Full Citation

Title: Missouri's Hidden Civil War

Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis

Publication Year: 2006

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Abstract: This dissertation explores a previously unknown Civil War financial conspiracy that backfired and caused a great deal of collateral damage among Missouris pro-southern population. In 1861, a small group of pro-secession politicians, bankers, and wealthy men conspired to divert money illegally from Missouris banks to arm and equip rebel military units then forming throughout the state. The schemes collapse eventually caused a revolution in land ownership and permanently altered the states political economy. Most of these events occurred in Missouris main slaveholding district along both banks of the Missouri River, in an area slightly smaller than West Virginia. The narrative begins in January 1861 and ends in the 1880s.The present study grew out of my discovery, in Missouri circuit court records, of the archival traces of a large check-kiting scheme. Further research in judicial and financial sources showed that Missouris banks paid the equivalent of hundreds of millions of todays dollars in unsecured loans to the states southern sympathizers, in return for sham collateral. After Confederate defeat, litigation arising from these loans resulted in sheriffs sales of over a half million acres of farmland. These land sales effectively ended the plantation system in Missouri and the leading role of Missouris planters. The widespread distress caused by the land sales also intensified the states notorious guerrilla insurgency, the worst such conflict ever fought on American soil. Bushwhackers whose names can be identified and who lived in the indebted counties overwhelmingly came from families stripped of their property in the widespread litigation. The financial history of the Civil War in the West has been hitherto largely unresearched. The dissertation traces the effect of financial decisions and conditions on wartime politics, and explains certain social and economic outcomes that otherwise seem anomalous. Because Missouris banks were instrumental in these events, the dissertation considers at length the development of antebellum state banking, its role in the slave economy, and the banking industrys wartime transformation. The industry discussion rests on an analysis of the banks financial statements for the period 18591865, reconstructed through forensic accounting. The resulting data are the most complete set of financial statistics extant for any states banking industry in the period.

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Authors: Geiger, Mark

Institution: University of Missouri

Department: History

Advisor: LeeAnn Whites

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

Publisher Location: Columbia, MO

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Crime and Deviance, Housing and Segregation

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