Article
"The Deplorable Condition of the Country": Nature, Society, and War on the Trans-Mississippi Frontier
Civil War History
(2012)
Abstract
On a cold day in the early spring of 1864, Union cavalry captain Ozias Ruark and his men rode through a wasteland. Directing his small force through Missouri's extreme southwestern corner, Ruark reported the local mills torched and the region mostly uninhabited. The only human life the tired and harried Federal cavalry had seen consisted of "a small number of indigent women and children, who [had] no forage at all except a very little corn." Worse, Ruark noted, the pitiable civilians probably did not have enough corn "to bread them more than two months." Those who had corn guarded it carefully by meticulously shelling and storing it in their bedrooms inside drawers and under floorboards. In a style of warfare that required combatants to live off the land and with little food remaining in the fields, Ruark and his men had little choice but to keep riding. Even if he had stolen every bit of food from the impoverished locals, the young captain observed, he could not have sustained his force for more than a few days. Three years of hard warfare in tandem with an unforgiving environment had turned an already difficult countryside into a no-man's land.1
Keywords
- American Civil War,
- American History,
- Military History,
- Environmental History,
- Trans-Mississippi Frontier
Disciplines
Publication Date
September 1, 2012
DOI
10.1353/CWH.2012.0053
Citation Information
Matthew M. Stith. ""The Deplorable Condition of the Country": Nature, Society, and War on the Trans-Mississippi Frontier" Civil War History Vol. 58 Iss. 3 (2012) p. 322 - 347 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/matthew-stith/6/