As the Union troops moved forward to capture an artillery piece, they came under heavy fire from the Missouri State Guard. Thompson was able to withdraw, but the engagement was a Union victory, and consolidated Federal control of southeastern Missouri.
Thompson's troops caught the attention of Union Brig. Gen. US Grant, commander of the District of Southeast Missouri, when Frémont sent word that Thompson was at Indian Ford on the St. Francois River. Grant was to dispatch troops on 03 November to capture Thompson's force near the Arkansas border. 3000 men under Col. Plummer were to leave Cape Girardeau and 4000 under Col. Richard Oglesby from Bird's Point. These troops were diverted to meet a greater Confederate threat at Belmont, Missouri as Grant considered Thompson's troops to be ineffective as a fighting force after Frederickstown.
You're in the Army's Navy now
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| CSS Gen Jeff Thompson in battle line at Plum Point Bend |
In 1862, Thompson became involved in the battle to control the Mississippi River, commanding a ram in the Confederate riverine fleet. It was fairly common to have Army personnel on board ships as gun crews. He commanded enough respect on the field and on the river that a converted sidewheel steamer was outfitted as a "cottonclad ram" and renamed the CSS General Jeff Thompson. The ship saw its first action at the Battle of Plum Point Bend, about four miles upriver from Ft. Pillow on 10 May 1862. Twelve Federal mortar boats and eight ironclads were tied up there, and the Confederate fleet, with Jeff Thompson on the CSS Gen. Bragg, was going to try to clear them out. The Union ironclad USS Cincinnati headed out into the shallows where but few of the Confederates could follow. The CSS Bragg hit the ironclad with a gun volley, but her tiller rope was fouled and she was effectively out of action. The USS Cincinnati and USS Mound City were rammed and sunk. The Confederates had to withdraw as their ships needed deeper water to reach the other Union ships. Their presence did hold off Federal forces long enough to allow Ft. Pillow to be evacuated by 01 June, then the Confederate flotilla headed down to Memphis for refueling and resupply.
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| CSS Gen Jeff Thompson sinking at Memphis |
The CSS Thompson didn't have a long career. The Union Mississippi River Squadron of ironclads pushed downstream to Memphis. A lack of fuel meant that the Confederate force could not withdraw, but chose to fight it out on 06 June 1862. Early in the fight, the Jeff Thompson was hit heavily by Union guns, caught fire and began to sink. After the crew abandoned ship, she burned to waterline and her magazine caught fire and exploded, sending debris high into the sky.
Only one of the Confederate ships would escape. The CSS Gen. Van Dorn was able to head south and find refuge in the Yazoo River. The rest were destroyed or captured. Among those that were captured and entered Union service were the Gen. Price and the Gen. Bragg. This effectively ended Confederate naval presence on the Mississippi River, with the CSS Arkansas later being the only outstanding challenge to the Union.
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| Explosion of the magazine of the CSS Jeff Thompson |
On the road again
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| St. Charles Hotel in Pocahontas, Arkansas |
Jeff Thompson was assigned to duty west of the Mississippi River and was soon in Arkansas. He joined the second raid into Missouri led by Gen. John Marmaduke. The raid commenced on 18 April 1863 with 5000 troops, many of which were unarmed and without mounts. Marmaduke feared the soldiers would desert if he left the unarmed/unmounted behind, and took them along, planning to supply them with captured materiel. The raid collapsed in defeat following an unplanned and ill-advised attack on Cape Girardeau on 25-26 April. Given orders to pursue Union troops only if they marched towards Pilot Knob and Fredericktown, Col. George Carter followed General McNeil to heavily fortified Cape Girardeau. Carter was demoted and Marmaduke had to retreat back to Arkansas.
