Historian Terry Beckenbaugh of the Military History Department at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth discusses The First Year of the Civil War in Missouri.

The Civil War officially began on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces fired on Federal Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. For Missourians on the Kansas-Missouri border, the war had been ongoing since 1855. Missouri’s government was deeply divided between pro-secessionists and Unionists, and events like the Camp Jackson Affair on May 10, 1861, just outside of St. Louis, escalated the political fights to actual combat.