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| Confederate Memorial State Historic Site and Cemetery |
Missouri, the state of my birth, is usually regarded as a “border state” during Abraham Lincoln’s War to Prevent Southern Independence. Regiments of Missouri soldiers fought on both sides of the conflict. Although many of the citizens of Missouri tried to remain neutral, Yankee atrocities and war crimes against Confederate soldiers and civilians alike, both black and white, caused an ever increasing number of the Missouri populous to give their support and allegiance to the Confederate cause.
The war ended in 1865, but many Confederate soldiers survived and continued to live until the mid-20th century. In 1891, the state of Missouri established a home for aging Confederate veterans on 135 beautiful acres of land in Higginsville, Lafayette County.
Here in the western part of the Show Me State, 1,600 Confederate veterans and their families peacefully lived out their lives, over a period of 60 years. The last Missouri Confederate veteran did not die until 1950, at the age of 108. That was five years after I was born. Every time I am reminded of such realities, it impresses me that the War Between the States was not really all that long ago in the span of History. The lives of millions of people living today overlap the lives of our Confederate compatriots who fought in that senseless and unnecessary war.
Two years after the death of the last Missouri Confederate soldier, the Veterans Home became a State Historic Site. It is an interesting, albeit sobering place, to visit and to contemplate the darkest chapter in the history of our country.
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| Confederate Chapel and Cemetery |
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