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| Brig. Gen. Jeff Thompson at Johnson's Island (front, next to right) |
Though this foray into Missouri was a disaster, Thompson proved himself to still be an able commander. His symbolic value to the Confederate resistance in Missouri was at a high, and he became a prime target for the Union Army. On 24 August 1863, elements of the Missouri State Militia Cavalry (Union) commanded by Col. Richard G. Woodson of the 3rd Missouri State Militia Cavalry heard that Thompson was in Pochahontas, Arkansas with very little in the way of force. Woodson ordered Capt. Henry C. Gentry of the 2nd Missouri State Militia Cavalry to ride for town with all haste and arrest the general before he could escape. Gentry rode into town and arrested Thompson and several officers at the St. Charles Hotel. Thompson was calmly reviewing maps of southeast Missouri and caught by complete surprise. The Missouri State Militia Cavalry took their prisoners back to Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Thompson would be sent to
Gratiot Street Prison in St. Louis, Fort Delaware (on Pea Patch Island in the Delaware River) and Johnson's Island (in Lake Erie, near Sandusky, Ohio) prisoner of war camps. On 03 August 1864 (or 29 July, depending on which history you are reading), he was exchanged for a Union general.
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| Fort Delaware - Seth Eastman c. 1870 |
Out of the frying pan, into the fire
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| Map of Johnson's Island |
Soon after his release from Johnson's Island, Thompson returned to the service of the Confederacy. He joined the Autumn 1864 raid on Missouri with General Sterling Price and 12,000 horsemen. Thompson took over the command of Gen. J.O. Shelby's "Iron Brigade" as Shelby was now commanded a division. The whole campaign was fraught with failure. On 27 September 1864, Price attacked Ft. Davidson at Pilot Knob with several uncoordinated attacks from several directions. The guns of the fort were turned in response to each one. When the position became defenseless, the Union escaped through a gap in the siege lines, and lit a timed fuse which destroyed the powder magazine and the fort. The Confederates had the fort, but had suffered 1000 casualties, used up a huge amount of ammunition and had not captured the men or arms of the Union soldiers. It would now be impossible to capture St. Louis.
Price set his sights on capturing Jefferson City, but found it too heavily defended. He then turned towards Lexington and Westport (Kansas City). After victories that provided supplies at Glasgow (15 October), the Little Blue River (east of Independence, MO - 21 October) and Independence (Second Battle - 21-22 October), disease, desertion and casualties caught up with Price. The dogged fighting by the Union forces under Maj. Gen. James Blunt slowed Price's advance long enough for Gen. Alfred Pleasonton's cavalry force of 10,000 to join the battle. The Confederate force, which had shrunk to about 8.500, was decisively defeated by 22,000 Union soldiers at the Battle of Westport (23 October).
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Mine Creek looking toward the Union line from the Confederate line.
The Federal line was near the treeline at the horizon. |
During the Battle of Westport, the Iron Brigade under Thompson drove the Union troops under Brig. Gen. Thomas Moonlight back into Kansas, and those under Col. Jennison back into Westport. The Confederates were unable to capitalize on this advantage, running out of ammunition. In the retreat that followed defeat, Thompson's men would fight a rear guard action to give the Confederates time to escape the field of battle.
Setting sights on the supplies at Fort Scott, Kansas, Price started in that direction, but were pursued by Pleasonton through the night and into the next day. On 25 October, Price was forced into three engagements: the Battle of Marais des Cynges (Trading Post), the Battle of Mine Creek, and the Battle of the Marmiton River. All three were heavy losses for Price. All hope of capturing Fort Scott gone and his forces whittled to fewer than 6000 men, Price had to make a run for Indian Territory (Oklahoma). Price was pressed into one more engagement near Newtonia, Missouri during which Thompson and the Iron Brigade rode to the front, dismounted and engaged the Federals. The Federal force was forced back into a cornfield by the Ritchey estate. When the Union surged forwards, Price had escaped.
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| Mine Creek Crossing - it was full of water on 25 October 1864 |
Missouri State Guard Brig. Gen. M. Jeff Thompson was appointed commander of the Northern Sub-District of Arkansas in March of 1865. By May of 1865, Thompson's command of 7500 men was one of the largest Confederate forces left in the field. He made arrangements at Chalk Bluff, Arkansas on 09 May 1865 to surrender his troops. He marched them to Wittsburg and Jacksonport, Arkansas on 11 May 1865 to lay down their arms and obtain their paroles.
