"The Dread Effects of War": The Wilson's Creek Battlefield, One Year Later (This Hallowed Ground Speaker Series)

Just months after the battle of Wilson’s Creek, Americans began looking to the rough hillsides of Greene County, Missouri, to make sense of the bloody conflict that still gripped the nation. The landscape bore scars of what one soldier called the “dread effects of war,” but such markers were beginning to fade. Some visitors came to the battlefield to experience a place being slowly remade by time, nature, and the unabashed scavenging of souvenir collectors. Others found themselves beckoned to the battleground by the heroism and sacrifice of men who had fallen there, particularly the martyred Nathaniel Lyon. Although nearly a century would pass before the establishment of the Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield Park, the resonance of this site had already become clear within the first year of the Civil War.
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Dr. Neely is an associate professor of history who has taught at Missouri State since 2010. His most recent book, A Union Tested: The Civil War Letters of Cimbaline and Henry Fike, was published last year by the University of Georgia Press. It follows a Unionist couple in Illinois whose wartime correspondence exemplified the wartime struggles of ordinary Americans. His first book, The Border between Them: Violence and Reconciliation on the Kansas-Missouri Line, was published by the University of Missouri Press in 2007.
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Join park staff and guest speakers at 1 pm every Sunday from July 6th through August 3rd to learn the history behind battlefield preservation efforts and commemoration. This series will engage visitors in the stories of people and events that saved places hallowed by the sacrifices of soldiers and civilians alike during and after the Civil War. Wilson's Creek National Battlefield is one of those places and this series is part of the remembrance of the 164th anniversary of the Battle of Wilson's Creek.