Shelby and Price took their men to Mexico and offered their services to Emperor Maximillian, but they were refused. Ultimately, Maximillian would face a firing squad following a popular revolt against the European government. While these men would gain fame as the "undefeated" or "unsurrendered", the war was over for Jeff Thompson. He became one of the first Confederate officials to apply for reinstatement of citizenship and take the loyalty oath. His talents as a civil engineer and surveyor won him a post-war position as Surveyor General of Louisiana and Chief State Engineer of Louisiana. He moved to his wife's hometown of New Orleans, and for several years supervised projects that would control flooding and improve swamp land in Louisiana. Several histories of Louisiana have praised his competence as an engineer and service to the state.
"Home again and home again"
At some point along the line, Jeff Thompson had contracted tuberculosis, a common respiratory disease of the time. It is likely that this happened during his Civil War service. His hard work ethic likely exacerbated the disease, and a tired Thompson returned to St. Joseph, Missouri in 1876. In short order he passed away at the age of 50 years on 05 September 1876. The man who wanted to be a soldier but was turned down by major military academies had earned his bones as a high ranking officer for the Confederacy in the Civil War, a politician, businessman, surveyor and civil engineer. His flood control systems protected St. Joseph and Louisiana for years after his death. Leading the effort to reconcile the South with the North, he was alternately praised as a model citizen and vilified for abandoning the "Southern cause".
Thompson is buried in a fairly easy to find spot in Mt. Mora Cemetery in St. Joseph, Missouri. His grave is in a small triangle just southeast of Section L and northeast of Section B.
Jeff Thompson, Mark Twain and David Rice Atchison - Talk about pop culture
Jeff Thompson was a large enough personage that his fictionalized self was made part of the book
The Guilded Age: A Tale of Today by
Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in 1873. It seems fitting, since the papers for the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad were drawn up in the offices of Sam Clemens' father. Warner had been a surveyor/engineer on the railroad, so he was acquainted with Thompson.
On laying a straight line:
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| An early Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad locomotive |
"The Colonel hitched up his chair close to Harry, laid his hand on his knee, and, first looking about him, said in a low voice, 'The Salt Lick Pacific Extension is going to run through Stone's Landing! The Almighty never laid out a cleaner piece of level prairie for a city; and it's the natural center of all that region of hemp and tobacco.'
'What makes you think the road will go there? It's twenty miles, on the map, off the straight line of the road?'
'You can't tell what is the straight line till the engineers have been over it. Between us, I have talked with Jeff Thompson, the division engineer. He understands the wants of Stone's Landing, and the claims of the inhabitants—who are to be there. Jeff says that a railroad is for—the accommodation of the people and not for the benefit of gophers; and if, he don't run this to Stone's Landing he'll be damned! You ought to know Jeff; he's one of the most enthusiastic engineers in this western country, and one of the best fellows that ever looked through the bottom of a glass.'
The recommendation was not undeserved. There was nothing that Jeff wouldn't do, to accommodate a friend, from sharing his last dollar with him, to winging him in a duel. When he understood from Col. Sellers. how the land lay at Stone's Landing, he cordially shook hands with that gentleman, asked him to drink, and fairly roared out, 'Why, God bless my soul, Colonel, a word from one Virginia gentleman to another is 'nuff ced.' There's Stone's Landing been waiting for a railroad more than four thousand years, and damme if she shan't have it.'''
Jeff Thompson and Senator Atchison
"The fever at length got tired of tormenting the stout young engineer, who lay sick at the hotel, and left him, very thin, a little sallow but an 'acclimated' man. Everybody said he was 'acclimated' now, and said it cheerfully. What it is to be acclimated to western fevers no two persons exactly agree.
Some say it is a sort of vaccination that renders death by some malignant type of fever less probable. Some regard it as a sort of initiation, like that into the Odd Fellows, which renders one liable to his regular dues thereafter. Others consider it merely the acquisition of a habit of taking every morning before breakfast a dose of bitters, composed of whiskey and assafoetida, out of the acclimation jug.
Jeff Thompson afterwards told Philip that he once asked
Senator Atchison, then acting Vice-President of the United States, about the possibility of acclimation; he thought the opinion of the second officer of our great government would be valuable on this point. They were sitting together on a bench before a country tavern, in the free converse permitted by our democratic habits.
'I suppose, Senator, that you have become acclimated to this country?'
'Well,' said the Vice-President, crossing his legs, pulling his wide-awake down over his forehead, causing a passing chicken to hop quickly one side by the accuracy of his aim, and speaking with senatorial deliberation, 'I think I have. I've been here twenty-five years, and dash, dash my dash to dash, if I haven't entertained twenty-five separate and distinct earthquakes, one a year. The niggro is the only person who can stand the fever and ague of this region.'"
This last statement attributed to Atchison was not totally untrue. Malaria caused by
Plasmodium vivax was a tremendous problem in the United States since it had been introduced by the Spanish conquistadors. One of the reasons that enslavement of West Africans was needed in the Southern agricultural economy was that the Africans lacked Duffy's antigen (a blood cell protein) and they were immune to
vivax malaria. The parasite was denied a portal into their red blood cells. Sickle-cell trait also made black slaves resistant to the most virulent form of malaria caused by
P. falciparum.
On drinking corn liquor properly
"Mr. Jeff Thompson, for it was the camp of this redoubtable engineer, gave the travelers a hearty welcome, offered them ground room in his own tent, ordered supper, and set out a small jug, a drop from which he declared necessary on account of the chill of the evening.
'I never saw an Eastern man,' said Jeff, 'who knew how to drink from a jug with one hand. It's as easy as lying. So.' He grasped the handle with the right hand, threw the jug back upon his arm, and applied his lips to the nozzle. It was an act as graceful as it was simple. 'Besides,' said Mr. Thompson, setting it down, 'it puts every man on his honor as to quantity.'"
Sing, sing a song, sing out loud, sing out strong
"Early to turn in was the rule of the camp, and by nine o'clock everybody was under his blanket, except Jeff himself, who worked awhile at his table over his field-book, and then arose, stepped outside the tent door and sang, in a strong and not unmelodious tenor, the
Star Spangled Banner from beginning to end. It proved to be his nightly practice to let off the unexpended steam of his conversational powers, in the words of this stirring song.
It was a long time before Philip got to sleep. He saw the fire light, he saw the clear stars through the tree-tops, he heard the gurgle of the stream, the stamp of the horses, the occasional barking of the dog which followed the cook's wagon, the hooting of an owl; and when these failed he saw Jeff, standing on a battlement, mid the rocket's red glare, and heard him sing, 'Oh, say, can you see?' It was the first time he had ever slept on the ground."
Although a Star Spangled Banner singing Thompson may seem at odds with his Civil War career as a Confederate, he felt himself a loyal American. Of his flag-lowering at the Post Office he remarked, "I had cut down the flag that I had once loved. I had as yet drawn no blood from its defenders, but I was now determined to strike it down wherever I found it."
Getting There
From Frederick Avenue in St. Joseph, turn north onto Mt. Mora Rd, which is between 14th Street and 17th Street. Once in the cemetery gates, take the first right and follow it up the hill to the triangle between Section B and Section L.
Every time that I have passed this gravesite, it is decorated with US flags. Not sure why, unless they consider his antebellum career in the Missouri State Militia to be US service. More and more I see the graves of staunch Confederates decorated with the US flag. All I can say is that I don't like it, especially if their only military service was to the CSA. The battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia has been appropriated by hate groups and has been banished from most public places. Most Confederate soldiers never fought under that flag. Most of them fought under their own state's flag, specially designed unit flag or the first national flag of the Confederacy. The flags of 1864 and 1865 did incorporate the battle flag blue cross and white stars on a red background with a white or white and red field. I have been known to plunk the CSA's first national flag down on a Confederate's grave when I can find them. I guess that is my act of rebellion.
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| First National Flag of the Confederate States of America |
Waypoint: Latitude 39.775503 N; Longitude 94.841077 W
